Over at Protein Wisdom, the discussion in the Comments section of this post turned to George Santayana’s famous saying:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
At one point, Friend In The Ether Sdferr remarked:
Does Santayana mention historical occurrences of a people voluntarily electing into the chief magistracy a man who while posing as a lover of their nation secretly hates their nation and aims all his policy, all his purposes and acts, surreptitiously to undermine and punish that nation in the name of History and vengeance (sorry) justice? That’s the one case we should have studied, if Santayana does cite such a case.
I sure don’t recollect one.
I asked:
Caesar, Sdferr?
He replied, in the course of two comments:
I don’t think of Caesar hating Rome exactly. Did he? Is it necessary to make that case in order to explain his opportunistic behaviors?
And…
I guess I should say that I don’t view ClownDeceptor’s power grabs as merely for the sake of power alone, but as instrumental to actions necessary to achieve his nefarious aims (i.e., seeing to it that America’s chickens come home in fact to roost). That he personally benefits from the trappings of office is icing on cake. The key, though, as I see his own view of the matter, is delivering justice (punishments) to the miscreant west, whether measured as the west of Christianity free to hold its upper hand lo these many centuries, acting where it list, or upon capitalism writ in the broad strokes of classic Marxism, i.e. upon such American and western allies as the Sauds, the Israelis, the NATO bunch, the Ukraines, the hapless Japanese, Australians, etc. ClownDeceptor holds a very high opinion of himself and his aims. Nothing, from his point of view, so lowly as mere power acquisition.
FITE Ernst Schreiber chimed in:
The only example I can think of is cinematic. And the American people were saved from their own naivity, insipidity, stupidity (as the case may be) by a Hollywood ending.
The Jarrett Junto may be unique, then, in it’s motives, it’s casus belli, as it were.
If so, lessons can still be learned from, say, the Fall of The Roman Republic, but some creative thinking will also be needed.
Because, if we are truly Servants Of The Good, it is our Duty to see that Jarrett Junto Delenda Est!
We must discern the True Nature of these types, consult History for similar examples of such Evil in action, and summon all of our Intelligence – tempered by Virtue – to devise a plan for defeating the Left In America.
Where no quarter should be given, it must not be given. We cannot allow our strong Judeo-Christian belief in Mercy to prevent us from doing what is needed. However, we must always be on guard against the worse angels of our nature, lest in performing a successful surgery, we kill the patient.
This will demand every ounce of Physical and Spiritual Strength we possess. We may end-up so drained of both that we do not survive, but this is really about our Posterity, so we must not care.
OUTLAW.
By the way, here is a longer excerpt from George Santayana’s The Life Of Reason, Volume I:
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience. In a second stage men are docile to events, plastic to new habits and suggestions, yet able to graft them on original instincts, which they thus bring to fuller satisfaction. This is the plane of manhood and true progress. Last comes a stage when retentiveness is exhausted and all that happens is at once forgotten; a vain, because unpractical, repetition of the past takes the place of plasticity and fertile readaptation. In a moving world, readaptation is the price of longevity. The hard shell, far from protecting the vital principle, condemns it to die down slowly and be gradually chilled; immortality in such a case must have been secured earlier, by giving birth to a generation plastic to the contemporary world and able to retain its lessons. Thus old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird’s chirp.
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