I may have posted this already, I know I wanted to, but I don't remember. If I did, I guess just ignore this one.
Anyways, when I was in college, circa 1990 (give or take a year or two) I had this professor who was obviously an old hippie. He had longish hair, reminded me of a Mary Tyler Moore on the Dick Van Dkye show hairdo. Except it was totally completely white. He had a similarly colored goatee. Might have been a beard, but was definitely a goatee. He always wore turtlenecks...or maybe he didn't always, but all my memories of him are in one. Sometimes, with a vest which he wore open. And always with a necklace with medallion on it. Oh and he had glasses too.
Not sure of the specific class but it was some Social Science class.
At any rate, he told us something then, in 1990, that has stuck with me in all the years since, even though I can't remember his name or the class.
He said the longest functioning democracy in history was the Roman Senate. And that lasted 250 years. He said in all the other democracies, a bit prior to the point, the people in charge realized they could use the government to feather their own nests (those were his words) and they cared more about themselves and enriching their pockets then they did about the citizens and country they were supposed to govern. And then the democracy fell into despotism, or monarchy, or simply fell apart under the weight of corruption from the people above. he said, 250 years is about all a democracy and really remain a democracy.
He said this in 1990.
I remembered this because at the time, I thought, "only 250 years? Geez, for us, that'll be 2026! That's far away, but not that far. Still, nah, I can't imagine anything happening like he's talking about." I scoffed in my head, but filed it away so that I could look back in 36 years, if I were still alive, and scoff at him again.
And now, 2 years before the "deadline' he mentioned, we have Project 2025.
It's almost like he could see the future.
But GOD, I hope he's wrong.
POLT
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