Cheney, guns, and the missed story

Last night on PBS I watched Mark Shields and Rich Lowry (the designated adult at NRO) discussing the possible repercussions of the Cheney hunting accident. Lowry used the age-old tactic of defending by distracting: it was the media who were going into an unjustified fit! But I was left with the feeling that neither, nor anyone else I have read or heard, was getting to the really disturbing part of the story. Hunting accidents happen, people do stupid things, and politicians try to hide things. None of that is really new.

What disturbs me, however, is the fact that we have two classes of people now. The powerful and the commoners, or as it was put in the Late Roman Empire, the Potentiores and the Humiliores, the Powerful and the Humble as Gibbon would tell us.

If you or I, or any other humiliores, were to shoot someone under any circumstance we would have to talk to the local police immediately. But when you are a Dick Cheney, on the estate of one of the richest people within god-knows how many miles, you get to make arrangements for the sheriff to visit at your convenience. As did, by the way, the parents of poor Jon Benet, if you remember. So we are a nation of laws, and we are all equal before the law, but some are more equal than others and can pay for first class service.

It is very likely that the increasing distance between the power and wealth of the Potentiores and the Humiliores was a major cause for the collapse of the Roman political order.

Your most humble, and most obedient, servant,
Clemens