We have all sat and watched the news over the last decade and seen a reasonable amount of things change through that time. But have things changed that much fundamentally around the world?
I have been locked up (off and on) throughout the year due to COVID-19, and like many people have had to find things to do. One of the things that has occupied my time is working on a few writing projects (see the books area of this website) and reading a lot more.
One of the things I have been reading is about the history of World War 1, not just the battles but the politics of how it all started and I found a few things of interest.
First, it wasn’t just an assassination that caused it, that was the excuse but had that not happened something else would have kicked it off.
The largest contributing factor was really the way the world was governed at the time. There wasn’t really a democracy governing much of the planet besides the United States and a little bit in England (the Kind and Parliament were splitting duties a bit).
Mainly it was smaller countries not wanting to be governed by some aristocracy from some other nation. These aristocracies were made up of the same families just inheriting the governing position handed down from parent to child, and then these royal families would only marry into other royal families so at the time they were basically all cousins, half brothers, etc.
Now, we live in a world where, increasingly, if you aren’t born into a family with either a political background and therefore connections and family name recognition, or a family with tons of money and therefore less dependent upon donors you don’t stand a shot at being in leadership (and I’m not just talking about being President this goes to other offices as well).
Now, fast forward to 2021 in the USA and we are arguing about the validity of an election to fight over which person from this class of modern day aristocracy gets to be in charge.
Have we really changed or do we just call it something else now?
I’m not sure I’m smart enough to answer that question but I feel that it is one we must consider.
