More old fart scibblings

On a different tack lately. Here's another one. Since I've been watching a lot of videos about Roman history, I've come to a few conclusions. Not that this is new. I've done it before. In fact, I think I might adjust my opinion just a little in the light of new information.

One thing about me, I've always got an opinion. It may not be based upon expert opinion, but I guess I'm always willing to offer what I think anyway.

In the case of the Roman Empire in the West, it seems to me that there was always somebody WILLING, but not always somebody ABLE. Things would go to hell in a handbasket, and there was a need for someone to step up to the plate and do something about it. For instance, there was Nero. Nero was not deemed to be a good emperor by most standards. Not even in the standards of the time. The people then were getting fed up with him. Nero figured it out, and he fled. He ended up committing suicide. But the problem after that was this... who and what comes next?

In the case of Nero's fall, it was Galba. Galba was willing, but he wasn't able. So they did away with him, and maybe another one or two before they found somebody who was ABLE. The Julio-Claudio dynasty was dead and the Flavian dynasty was born. And so it went with the Flavians until they were gone and so on and so forth. The point is that there was a time IN BETWEEN the dynasties where there was instablity and nobody was able to fill in the gap until somebody was able to fill those shoes.

I see the same pattern with the death of Marcus Aurelius--the last of the Good Emperors. Aurelius broke the pattern of choosing outside of family and chose his son. His son was one of the worst. By the time Commodus was assassinated, Rome was on the way down. During all that time of his reign, nobody was WILLING NOR ABLE to do anything about him until the damage was so severe that Rome never really did recover from it.

There was a lesson in there somewhere. It could be that the ablilty to choose your own leaders is key to making changes before things go too far. The trouble is that this is not what the leaders want. Those in power are quite unwilling to give it up.

An example for us is with this election of 2020. Nobody seems WILLING NOR ABLE to deal with the controversy and to put it to bed permanently. Oh, they'd like to, but nobody can do this. The winners can't either. To do so would undermine their legitimacy. To do this on a permanent basis would require that they risk losing what they've gained, and they do not want to do that. But that is what it would take to end the controversy. To end the controversy, there needed to be a full accounting of what actually happened.

Complaining about a problem without truly addressing it will never solve it. This business with 2020 won't be solved, and it's going to happen again and again until it can't. By then, our nation will likely be shattered like in the Roman experience. Nobody's going to be ABLE to put back together something that is totally destroyed. The longer you wait, the harder it will be. It has probably gone on too long already.

Of course, if you leave to the left, they'd destroy the election process and so it won't matter anymore anyway. That almost happened. Yet nobody on the so-called "right" is WILLING NOR ABLE to do anything about it either. Unfortunately, this includes Trump. If he was truly ABLE, it wouldn't have happened in the first place.

I once compared Trump to Constantine. He might be more like Galba or the one that followed Commodus--Pertinax. Both those were good men, but they weren't up to the task at hand. I am beginning to think that also applies to Mr. Trump. But he is the best that is available. That is what it means when there is no one ABLE. Everybody can see something needs to be done, but nobody is ABLE to actually do it. And so it goes down the Commodus, which is a pun. Commodus looks like commode. That's what happened to Rome, and that is what is going to happen here if we don't get it together and soon--down the commode.