The age of the Machiavel, as opposed to the age of the Republic. All well and good, but the difficulty comes when a hundred million people start to imitate that.
The cynical view: a mad, at times apparently imbecile, rat-catcher appears to be willing to burn down the city to drive out the rats, or at least unaware of the means historically used to avoid conflagration, and in the shadows, the old rat-kings are making war.
Rather good time to decamp, I think. Were it not for the war, exploring 19th c. wooden houses deep in Siberia, and reading Kant and Hegel by lamplight might be the order of the day.
I would stay and save the Republic (the famous epitaph: "They did not despair of the R."), but reading Heidegger on a park bench is a notoriously ineffective means of social change.
Gently down the stream.
