Here’s a gallery of photos from Puerto Rico.
Here’s a gallery of photos from Trump’s golf courses.
We’ve been through this before. Do the pampered, privileged, entitled rich never learn anything?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
EVERY new generation of pampered rich kid believe They are smarter and more cunning than their predecessors. Show them the folly of past aristocrats and they’ll be all “WE won’t allow that to happen to us“
The thing that bothers me the most is that Trump has supporters who actively campaign against their own best interests.
Napoleon was not a full-blown imperialist when he led the troops to the bridge at Marengo. He was actually still a believer in the revolution – kind of like how Stalin was once a marxist.
I love that painting…
I mean Arcola, dang it! Need covefe.
Retribution takes generations; the rich know it’s just their descendants who face revolution.
Louis XIV would be envious. But, at least he had a purpose.
I wonder how many photos of Trump in those humble settings exist? I’d think that they would make great political fodder.
“I have inspected the house, which is constructed of hewn stone; the wall which encloses a forest; the towers also, buttressed out on both sides for the purpose of defending the house; the well, concealed among buildings and shrubbery, large enough to keep a whole army supplied; and the small bath, buried in darkness according to the old style, for our ancestors did not think that one could have a hot bath except in darkness. It was therefore a great pleasure to me to contrast Scipio’s ways with our own. Think, in this tiny recess the “terror of Carthage,” to whom Rome should offer thanks because she was not captured more than once, used to bathe a body wearied with work in the fields! For he was accustomed to keep himself busy and to cultivate the soil with his own hands, as the good old Romans were wont to do. Beneath this dingy roof he stood; and this floor, mean as it is, bore his weight.
But who in these days could bear to bathe in such a fashion? We think ourselves poor and mean if our walls are not resplendent with large and costly mirrors; if our marbles from Alexandria are not set off by mosaics of Numidian stone, if their borders are not faced over on all sides with difficult patterns, arranged in may colors like paintings; if our vaulted ceilings are not buried in glass; if our swimming-pools are not line with Thasian marble, once a rare and wonderful sight in any temple-pools into which we let down our bodies after they have been drained weak by abundant perspiration; and finally, if the water has not poured from silver spigots. I have so far been speaking of the ordinary bathing-establishments; what shall I say when I come to those of the freemen? What a vast number of statues, of columns that support nothing, but are built for decoration, merely in order to spend money! And what masses of water that fall crashing from level to level! We have become so luxurious that we will have nothing but precious stones to walk upon.”
Seneca, Letter from Scipio’s Villa to Lucillus, c.63BC.
“Do the pampered, privileged, entitled rich never learn anything?”
As with the French royalty restored after the Revolution:
“They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing. ”
Aux armes, citoyens.
Marcus Ranum @ # 3: Napoleon was not a full-blown imperialist when he led the troops to the bridge at [Arcola]…
That was back when he still had that cameltoe.
# 7 cartomancer
So baths had improved? They have recently also. I just missed the tin bath in front of the kitchen stove.
Seneca was just decrying modern decadence, a long tradition even then. If it had been Nero’s little pied-à-terre, he might have had a point.
I really liked Shiv’s quip: “it’s not taxes, it’s guillotine insurance.”
Someone needs to invent “compassionate capitalism” except today’s capitalists wouldn’t accept it unless they were tied to the plank, looking down into the bloody basket.
jrkrideau, #10
Seneca was Nero’s tutor until 62AD (not BC, like some idiot said earlier), and it is very likely the decadence of the Neronian court that he is comparing Scipio’s frugality with. The Domus Aureus itself was not built until after the Great Fire in 64AD, and not completed until after Seneca’s death (65AD), but Nero had a reputation for extravagant living already.
It is true, though, that this fits right in with a traditional rhetoric of decrying modern decadence and looking back to the Good Old Days for virtue and right-headedness. We must be careful of this even now. Seneca, being a Stoic, makes this an overtly moral issue – frugality is good, luxury is bad, it shows personal moral decline that so many people are obsessed with luxury. I wouldn’t want to say that it’s quite like that myself.
What strikes me as the relevant comparison is how Trump’s taste for gaudiness and show is utterly lacking in any awareness of this critical tradition. Roman moralists sought to crack down on conspicuous consumption with sumptuary laws – even if you enjoyed lavishness and opulence in private you made a show in public of not being greedy and venal. Political prudence dictated that you at least hushed up your life of wealth and luxury, and didn’t dwell on it. It says something about how skewed a society’s ethics are when the wealthy no longer even feel embarrassed at flaunting their privilege.
They have seemingly have learned at least one thing: no one has yet said “Let them eat cake.”
Hair furor and his minions may not have said anything quite like that — yet — but a visual analogy has already happened (back in January), Ivanka Trump Is Being Compared to Marie Antoinette for Her Latest Instagram:
@ 12 cartomancer
Thank heavens the wealthy were not flaunting their wealth earlier in the USA. http://www.biltmore.com/
Ugh, why is it that people buy into (what appears to be) the Trump version of luxury? Like, I’ve seen ridiculously expensive and lavish things that actually look beautiful, but every Trump interior I’ve seen has been sickeningly gaudy. I get that perhaps Trump himself simply can’t tell the difference, but other rich people buy into his shit.
Is it some sort of wealth kink? Like, they’re so rich that they can treat their conspicuous consumption as a joke? “Look at me, I spent millions of dollars to hang out HERE of all places! Oh-hohoho!”
@13, machintelligence
Eh, some folks have said stuff that comes close.
“Let them play golf”
“Some people want everything done for them”
I’m gonna have to learn to make those big angled blades.
The nouveau riche having horrible taste was already a cliché in ancient times.
@#13, machintelligence
Well, that was supposedly a tone-deaf response by Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, to being told that the poor could no longer afford bread. We have many tone-deaf, stupid comments by rich political leaders in response to the crises of the poor. And it certainly isn’t limited to the Republicans, although Mitt Romney, George W. Bush, and Paul Ryan have all shown themselves incapable of going for a week without dropping such a comment. The Democratic Party’s leadership is almost as bad — although I must admit that Obama was very good at avoiding saying anything seriously tone-deaf along those lines, even when he was actively pursuing policies that showed he was thinking that way. His staff, though… “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” asked one Secretary of State who later saber-rattled for unnecessary wars… another one thought it was brilliant to offer a deferment of college loan debt which only the very rich could reasonably take advantage of in the first place.
@#18, Halcyon Dayz, FCD
Except that Trump isn’t nouveau riche — the term refers to people who have grown rich themselves, rather than inheriting their money; it’s a term of scorn for patricians to use against their generally more-liberal compatriots. The caricature of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is an old one. Trump’s family has been rich for generations — many people claim that his current fortune is essentially what he inherited from his father.
The Vicar @19:
Fanatic (noun): someone who can neither shut up nor change topics.
Why do the rich need to learn anything new as long as the economic relations within societies don’t change? As a class they don’t care.