Shine, Perishing Republic

[Kumpe]

The subject line reminds me of  some cesarean biographies I read recently
(the author's name was Michael Grant, if I remember correctly).  Main topic
was the change from republic to empire.  Augustus boosted the empire by
pretending to  care for republican institutions.  The opposite character in
Grant's interpretation was Caligula, who despised Augustus'  doublethink
and and opted for a straight centralistic government, without
constitutional restrains, to put it in modern terms.
So I apply a little perspective by incongruety, in trying to understand
president Bush, by regarding our planetary politics as a change from a
strong local republic to an even stronger  global empire.  This offers a
way  to regard Bush as an idealist who believes in what he does, opposed to
any kinder and gentler  democrat in office, who will be as imperialistic as
Bush in the end. Yet I  guess the world prefers to be lured into a colonial
state, rather than be conquered.

This is not a Bush/Caligula comparison, this is comparing the  current
global situation to the mediterranean situation around  the beginning of
the chistian era. The only Bush/Caligula parallel is in  the supposedly
shared idealism of the two characters. If we see them as people who try to
act straight.


Christian