Why politics today suck

Short answer: lack of poop. Longer answer: lack of poop and throwing people.

Now, you might be thinking-oh he's talking about the Defenestration of Prague where, in 1618, some Bohemian Protestants chucked some Catholics out a window. Fortunately for the Catholics, they survived the long fall by the grace of god. Or, by the Protestant account, they survived by landing in a giant pile of poop that had been placed oh so considerately beneath the window.

Fecal Matter: The Early Modern equivalent of this

But no, you'd be wrong! Our politics have been in decline ever since the Roman Republic. I know there have been romantics complaining about the degradation of morals since the day Augustus turned the Republic into a Principate (and even before then), but they usually use fallacious arguments. My reasoning is backed up by hardcore facts. There are few objective truths in the world, but among the few is this: Politics are always made better by personal violence (between politicians, I'm no war-monger), feces, and historical badasses. And during the late Roman Republic these three factors intertwined through Julius Caesar

Whaddup, bitches?

When Caesar was first elected consul, his co-consul for the year was a dude named Bibulus. Saying Bibulus and Caesar didn't like each other was a bit of an understatement and because this was Rome, where everything was way cooler, they didn't just go about hiding their mutual hatred like the politicians today. Bibulus was known for being very liberal and open to ideas, often saying "I will have no innovations during my term in office!" Well this didn't fly too well with Caesar, who liked the idea of actually utilizing his power (and gaining more of it as we later see). So one day Bibulus was on top of the big podium in the forum (the Rostra) and yelling about of stuff Caesar didn't like. Caesar, not one for free speech, takes a bucket of poop (the very fact that the Romans had one close at hand just shows you how much better politics were back then) and upends it on Bibulus' head. Then, he ordered his tribunes to break the fasces (ceremonial bundles of wood with an axehead) of Bibulus' men, a ceremonial fuck you-kind of like breaking your first grade enemy's doll, and a tribune loyal to Bibulus was straight up lifted and thrown off the Rostra.

What was Bibulus' reaction? Well you can imagine he wasn't too pleased about being defecated on in public. So for the rest of the year he sat at home and said that since the omens were bad, government business done that day was invalid.

Duuude, Caesar, the stars are talking to me...

Beautiful Blood

Okay, hold up. Yeah, the title is kinda creepy; creepy in the way that you now probably think that I live in a dark room, dress in all black, and sacrifice small, woodland creatures to an evil demon.

Although let's be real, I'd probably would kill a rabbit or two if she asked...

But just hold your damned britches! I'm referring to one of the side-effects of the Battle of Towton. Towton was a climactic event in the Wars of the Roses when Yorkist forces defeated the Lancastrian forces in the bloodiest battle on English soil, ever (well, you can look up the Battle of Watling Street, but the casualty sources aren't that reliable). Sources say that the opposing sides would occasionally halt the battle so that the soldiers could move the piles of corpses on the front lines in order for fighting to continue. I mean Jesus! At that point I'd run like hell if I had to move a bunch of bodies just to get a chance to have some rusty axe swung at my head. Not the most exciting prospect in my book.
Anyway, you get the idea, lots of people died. How many? A lot, a lot. Like 1% of the English population a lot. The battle involved a whopping 2% of the total population of the island (4% of the males)! If the Wars of the Roses were fought today, that would mean that 500,000 Englishmen would die. Yuck.
So much blood seeped into the ground that the famous white roses which grew in the area became flecked with red as a result, hence the name "beautiful blood." Cause c'mon, what's more beautiful than a rose?

I'm gonna go with a demon.

Laconic Phrases

Ah the Spartans. How badass are they? Well, if you've seen 300 then you know that they're super duper badass from that completely accurate depiction of the Battle of Thermopylae.

In addition to being awesome at fighting they weren't too shabby at geography either.

But for all you goddamn hippy peaceniks out there you're probably muttering to yourself "Yeah, they could kill people, big fuckin' deal, that's definitely a productive society. Don't they know that the pen is mightier than the sword?" Well Spartans didn't really like writing stuff down, but they did say some pretty balltastically awesome things. They were famous for their thriftiness with words and so they were basically the inventor of the one liner... except the one liners were often said in the face of death.
So in the movie 300 there are a few examples of documented Laconic phrases you may remember. There's that time when the Persian dude's coming up looking all cool on his bigass chair saying they were going to blot out the sun with their arrows to which the Spartan responds "Sweet brah, then we'll fight in the shade"

The Athenians kept trying to tell them there was a simpler solution...

Or the Persians shouting out "Drop your spears and be called pussies by the rest of the Greeks for the rest of history" or something along those lines. And then Leonidas calls back "Come and get them!"

Archaeologists found Leonidas' fossilized left testicle

Later on, after Sparta had fallen from preeminence in Greece and kinda just sucked as a polis, her citizens nevertheless maintained their short, crazy bravado. When Philip of Macedon (Alexander's father who is usually outshadowed by his son, yet was an unbelievably successful conqueror) came with his army to Sparta, he sent a messenger telling the Spartans that "if they fought against him and he won he'd run train on them and do the whole looting, raping, pillaging, enslaving, etc deal." The Spartans sent back the word "if". Yeah, this was after Philip had taken over most of Greece, including some city states that were way stronger than Sparta at that time. Despite that, Philip, and later, Alexander, both completely avoided Sparta.

I could go on talking about Laconic phrases, but honestly, I'll just link you to a Wikipedia article that has a bunch of really funny ones (if you're a dork like me): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase

A guy named Vlad

A Wallachian prince named Vlad III captured the attention of the world in the mid to late 15th century for his anti-Ottoman antics. The Turks had recently taken Constantinople which was a really big deal and caused extreme distress in the European community due to their fear of heretical Muslims (lots has changed, huh?). The Turks began invading Eastern Europe and one of the feudal lords standing in their way was this guy named Vlad. While Vlad was quite successful at harassing the Ottoman army he really wasn't that great of a guy. His nicknames include Vlad the Impaler and Vlad "Bella Lugosi" Dracula. Yup, this Romanian prince gave his name to the infamous bloodsucker.

While Eddie sparkles in the sun, his grandfather's busy routing Turks, saving Christendom, and murdering his own people. 

Now, while you might think that whole "Impaler" deal has to do with the family kebab business, in fact, Vlad really got off on killing people. Lots and lots of people. Usually his own. With sticks.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say anyone who takes a town of thousands, impales them all, and eats breakfast while watching, which he did, is usually not a quality human being.

Ok, here's the story: Vlad came to power when crime was rampant. So he put in his own form of criminal justice. No pansy ass three strikes law or any BS like that, if you did something wrong, you died. And if you didn't do something wrong but you still looked weird, you probably died too. To test his subjects, Vlad had a a huge amount of gold put in the middle of a town's marketplace. We're talking thousands of times the amount of money an average person could expect to earn in a lifetime. Even just one gold coin for a peasant was an unbelievable treasure, yet this gold stood untouched for days in the middle of the city, because everyone knew if something happened to it, the entire city would be put to death.

If the amount of pedophile goes up with the grossness of the moustache, then this guy should think about joining the clergy.

Ok, so I'm a total history nerd. I guess that's as good a first sentence to introduce myself as any. I can never understand why people don't like history because to me, it's just a bunch of stories that I get to listen to. I guess I never really wanted to give up the kindergarten institution of story time (if only I could manage to find a college equivalent of nap time for credit).

Unfortunately, this doesn't count

I know history can get boring for some people with monotonous descriptions of events and time periods, but in every history class there are always those interesting, funny, or exciting anecdotes from the past that always lighten the material. Basically, that's what this blog's gonna be devoted to, whenever I come across an anecdote that stands out to me I want to post it here.

Anyway, the first little story I've got is about Spain's Charles II (1661-1700). This guy was severely screwed up. I don't wanna go into too much detail about the history of 17th century Europe (I don't want you to leave already) but he came from the powerful Habsburgs who controlled the Holy Roman Empire out East, and Spain and all its possessions in the West. Now the Habsburgs were super cute, or at least they thought so, because they married each other more often than a family of Alabama pig farmers. This led to the development of a "Habsburg chin" which was really pointy and gross (thus negating their "super cuteness") among other defects. Well, poor Charles II got royally screwed (literally. And yeah, if you stop reading after that, I don't blame you).

Charles II, and remember, painters were paid to portray subjects well... I mean c'mon, you'd need a  paper bag to love that guy

The interesting part about this guy is how sad he must have been at family gatherings for Chanukah or birthdays or whatever. Instead of having 16 great great grandparents like [almost] everyone has, he had nine. That's straight up freaky, like definitely not ok. To further creep you out, I'll quote from Wikipedia here: "Joanna was two of Charles' 16 great-great-great-grandmothers, six of his 32 great-great-great-great-grandmothers, and six of his 64 great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers." When one person can occupy all those relations, you know something's seriously screwed up... kinda like his eyes.

LOOK AT THEM