THE RULE OF THE THIRTY TYRANTS
THE RULE OF THE THIRTY TYRANTS
“Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” - Socrates
We have been here before. While it seems to so many that Donald Trump and his regime swept into power in 2016 through a crudely assembled catalogue of cheating, pandering, lying, stealing, and most prominently, through extortion - his triumph was, in truth, a pastiche as old as ancient Greek antiquity. With Trump, and his callous tyranny, we see history repeat itself – even if he does so rather amateurishly when contrasted to previous iterations. Trump sends Black Hand letters like those used by the Mafia to those he wishes to extort. His extortion demands are straight out of The Godfather. While he calls his letters “beautiful”; Zelensky of Ukraine calls them ultimatums. His letter is simple: either surrender or prepare for exile. His mailing list has jumped the Republican federal and state legislatures and has now expanded to the entire population of the United States. His message to Americans with respect to the coronavirus is signed with a Black Hand.
What began as a Republican movement to eviscerate the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s, slowly morphed into a movement to extinguish democratic governance entirely. It was a decades-long war of democratic attrition. Its tactics were varied, but one of the most prominent was the use of code words to signify racist ideas: “forced busing” and “welfare queens” referred to African Americans as parasites of the system; “States’ Rights” and “Willy Horton” referred to African Americans as recipients of liberal inspired federal overreach.
We all know this Trump era as an almost operatic revival of Hitler’s rise to power in 20th Century Europe. And we can even recognize some of the early architects of this Republican movement: My go-to villains of this tyrannical regime comprise a list of Capt. Renault’s usual suspects going back decades: Roger Ailes, Lee Atwater, Barry Goldwater, Pat Buchanan, Harry Dent, and Newt Gingrich, to name a few.
But not only have we been here before; we know how it ends. Plato told us what happened to the first democracy in the Athens of the ancient Greek world of the fifth century – 500 to 400 B.C. Two city-states, Athens and Sparta, fought for 27 years with tragic results. Sparta, the eventual winner, was an oligarchic state and a military power where social institutions were constructed to support its militaristic imperialism. Youth, both boys and girls, were cultivated to be soldiers for the state. Instead of Brown Shirts, they were required to train naked.
Athens, on the other hand, is considered to be the first democracy in the world. Citizens were defined, not by their nobility or wealth, but by the districts in which they lived within the city-state. While there were episodic oligarchic revolts within the democratic Athens, the system remained even as modifications to the definition of citizenship changed.
But with the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, there was a void in government. This period began the rule of the Thirty Tyrants – a period of increasing totalitarianism, where thirty oligarchs assumed power and plundered the treasury while imposing increasingly severe punishments for minor offenses on the citizens of Athens. From a citizenry of over 20,000, only 3,000 of the regime's most loyal supporters were permitted the rights of citizenship by the Thirty. Civility and democratic participation in governance were crushed by the black hand of the state.
This was the period when Socrates was sentenced to death for “impiety and corrupting Athenian youth”. His was a political trial, intended to remove an iconoclast-philosopher who taught the notion that "The unexamined life is not worth living", and he taught to his students the meaning of the words inscribed on the Temple of the Oracle of Delphi: “Know thyself”. This was the time when the philosopher Anaxagoras taught that the sun and the stars were “fiery stones”, and that the only reason humans did not feel their heat was because of the stones’ great distance from earth. Mike Pence would be horrified by Anaxagoras’s insight, and Donald Trump would, without irony, have a press conference to reiterate his declaration that “he loves the uneducated”.
For his crimes, Socrates was offered exile or death. He chose death.
But this brutal regime – this Rule of the Thirty Tyrants - lasted only 8 months before it was swept away by the democratic citizens of Athens.
So, I would like to remind Republicans that the letter they receive from the Republican Party urging them to vote for Donald Trump and the Republican ticket is signed with a Black Hand. It’s their logo. It represents tyranny and an end to democracy. I would like to ask each of them what Socrates asked Athenians upon receiving his guilty verdict from the Thirty Tyrants:
“Esteemed friend, citizen of Athens, the greatest city in the world, so outstanding in both intelligence and power, aren't you ashamed to care so much to make all the money you can, and to advance your reputation and prestige--while for truth and wisdom and the improvement of your soul you have no care or worry?” - Socrates
