Exactly the same sentiments were among Europeans, the French, and the British in the XIX century. At that time, there was no Internet, but there was a circus. All the freaks were collected and shown there. Even circus troupes of people carrying anomalies of appearance traveled across America. But everything that I have described is only the beginning of the process of the triumphal march of capitalism around the world. This is just the beginning of the freak show. At first, ordinary people, the crowd, were not lucky enough to calm down at the sight of the unfortunate. With the development of democracy in-depth, and not only in breadth, funny politicians appeared over time harbingers that further on Olympus there will be solid Guemplens. Democracy is a selective process, and it is not a choice of the best among the best. Democracy is a choice to laugh to yourself. Millions choose and take revenge at the same time. Amazingly, the manipulations of so-called dictatorships and autocracies save a country from another clown in the role of president. The fact that those who play the presidential role in the modern world are buffoons and empty seats is shown by the fight against a catastrophic treacherous virus
And only a politician who can challenge all the freaks and all the buffoons mumbling about some kind of democracy is a real imperial politician. This is a greeting from the XVI and XVIII centuries to Russia. But how and why he became like this, even though he was chosen to be an empty place and not interfere with the enrichment of the court, this is another question, another topic that requires disclosure. The last strong politicians were in Europe in the XX century. The last strong ideologues were in the world, too, in the XX century.
Chapter 11
Shorties
"People are like people. They love money, but it's always been humanity loves money, no matter what it's made of, whether it's leather, paper, bronze, or gold. Well, they are frivolous well, well and mercy sometimes knocks on their hearts ordinary people in general, they resemble the former the housing issue only spoiled them
M. Bulgakov "Master and Magarita"
Until about 460 BC, the Athenians did not like money. Money did not play a major role. After the victory over the Persians, Athens consolidated other Greeks around itself during the conflict headed the Delos Maritime Union of Greek cities. Over time, the union's treasury was also moved to Athens under the pretext of better preservation of money. From that moment on, the aristocracy of Ancient Greece began to suffer damage, not in terms of loss of authority and influence; however, the aristocrats themselves became bourgeois in thirty years. Rootless oligarchs appeared in Athens, who supported the strategist Pericles. To finally finish off the aristocracy, the oligarchs used the so-called "shard court" ostracism. In just two generations, Athens got rid of outstanding citizens: Aristides, Phimistocles, Cimon, Thucydides, etc. They drove all ambitious people out of the city. Only Pericles remained.
However, the sword of the crowd hung over him in the form of ostracism. It may seem strange to refer to some Ancient Greece: where is Ancient Greece, and where is modern world? Ancient events and modern facts are separated by 2500 years. (What are you, they say, a blockhead, carrying a blizzard. However, each material is not a fairy tale or a saying. I cannot tell white patriots and fascists that there are instructive examples and analogies. Here is the fate of the Greek Atlantis, as Ancient Greece and its democracy rested in the Bosom, just right). But it is precisely Greek democracy that creates a vivid example of a shortterm rise and a long fall and degradation, and then complete disappearance the oblivion of the famous ethnic group. (The Greek landing in Smyrna in May 1919 and the Second Greco-Turkish War cannot be regarded as a Greek revival. The Greeks were expelled by the Kemalists and left Asia Minor forever. However, these were completely different Greeks already. But what's the difference? These were also considered Greeks).
For the traditional ethnos to disappear along with the de facto disappeared aristocracy (no matter what, it may even be modern and socialist), the activity of only two "market" generations is necessary. Just two. And now, one is enough. Ancient Athens, until the complete defeat of the semi-savage in the opinion of civilized and tolerant Athenians of Sparta, lived in the struggle of the ancestral aristocracy, its clans among themselves, and the so-called newcomers. Who are these visitors? These are poor relatives, as they would be called now, poor relatives were then, and now, residents of other Greek cities are meteks. The youngest son of that very famous Pericles was not given an inheritance, thereby the position itself, because his mother was from their other Greek city! After the Greco-Persian Wars, the Athenians stopped working, or, more precisely, it became not prestigious to work. But trading is, yes, it has become prestigious. In addition, it has become fashionable to rally at the Agora Athenian Forum. The whole V century before. The witnesses watched the decline of the Athenian school of philosophy. Quick and easy ones replaced deep thoughts. Oratory and populism have become fashionable. The Greeks stopped appreciating whole natures and people with a core; they fell in love with populist demagogues. With the heyday of Athenian democracy, Athenians stopped literally thinking, stopped learning, and not only from philosophers; philosophers, moralists, and intellectuals were not needed for nothing (by analogy with modernity, they stopped reading books but only began to hang out in Tiktok and Twitter). All the townspeople began to hang out at the Greek theater.
The Greek theater had just blossomed at this time in the form of entertainment. The Athenians did not think long to execute and not to execute Socrates. Actually, the death of Socrates is symbolic of the rearrangement of values. First, the Greeks expelled the aristocracy, then ignored philosophers and all other knowledge, except management in the Aegean Sea and olive macroeconomics. The Athenian slave market supplied manpower. Of course, there were patriots. They were shouting: Drive guest workers into the neck! We can do it ourselves! But it was one of the subspecies of fashionable populism. What will develop in the form of a new-fangled philosophical trend of cynicism cynicism precisely in Ancient Greece until it falls from even more semi-savage Macedonia and its king Philip (the father of the great Alexander the Great). Does everyone know Diogenes of Sinope? Who lived in a barrel and despised the crowd with the words: "Where are the people? I don't see people?"