Thursday, December 29, 2016

Death Knell of the American Republic?

The Roman Republic was established in 509 B.C. with the overthrow of the last king of Rome, Tarquin the Proud. That Republic lasted about four hundred and fifty years until 44 B.C. when Julius Caesar (Latin pronunciation: 'kaisar') installed himself as dictator-in-perpetuity. The Roman Empire followed in 31 B.C. with the proclamation by the Senate of Augustus Caesar as Emperor.

With our two Houses of Legislature, the office of the President, and the Supreme Court all controlled by the same party, and the President-elect a self-aggrandizing multi-millionaire showman/huckster capitalist motivated by personal greed, how much longer will the American Republic stand as a government by the people for the people?

Friday, December 23, 2016

Alas, Everyone

A few days ago I came across a book I hadn't read for several decades, so I decided to give it another whirl. After all, any book you don't remember is a new book.

The novel was Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank, published in 1959 by J.B. Lippincott of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Although it is easy for us to look back almost sixty years later and snicker at how dated the writing is, the fact remains that it was one of the first novels to deal with the possibility of nuclear warfare and what that entails. Since then, numerous "end-of-life-as-we-know-it" books have hit the market, but with the recent posturing by Trump and Putin, the whole idea of nuclear holocaust has gotten closer to reality.

Maybe a good Christmas gift to the American president-elect and the Russian president-in-perpetuity would be a copy of Alas, Babylon, just to give them an idea of how important de-escalation is to the continuation of human civilization on planet Earth.