The Culture War

Finished book four of Thucydides. At the deepest level it’s basically identical to what’s going on in the world right now. Thus far in modern times it has been limited to culture, but the longer the sides continue to grow more extreme and faction off, the more likely it is to get violent. This is not good.

The scary thing is how cleanly you can map the Democrats to Athens, and the Republicans to Sparta. Including all the intricacies. The Athenians claimed to promote freedom and progress, but at the same time maintained a massive empire and, when problems arose, were quick to resort to force. Meanwhile, the Spartans had a reputation for being somewhat backwards and old fashioned, but they were well disciplined (just look at Thermopylae), and had firm principles that lead them eventually to success.

I wonder which event in our contemporary world will be most like the Cocyra episode.