Written By:
advantage - Date published:
10:00 am, October 5th, 2016 - 20 comments
Categories: International, us politics -
Tags: donald trump, hillary clinton
Back in 428 BC Athens was in a bit of a state and a good three years into a crappy war with Sparta. Athens had been used to being led by the bodaciously awesome Pericles. Pericles was like Obama and Lincoln combined and led for over thirty years: awesome orator, run the joint from 461 to 429, and could get up there at assembly and stitch together the ideals that all Athenians should strive, sacrifice and die for.
Unfortunately they’d just lost him to a big plague outbreak. And the Spartan war had dragged. And Mytilene, one of their key ally towns, had jumped over to the Spartan side. In revenge and in shock, the Athenians voted to have all male Mytileneans killed and their women sold into slavery.
Upon waking up the next day, however, and discovering that a ship had already departed to execute the city’s order, some horrified Athenians demanded that the assembly reconsider its decision.
Into this foment steps Cleon. Cleon had a massively wealthy merchant father who accelerated him into a political career. He’s portrayed by both commentators and playwrights at the time as a bellicose buffoon who uses and abuses the demos (the people) to rise to power. Furious with the weak-kneed Athenians and their moral qualms expressed at the assembly, Cleon declares that the “empire is a tyranny exercised over subjects who do not like it.” So if you don’t like it, he thunders, “surrender your empire … [and] go in for philanthropy.” His political point is that Athens’ security trumps justice: “A city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, than with good laws that are constantly being altered.”
In response steps in Diodotus. He’s as calm and collected as Cleon is seething and strident, and he’s totally prepared for this moment. The good citizen ought to triumph not by frightening the people, “but by beating them fairly in argument.” Which is lovely but not a patch on Cleon’s superior realpolitik that national security requires brutal realism. So Diodotus argues that moral or legal right and wrong should be pushed aside. Instead the assembly must consider if the motion to rescind was simply to Athens’ advantage. National security is best guaranteed by showing leniency to the Mytileneans. Not because we are merciful or morally moist, but because we are pragmatists. Showing mercy is simply, according to Diodotus, the only way to avoid future rebellions against Athens.
So the assembly buys the rationale, reverses the decision, and sends a ship in all haste to overtake the first one. The second ship arrives just as the first one is about to execute the first order and spares the entire town. Whew!
Or not. The endless Peloponnesian War this is part of reached its real low point a few years later in the neutral city of Melos. The Athenians besieged and then devastated it to remind all other Greek cities that either you were a winner with Athens or a loser with Sparta. It was a massacre that Diodotus’ pragmatism had paved the way for. In a dialogue that preceeds the siege, an Athenian commander makes clear to the Melians (not Melons!) that the only matters he will discuss are expediency and advantage. The standard of justice, he announced, “depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.”
Justice and right are clearly for low-energy types. The Athenians have extrapolated from Diodotus that the sole law of human nature and thus of international relations is that of power. So since they are stronger than the Melians they have every right to expect them to bow. The Melians refuse and reveal another truth of human nature: Just as the will to exert power is all too human, so is the will to resist. Athenian hubris simply makes its competitors resist harder and harder, and less than a decade later Athens is decisively defeated in Sicily.
So let’s get to it. We have seen what the lawless tirades of the son of a wealthy father can bring out of people. But as we saw in the first tv debate, rather than rise rhetorically and morally to this challenge, Hillary Clinton has instead done a Diodotus. In the debate she regaled us with her practicality and the need for realpolitik. Her reply to Trump’s criticism of the Iran deal was that it had succeeded in “putting a lid” on the threat – makes sense in a narrow way but has none of the heroic sensibility we saw in Obama or in Pericles.
So, pragmatism. With Clinton as with Diodotus, political language undermines directness and transparency. The end of the Periclean era is marked by coldness and calculation. Both Diodotus and Clinton can’t bring “the vision thing”, because it’s just not in them. Sure they both seek the good in their own terms, but they both do so not by rousing their fellow citizens to rise to their nations’ ideals, but instead to lower themselves to matters of practical advantage.
This has been brought to you by the old Greek Thucydides. He had great 2,000 year old insights into the ties between language and democracy. Check out Pericles’ funeral oration yourself.
A big lesson is this: if we don’t grasp that words truly matter, for democracy’s defenders no less than its destroyers, it may spell the impending funeral of the best kind of democracy.
The next U.S. Presidential debate is a town hall style one within the polis or people. I’m looking for some ideals in there. Somewhere.
https://player.vimeo.com/api/player.jsKatherine Mansfield left New Zealand when she was 19 years old and died at the age of 34.In her short life she became our most famous short story writer, acquiring an international reputation for her stories, poetry, letters, journals and reviews. Biographies on Mansfield have been translated into 51 ...
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Clinton seems bereft of ideals…Trump at least seems to want detente and peace with Russia and in the Middle East ( if you look at his serious statements as opposed to his blowing his mouth off and making outrageous statements)
Clinton has form as a calculated warmonger…and seems bought off…a dangerous situation
Trump seems to be his own man and a skilled deal maker
Imo it is best to evaluate them by looking to see who supports them…in the military and amongst the USA oligarchy ( bankers eg Goldman Sachs, politicians eg Bushes)…and who has given funds to their campaigns from outside the country eg Saudi Arabia ? Israel?
Trump is clearly the outsider
If you want more of the same and worse , vote Clinton
…if you want to gamble on something new which could come up trumps, vote Trump
Trump does not claim to be an idealist , but a pragmatist and a deal maker
Thanks Chooky: I needed a laugh to go with my lunch time bagel.
And a piss poor businessman, too.
It’s worth taking a closer examination at just how awful this is for Trump. Setting aside the legal but shitty tax evasion for a moment, Trump lost nearly a billion dollars during a time when the U.S. economy was booming. Do you remember the ’90s? The GDP consistently grew each year. Unemployment was low. Businesses thrived. Snap bracelets were everywhere. Meanwhile, Trump consistently made a string of disastrous deals that tanked his casinos and airlines. Trump’s so bad at business, his losses in 1995 account for nearly two percent of the entire country’s.
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/305415/trumps-so-bad-at-business-1995-loss-was-two-percent-of-us/
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11722967
I cannot find a better summation of what politically is happening, and here too, if you live in Auckland or Wellington you won’t realize the town in Ohio is exactly the same as every small town in NZ.
In NZ all it needs is someone to resonate what Trump tapped into, politics doesn’t matter, what people have seen is the neolib decimation of western countries, our manufacturing, empty shops etc, but unless you drive outside the main centre’s here you would think everythings great.
There was an even more perceptive Greek IMHO. Plato. He wrote extensively on the topic of different forms of governance. You can read about his 5 different regimes, Aristocracy, Timocracy, Oligarchy, Democracy, and Tyranny here.
Essentially, according to Plato, all regimes decline and transform over time from the Aristocracy state the ultimate of which is ruled by the philosopher kings into tyranny. Note, democracy is listed second to bottom! i.e. next step along the line is tyranny.
It might be argued that the US is actually in a state of Oligarchy at the present time. That is a regime where the poor vastly outnumber the rich and in which the rich rule for themselves. However there are certain aspects of Plato’s democracy also very evident in the US – and in all western societies as well.
“The democratic man is consumed with unnecessary desires. Plato describes necessary desires as desires that we have out of instinct or desires that we have in order to survive. Unnecessary desires are desires we can teach ourselves to resist such as the desire for riches. The democratic man takes great interest in all the things he can buy with his money. He does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. His life has no order or priority.”
So essentially the US (and the majority of western nations) is in that juxtaposition between oligarchy and democracy.
In MHO Clinton represents the Oligarchy,
“Oligarchs do, however, value at least one virtue, that of temperance and moderation — not out of an ethical principle or spiritual concern, but because by dominating wasteful tendencies they succeed in accumulating money.
On the other had I fear Trump represents Tyranny
“Democracy is taken over by the longing for freedom. Power must be seized to maintain order. A champion will come along and experience power, which will cause him to become a tyrant. The people will start to hate him and eventually try to remove him but will realize they are not able.”
We have one such tyrant already in the western world. Duterte of the Philippines we don’t need any more.
The US is a plutocracy, which is a specific kind of oligarchy.
re “On the other hand I fear Trump represents Tyranny” (not according to all who know him…he is a warm human being and a deal maker, if a blowhard and given to politically incorrect bombast to lure in the Republican masses)
…actually I fear Clinton is the one who represents cold hard hearted tyranny
…just look at her secret email account (designed to circumvent the scrutiny of state and democracy)
…just look at how she dealt to Gadaffi…this really does end a chill down your spine
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35222-exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-hillary-s-emails
look at her cold war statements and her warmongering aggressive statements towards Syria, Iran and Russia
🙄
The “secret” email account is nonsense and has been explained a thousand times – and indeed most of the documents had been declassified anyway. Also having myself been the recipient of many classified document the documents labelled “restricted” would be pretty common knowledge to anyone who had an interest in those things. If there was intentional breach of security on Hillary Clinton’s part you can rest assured that there would have been very positive action taken by Federal agencies before now! On a similar matter one could question the continued presence of Trump on the campaign trail following his obvious implied threat to Clinton at a rally where he was taking about her desire to limit guns. There has been more than one President assassinated by maniacs with guns.
As for Gaddaffi I can hardly imagine a better end for the man. “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword”. If you imagine Trump is going to be any less of a threat to world peace, I fear you are seriously deluded.
His statements with regard to the use/non-use of “nukes” are highly ambiguous as are almost all of his statements.
As for the welfare of the US. His intent to reduce taxes for the wealthy, will result in even more inequality in what is already one of the most unequal societies in the world – despite having one of the greatest per capita incomes. The US is already on its knees socially. If Trump is elected one can almost bet on rebellion in a few years.
re -“The “secret” email account is nonsense and has been explained a thousand times – and indeed most of the documents had been declassified anyway. ”
(…really!?…and I thought you were a liberal Greenie!?…the evidence does not seem to support you)
http://investmentwatchblog.com/wikileaks-drops-another-bombshell-on-hillary-clinton-and-the-fbi-and-the-latest-assange-interviews/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy
‘New York Times ‘What We Know About Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server’
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/27/us/politics/what-we-know-about-hillary-clintons-private-email-server.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/10/fbi_agreed_to_destroy_evidence_in_clinton_email_investigation_immunity_deals.html
re- “As for Gaddaffi I can hardly imagine a better end for the man. “He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword”
(…pretty spurious argument ..this does not justify Clinton or the USA interfering in another nations affairs and killing their leader …as her emails show)
‘Libya: How Hillary Clinton Destroyed a Country’
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/03/03/libya-how-hillary-clinton-destroyed-a-country/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/riley-waggaman/hillary-clinton-turned-nation-into-isis-safe-haven_b_9571956.html
http://benwilliamslibrary.com/blog/?p=3666
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/22/how-west-broke-libya-gaddafi-national-unity
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2016/01/06/new-hillary-emails-reveal-true-motive-for-libya-intervention/
Well we shall just hope that Trump never gets his finger anywhere near the red button because it won’t be a country being destroyed it will be the whole world.
Timely. It was Thomas Hobbes who first published English language translations of Thucydides in an attempt to avert what he correctly identified as the slide towards Civil War in England. Right now, averting the slide towards war with Russia is the imperative, and key to that is the hope that Americans will look upon the words of those who are pushing it and ask, “why?”
Unfortunately, I believe Americas Periclean tendency died at Dealy Plaza.
Yes, it was a debate between a buffoon and an experienced orator, but the positions are slightly different from Cleon and Diodotus: Trump wasn’t arguing realpolitik, and Clinton wasn’t arguing purely from amoral national security.
Trump was arguing from petulance, with no consistency in any law. Clinton had a more consistent and coherent structure.
The only similarity is in the relative styles each used: Trump as Cleon and Clinton as more rational. Neither was a Pericles, but bear in mind that Pericles started the war that eventually destroyed Athens’ government and independence.
Yes. There’s only so great a politician you can be if at some point you decide war with Sparta is a good idea.
Does that make Bernie Sanders Socrates?
If he has an ounce of smarts he’ll go for HUD Secretary.
@ esoteric pineapples re “Does that make Bernie Sanders Socrates?”
hardly!…he now supports Clinton and discards his supporters…he is gutless…what a let down
Sanders …now supports Clinton and discards his supporters…he is gutless
In the lead-up to the Democratic National Convention, while some of Sanders’ supporters were throwing their toys and generally acting like petulant cry-babies, Sanders and his team were pushing the Democratic agenda to the left. He obtained massive policy gains by working within the structure of the party. If some of his supporters are too ignorant to see that, well… that’s on them.
http://www.vox.com/2016/7/25/12281022/the-democratic-party-platform
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2016/07/the_democratic_platform_is_a_monument_to_bernie_sanders_campaign.html
What We Talk About When We Don’t Want to Talk About Nuclear War
It’s pretty much the same in all Western nations. The political discourse is so shallow that no one really knows what’s going on and what response is happening.
the USA candidates are what they are ….without trying to fit them into some classical ancient Greek role models and scenarios …this is an ill fitting glove imo…one could just as well try and fit them into a Shakespearean drama
REALISM is what is required and a close look at their personal histories…lets face it Hillary Clinton has form
http://theduran.com/support-donald-trump-president-united-states/
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/book-review-of-david-stockmans-trumped-a-nation-on-the-brink-ruin/