Comment by cantor_S_drug
15 hours ago
There is in one sense the king and the pawn are similar. Pawns are many, kings are few. If one pawn sacrifices itself to sacrifice the king, then kings ought to fear pawns and not take undue advantage.
15 hours ago
There is in one sense the king and the pawn are similar. Pawns are many, kings are few. If one pawn sacrifices itself to sacrifice the king, then kings ought to fear pawns and not take undue advantage.
The power (access to tools, system, and opportunity) to sacrifice an individual by another individual has become immensely disproportionate of late among individuals of different social and economic strata.
If you look at history, that's really not how elites react to violence (or its threat) from the 99%. Regicide is a Crime against God - meaning the social order which puts the elites on top. Vs. peasants are expendable at scale if the elites feel that they need to violently defend their elite status.
And this ain't chess, where Pawn x King is just another move. Nor 1960's America, where Mr. Oswald could buy a rifle and 4X scope by mail order, then get a job in a convenient book depository. If an assassin manages to kill a king, then 100:1 that it's an inside job - the perp is either another one of the elite, or acting his behalf.
This is an odd thing to say given the events of the past few days and even last couple years:
“Nor 1960's America, where Mr. Oswald could buy a rifle and 4X scope by mail order, then get a job in a convenient book depository”
Your broader argument still holds that those in power often don’t tend to view isolated threats from the public as truly existential threats (until they do, like we just saw in Nepal).
But it’s a bit hard to agree that even in America things are truly that much different.