Burning it for a purpose
by digby
I keep seeing charts like this:
and they come out in my head like this:
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| History has blamed Nero for the disaster, implying that he started the fire so that he could bypass the senate and rebuild Rome to his liking. Much of what is known about the great fire of Rome comes from the aristocrat and historian Tacitus, who claimed that Nero watched Rome burn while merrily playing his fiddle. Gangs of thugs prevented citizens from fighting the fire with threats of torture, Tacitus wrote. There is some support for the theory that Nero leveled the city on purpose: the Domus Aurea, Nero’s majestic series of villas and pavilions set upon a landscaped park and a man-made lake, was built in the wake of the fire. |
“Nero” being a symbol of the 1%, of course. Maybe they just want to get rid of all the remnants of the American Dream once and for all and build themselves a grand vision of Galt’s Gulch in its place.