Solon: “If ye have suffered the melancholy consequences of your own incompetence, do not attribute this evil fortune to the gods. Ye have yourselves raised[1] these men[2] to power over you, and have reduced yourselves by this course to a wretched state of servitude. Each man among you, individually, walketh with the tread of a fox, but collectively ye are a set of simpletons.[3] For ye look to the tongue and the play of a man's speech and regard not the deed which is done before your eyes.”4How long will the “tongue and play” of the powerful make us blind to the things they actually do?—blind and deaf to the witnesses and whistle-blowers they mock, suppress, and target for destruction?5
Solon: “Out of the cloud come snow and hail in their fury, and the thunderbolt springeth from the lightning's flash : so from great men ruin issueth upon the state, and the people through their own folly sink into slavery under a single lord. Having raised a man to too high a place, it is not easy later to hold him back : now is the time to be observant of all things."6How many déjà vus must we endure?
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* Solon of Athens (c. 638–c. 558 BC): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solon
1. [or allowed them to be raised by malevolent forces through stupor, apathy, fear, deception, distraction, complicity, and so forth]
2. [and women, being Presidents, or HoR members, or senators——right or left it mattereth not!]
3. [because we have learned next to NOTHING from the history of man, the nature of power and gain, and the ubiquity of secret conspiracies??]
4. THE FRAGMENTS OF SOLON'S POEMS XIII-XIV ~ https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011212503, (p. 145, bold emphasis added)
5. http://dejavu-timestwo.blogspot.ca/2017/02/disrupt-and-destroy.html
6. Fragments of Solon's Poems, p. 145; actual page at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?view=image;size=100;id=loc.ark%3A%2F13960%2Ft0gt6fp8w;q1=towns-folk;page=root;seq=159;num=145
