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Ed Meyer's avatar

Hm. I'd classify Clinton as a Horny Toad, Obama as a Hyena, and Biden as a houseplant that needs watering 2-3 times per week.

Seriously tho, the difference between Trump 45 and Trump 47 is very stark. I think the person most surprised by Trumps first election success was Trump himself. Back then, he seemed to have announced his run for the Presidency as a bit of a lark and then didn't quite know what to do when he won. The political machine schooled him harshly over the last 9ish years but, to their dawning and complete chagrin, they completely underestimated how much he would learn from what they were teaching. And now they are the ones caught by surprise and are floundering around like a beached fish. They will soon begin to smell like a dead fish and hopefully, we'll be done with them for a little while.

Winston Churchill proved to be the absolute embodiment of a Lion when Britain needed one. But you cannot ignore how quickly he was discarded after his services were deemed to be no longer required. The personal pronoun rapist immigrant cesspool Britain is currently swimming in a mere 80 years later is indicative how far and how fast the fall from the heights can be.

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Rikard's avatar

This is the most important part:

"The wolves, for their part, can instinctively smell weakness and just keep coming."

If that isn't accepted as true, then it matters not if the rulers are foxes or lions.

Also, consider that Machiavelli has been thoroughly downplayed, along with many others (Pareto f.e.) at universities, especially in pol-sci and political economy (the latter is what economics used to be called, since all economic policy is political and vice versa) ever since higher education was made available to the public.

Meanwhile, the elite's private instituti0ons of learning retain the classical curriculum, including logic and ethics and rhetorics.

Now, why would one want to remove certain subjects from educational canon, just because it is made public?

PS: To extend the Machiavellian metaphor, we now live under a court of Fools (media and entertaintment) who believes that a Wolf can be made vegan.

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