Comics wank colliding with political wank: Like matter and anti-matter ...

[box_in_the_box]

I look forward to seeing the perfect storm of wank calm and rational debate that will ensue in the comments, between competing factions of both superhero comics fans and public policy ideologues.

Superman supports health care and welfare!



From back in the day when Superman used his moral force to say we should do this because it's the right thing to do for our neighbors, never mind if it cost us some tax dollars.

Of course, today he'd be attacked for his position because, after all, he's an illegal immigrant.

And like so many other illegals, we just want him to clean up our messes and do the jobs we can't do for ourselves for non-existent pay, but that doesn't mean we have to acknowledge when he might have a point.

But I could be mistaken. Is there someone out there who can explain why Superman is wrong?

(Hat tip to Kevin H and Wesley Osam.)

This was originally posted online near the end of August, but I don't recall seeing it on this comm, so I thought I'd share it with you all.

Comments

[arilou_skiff]

Bollocks, Rome failed for a very large variety of reasons, but actual luxury spending was not one of them.

The most important (although there were a bunch of factors that contributed to a declining tax-base, like environmental decline, and new virulent diseases) was probably that the fact that they kept paying huge sums for armies that constantly rebelled. (Which meant they had to pay MORE money to put down those rebellions)

Like every empire they faced the problem of what the heck do you do to keep the guy you gave an army from just using it against you? The end result seemed to be "create an ideology that emphasizes loyalty to the sovereign" only by the time that got around the western empire was the playground for Franks and Lombards.

The real simple reason is that roman generals stood to gain more by fighting for the throne (or trying to set up their own personal fiefdoms) than defending the borders.

[halialkers]

And this was because of a failing on the part of the civilian authorities to decide "Well, shit, there's no viable Caesar. So how do we handle this?". The soldiers simply did what soldiers in ancient times did, and it was the damn fool idiot Octavian's fault that his little idea didn't work. The Pagan Roman system, like the USSR, held within it the seeds of its own destruction.

[arilou_skiff]

As our favourite jewish carpenter said: "He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword." The same roman armies that built the empire was what brought it down, the barbarians just picked up the scraps that were left.

[halialkers]

Except that the Western Roman Empire did implode and the Eastern Roman Empire survived until 1922, yeah. And given that the Islamic Janissaries were worthy heirs of the Pagan Legions in full....what goes around does end up coming around.