strange or odious

"whatever was strange or odious, whoever was guilty or suspected, might hope, in the obscurity of that immense capital, to elude the vigilance of the law. in such a various conflux of nations, every teacher, whether of truth or of falsehood, every founder, of a virtuous or a criminal association, might easily multiply his disciples or accomplices."edward gibbon. the history of the decline and fall of the roman empire. vol.II chapter XV_________________________________________ yes i know drawing exact parallels between the past and now is unsound and has the potential to be wildly inaccurate...then again, an empire is an empire and certain anthropogenic constructs can serve to funnel human behaviors in similar directions and you have to admit that ed, who was writing from the center of a burgeoning empire that saw itself as heir to rome, would have a fair understanding of the way things are in whoretown two hundred and forty-three years later...and all you have to do is look at the neo-classical kitsch that dominates whoretown to see where the founders ( count how many times you read the word "empire" in the federalist papers ) and their successors thought they were headed...like all empires they started locally and expanded and wrote it all off as "civilizing" the barbarian other...one of the public faces of the "odious" part got shit-canned today and the world is a safer place...a jingoist has been turned out from the powerful and he will wail in the wilderness about being "misunderstood" until some fascist think tank snaps him up ( or he starts his own )...unfortunately he is only a public face of a severely demented and paranoid infrastructure of spooks that will blithely go on spying on ( and since you are reading this, what do you guys think of the bee photos i have been posting on facebook? be honest but fair ) and , when they think it of vital importance to "national interest" killing people...meanwhile the criminal founders in whoretown go on aggrandizing themselves at the public purse and passing that off as "public service"...there is no end to this beyond collapse...and all empires do...and when it does the entire national structure will crack along fault lines that have been simmering along for decades if not centuries growing deeper and more bitter beneath the surface..."releasing historical energy" is an historian's euphemism for an upsurge in social disruption and violence as we adjust to the "new reality"...fake news...alternate facts...hurricanes in alabama...and a parade of less than charismatic wannabes are just a start...bolton is gone and i, for one, will not miss that unsmiling, crimped, bitter, constipated face...however, events will still unfold without him and this is not going to end well...the puking buddha agrees.