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So, I had a fun time reading Gibbon a while back. I don't feel like combing back over them to dig out the specific emperors, dates, etc. But the narrative he paints of the crisis of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century is basically the praetorian guard run amok. Every emperor was basically appointed if not directly by them, but by their assent to his rule. They expected generous bribes that increasingly bankrupted the empire, and at a certain point Senators were begging not to be made emperor because they couldn't afford it, and the praetorian kept murdering emperors that displeased them. Eventually Diocletian comes into power and "solves" the problem by subdividing the administration of the empire into such a labyrinthine bureaucracy that it's profoundly rare that anyone has enough consolidated power to rebel or murder an emperor.
Along the way, emperor's tried to "fire" the praetorians, or get the rogue and rebellious legions to come to heel. It generally ended in murder, a new emperor and a new round of "donations" to the legions. They could not be shamed out of enriching themselves. Pompey's cold logic from another age to "stop quoting laws to men with swords" always won out.
I think about this a lot with the current Trump administration. I think about it with all the profoundly powerful intelligence chiefs he's revoked the clearances of and banned from federal buildings. I think about it with the appointments he's sent in to reform the FBI, already breaking up the DC office and transferring thousands of FBI agents all across the country. I think about it with Trump firing so many top generals. There are a lot of powerful interest right now having the law quoted to them, and many of them have guns.
I don't know exactly where we are so far as the breakdown of our society. The call going out is that what Trump is doing shouldn't be allowed, is a "fascist coup", and stopping these powerful interest from being dispossessed from the levers of power is "saving our republic". I'm sure the men with guns having the law quoted at them might feel rather emboldened that even if the law isn't on their side, they'll still be on "the right side of history".
The last thing I think about a lot is how violent successions are in Roman history. Entire factions get crucified and their wives and daughters sold into slavery, all their property confiscated by the victor in the name of "the state". One way of reading about it is to be thankful we have peaceful transfers of power in our modern system. Another way is to wonder how much power ever really gets transferred if it's so peaceful. One rarely quotes law at men with swords and lives to tell the tale.
Another one of Diocletian’s innovations to circumvent the Praetorian Guard was to never set foot in the city of Rome and just rule the empire from Florida uhh I mean Mediolanum. This also allowed him to always stay with the army on the frontiers. One thing that got emperors into trouble during the third century is that they could either stay with the army at the German frontier to keep it from rebelling and keep the barbarians out, or stay in Rome to keep the Praetorian Guard under control. Moving the admin center closer to the border solved that issue.
But Trump doesn’t rule from the winter palace at Mar-a-Lago, he rules from Washington city. There also isn’t any army rebelling; the barons who disputed the old king’s orders are red state governors on Trump’s side. Trump has no need to reign in the troops because the troops love him the same as other working class males.
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All of the men who actually carry guns are trump supporters, or near enough. It’s progressives quoting laws to them.
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How's that executive order to declassify records on the JFK assassination going?
The executive order says only that a plan for "full and complete release" is to be presented to the president, by February 7 for the JFK files, and by March 9 for the RFK and MLK files. It does not provide a deadline for the releases themselves.
Of course, as weeks elapse after February 7 and March 9, you can argue that the releases will never happen.
My guess is that the JFK files confirm that Oswald did it (or at least that the deep state genuinely thought he did) but the investigation into Oswald's background and history pulls in hard-to-declassify material about Cold War era espionage.
Of course, releasing JFK files which confirm that Oswald did it is a political loser for this (or any other) administration because none of the people looking forward to the files being released will believe that they are seeing the real files.
To me the most parsimonious explanation is that there are details that are relatively probable but highly embarrassing to the federal government. For example, if Oswald did indeed start shooting, but that it was an accidental discharge from a Secret Service agent (possibly still alive) which blew Kennedy's head off and killed him.
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I find it kind of a weird idea to suppose there was a conspiracy capable of murdering a president and getting away with it but incapable of getting rid of the paper trail when given six decades to do so. If there is evidence for conspiracy in the JFK files, it will be entirely deniable circumstantial evidence, something like "this report was filed weekly except this one time in October 1963."
I've long suspected that the problem is that the files hold some still relevant procedural detail that the US doesn't want people knowing (my theory: just how long JFK was "dead" before the announcement was made - in his case they officially continued life saving measures for awhile despite clear futility, likely to allow for succession planning related stuff).
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You're probably right.
I figure that Oswald likely did pull the trigger, but did so as part of a wider conspiracy/plot for which Jack Ruby was tying up loose ends.
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