"War, destruction, ruin and decay"

 

Old Aristotle was quite an impressive thinker.  He was maligned, I think, by the novelist Mary Renault, who implied he was complicit in the death of Alexander the Great. Fans of Plato (we may also call him "old") tend to denigrate him, claiming he was inferior to that philosopher.  But I'm inclined to prefer Aristotle of the two since I think he was less of a totalitarian and more of a realist.  I'm not as much an admirer of him as was Thomas Aquinas, though.  Aquinas' thought is almost entirerly derivative of Aristotle.

Aristotle famously claimed that democracies tend to decay over time because the populace falls prey to demagogues.  A demagogue persuades the people to abandon reason and embrace fear and hatred.  The rule of law breaks down in that case and the republic is ruled by a despot.  So you can imagine why Aristotle comes to mind, or at least to my mind, today.

Recently I posted about the far too many people in our country who eagerly await the end of our sinful world.  [I wonder, in passing, whether they hope for the end of the universe as well?  Our world is but a tiny part of it, so from a cosmic perspective its destruction wouldn't even be noticed. But I digress.]

Regardless, though I can't help but sigh at the thought of those happy folk who can't wait to be raptured and watch others die in agony during Earth's destruction (only as a prelude to eternal torment) I also can't help but wonder whether we face an end of sorts.  Not of the world, but a form of government, if not a nation.

Are we seeing Aristotle's claim being verified?  The political ads flooding the media in advance of the midterm elections have been particulary vile.  We see how AI may be misused each time we see one of the ads, and we see them all too often.  Are we truly such idiots as to believe the ridiculous claims being made? 

Then there is the new tendency to buy votes.  What was the practice once in corrupt local politics through party "bosses" is now the tactic being employed outright by major figures on the national stage.  We seem to have neither sense nor shame.

The title to this post is taken from Shakespeare's Richard II.  Shakespeare's plays rival the Bible in their evocation of disasters of various forms. We see war, ruin and destruction around the world each time we watch TV.  We read of them all the time.  Do we see decay here as well, of our system of government which it seems now is infused with corruption?  We'll know more than we do now soon enough.