Saw this while walking in Mumbai last year…
So there’s a whole “Hitler” thing in India. In addition to what that author says, I have to think that it also has something to do with Hitler being against Britain, famous occupier of India, who only left in 1947.
“It’s curiosity about a really sick and evil mind. We read it the way you read [Karl Marx’s] Das Kapital.”
hmmm
Now read it again and replace “Hitler” with “Caesar” and “the West” with “the Present”
Caesar
Which one?
Regardless, I don’t think anyone is in the dark about the brutality of Roman leaders, even if the “Gaius Julius got kidnapped by pirates and was an absolute legend in that situation” is widely appreciated. That doesn’t mean we want to model our own time on their examples, or revere them.
I wasn’t aware of the pirate story but many modern people are fascinated by him. There even was a meme “how often do you think about the Roman Empire” and some people where like “twice a day”
Fascinated, sure. There’s a lot of history to be fascinated by, doesn’t mean you have to think it was good.
The pirate story is a great one. Probably exaggerated at best, if not almost entirely made up, because Dignity and Glory (I have capitalized those because they were concrete concepts) were huge things in Rome in those times, and those were earned through war. Having such a tale ascribed to you was a way to earn Dignity and Glory if you had political aspirations and were not (yet) able to actually go to war.
The final solution to lock picking!
I could get this thing open by sternly looking at it. Wouldn’t even need my tools.
Best used for locking your bunker and offing yourself and wife.
40 years from now we’ll be seeing similar labels with “Trump” on them strange places.
