96 Years Ago

[Minimalist]

In 1922 H. L. Mencken predicted republicunt party tactics for 2018.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

― H.L. Mencken

Uncanny, that man!

[onlinebiker]

"This is the most important election of our lifetime" -- the war cry of every political huckster since voting began......

SSDD

[vulcanlogician]

And 2,400 years ago we had Plato:

And it is when a democracy has ripened... fully... Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.

He is usually of the elite but has a nature in tune with the time — given over to random pleasures and whims, feasting on plenty of food and sex, and reveling in the nonjudgment that is democracy’s civil religion. He makes his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob” and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt... He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery” — and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/04/a...gtm=bottom

[Gawdzilla Sama]

In 1922 H. L. Mencken predicted republicunt party tactics for 2018.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

― H.L. Mencken

Uncanny, that man!

It's called FUD now.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Less than two years ago, 9 November 2016:

Dear America -

You're boned.

Condolences,

Boru

Uncanny, that man.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Stupid people seem to have greater influence these days.

[Cato]

Plebeians, Patricians and Equestrians anybody? Demagoguery has always existed in politics and likely always will. Everyone does it. Chastising a political foe for doing so is just a round about way of declaring one's political affiliation.

[Rev. Rye]

Really, it’s the same old story, and it has been since (at the very least), the second century BC, when Cato the Elder ended all of his speeches with “Carthago delenda est,” insisting that Carthage must be destroyed even when the speech he gave had absolutely nothing to do with Carthage. And now, for a more eloquent take on the same subject from Burt Lancaster in Judgment at Nuremberg: