Well, I think it is built into the premise that when we say "democracy" we really mean Republic. The main area of contention is probably most of us take for granted that it actually matters who we vote into office, and you probably don't.

The issue is when we say "Republic" we're referring to oligarchy

Ok. I found the source. It was an unstuck politics post by superuberbob.

It is interesting how much (alleged) alt right material I get exposed to by reading liberal forums. In this case, I don't think he even was criticizing the material as right wing. I think he was sincerely questioning our possible eminent demise based on our stage of the cycle.

the liberals are the real alt righters amirite

No. But I think it is a symbiotic relationship to an extent.

I would say I have had a lot of exposure to reactionary ideas through ridicule by liberals and vice versa. I doubt I am the only one.

FWIW, I doubt I would be aware of the terms intersectionality, postmodernism, etc. if they weren't introduced to me through criticism on podcasts I listened to.

I still get a kick out of the fact that Jordan Peterson blames most of the ills of the Western world on Jacques Derrida. If you want to know why he's controlled opposition as opposed to obscure professor who hit it big.

He isn't a fan of Foccault either.

Baudrillard was the one that had draw for me.

This isn't too bad really. I can see why I liked him. I never made it too far though.

That is one of the dumbest things I've read. It is no meaning. Like its a collection of real words in the proper order with props grammar and it says nothing at all.

Welcome to post-modernism

From the wiki. Basically: if you think you have everything figured out you probably don't. It's Socrates' "all I know is that I don't know nothing" re-written and applied to society.

The Wikipedia article stated plainly that attribution of the quotes to Tytler was dubious.

Tytler is very obscure. I am guessing that almost no one on the left or right had heard of him before the before the right wing derposphere made up some quotes and attributed them to him.

According to Wikipedia, 2 of the quotes I cited are attributed to him, and the other 2 popped up in the 1940s-50s, and were attributed to him, without proof he is the source, although they are consistent with his worldview. So I would characterize your argument giving agency of creating the ideas to the right wing derposphere as a false one. At most they seem to have coopted his name and ideas for their own nefarious purposes. And clearly none of us even knew this without the Snopes article, so it appears it wasn't a very prevalent meme.

Anyways, I am more interested in exploring the ideas presented than worrying about the fidelity of the source. Ironically, quotes of his I didn't include line up more with Luckbox's pessimistic worldview.

"The people flatter themselves that they have the sovereign power. These are, in fact, words without meaning. It is true they elected governors; but how are these elections brought about? In every instance of election by the mass of a people—through the influence of those governors themselves, and by means the most opposite to a free and disinterested choice, by the basest corruption and bribery. But those governors once selected, where is the boasted freedom of the people? They must submit to their rule and control, with the same abandonment of their natural liberty, the freedom of their will, and the command of their actions, as if they were under the rule of a monarch"

-If you disagree with the concept that democracy is by its very nature destined to be a transitionary period between more stable non-democratic governments, then it is certainly your prerogative to do so.

My point is that no one was talking about Tytler before the right wing derposphere decided to make those quotes a thing. He wasn't a part of university curriculums. (As far as I know, he still isn't.) He wasn't widely discussed in political circles.

All that said, I have no objection to discussing the idea behind the so-called Tytler Cycle, even though I believe it is wrong.

Ok. Take it up with SuperUberBob. He posted the circle, and I thought it interesting, and went down the rabbithole a little.

Is there anything to discuss in your opinion? Do you believe the cycle accurately describes the downfall of ancient Athens or the Roman Republic?

for what it's worth, i saw and ignored this post when it was just the OP, you guys could have done the same

18th century is probably the nut low for accuracy in history and archaeology

and the real conspiracy theorists out there should not get behind analyzing the ancient greek texts but actually debunking them

much of what we have that is greek is translated from Arabic because we lost it and they preserved it and we later got it back from them so we have no idea what was lost or misinterpreted along the way - to my knowledge, this is the earliest known drawing of Socrates in existence



most of our intact texts are from the renaissance or later, much of them conflict with each other and we often just guess when do author attribution

for example, when in doubt, a scholar would just say "this is probably aristotle" so it got attributed to him, he'd have every incentive to do that as well because unearthing an unknown text by aristotle from a church archives in florence in 12th century would be a whole lot more momentous than unearthing a random and anonymous text

same for forgeries, if you're forging a document for fame or fortune to sell then it'll make a whole lot more sense to attribute it to someone with more name brand recognition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudepigrapha

in fact, much of what someone in the 18th century who studied the classics would have studied has long since been proven as either falsely attributed or outright false itself

if you're going to go down rabbit holes based on ancient greece, the possibility that much of what we know is made up fiction is a whole lot more fun

fun fact, i learned all this stuff because i love ancient history and have read most of the original texts in english. I actually was such a fanboy that when I began researching which version of ancient greek to read the originals in, I soon discovered that most of the information we have on the Greeks can't be traced back to the Greek language itself but our earliest copy of it is in Arabic, Latin or some other language...

that's when i went down that historicity of greece rabbit hole and man... I do not recommend it, i'm sure many of you are already labeling me as a nutjob

That's actually a real cool story.

yeah I'm going to shutup now but most of the great Renaissance artists actually spent most of their early careers forging works of art to sell as if they were ancient greek or roman - in modern times we can't tell the difference between the two because you can't carbon date stone or metal either so it's basically impossible to tell if an ancient greek statue was made by an artisan in Pisa on the 16th century or is actually that ancient roman bust from the time of caesar - at the end of the day it's still absolutely amazing to own a piece that could be a 16th century bust anyway and the owners have no incentive to prove their priceless work isn't quite as priceless so it's all treated with a level of indifference you wouldn't find if someone today miraculously found an ancient greek statue buried in his backyard in Ohio and tried to sell on ebay

this is also why you can buy a coin from the time of Alexander the great on ebay for $1. There are so many fake ancient coin factories in eastern europe that they flooded the market and now need to just dump inventory despite that they are supposedly "priceless" pieces that Indiana Jones would steal to put in a museum

even in the middle ages, everyone wanted Roman and Greek stuff, Michaelangelo spent most of his career as a forger before he finally felt like he could strike out making his own original work

likewise, books and texts were the birkin bags of their era, they'd spend a fortune on a book and a book would sell a whole lot more if it were "newly discovered" classic

like if you were to forge a painting today, you'd shoot for the moon for a piece that could fetch millions instead of just saying "it was just some random dutch painter from 300 years ago" - people engaged in the same forgery work back then but it was a million times more difficult to tell - you have a marble bust of caesar, it can only be traced back to the 16th century, but that's super far back so we figure it must be real despite that era was rife with Roman forgeries

don't get me wrong, i'm not of the "history is all made up" narrative like fomenko etc, i love history, i read historical non-fiction nearly every day

factor in that people are happy to draw conclusions based on circumstantial evidence and you'll get a circle jerk of archaelogy and history - the Unesco site we call Troy today is the 3rd site we've called Troy in the last few centuries. The reason for the changes is we have no other proof other than the location vaguely fits a description of it in a fantasy novel the Iliad and after we found it the first time we later found 2 other sites that fit the description a little better. Absolutely nothing about the actual archaelogical record gives the slightest evidence of it being troy, it's just one of thousands of ruins found in Asia minor and this one fits the description the most. In fact, nearly every map of ancient greece is not based on archaelogical evidence either but actually from Homer's writings. That's no different than if in three thousand years, some people decided to use the kindle copy of Tom Clancy's novels to recreate a map of the world. It could work, but we both know how incomplete and wrong it would be.

just take basically anything as nothing but pure entertainment if it takes place before the renaissance is all i'm saying

i'll take off my tin foil hat now and go back to the grind

Democratic capitalism does seem to me to be transitional.

The choice may well be whether to lose the democratic bit or the capitalist bit.

There is only socialism and liberalism(individual choice and free markets); interventionism is unstable and tends towards socialism.

We have always had plenty of intervention. I agree as capitalism diminishes this intervention increases. That leads us to democratic socialism.

It's like the definition of a transition stage.

One post later, exploring the ideas,
This has been a truly fascinating demonstration of how the one way our society is unequivocally in decline is that we've completely abandoned the concept of "feeling ashamed"