The political playoffs officially have reached the homestretch and a couple of intriguing statements have jumped out at me like dancing mow cow popups on my computer screen.
The line that keeps running around in my airspace is, “It isn’t personal.” It has come up in a number of races and it has come up in every political season I can recall.
Political races are always personal. Even if it doesn’t show overtly, it is. I must admit after a few decades of covering political races of every flavor, I have come to believe the angel of revenge is constantly battling with the angel of ideals and ideas. Revenge is often harder to gauge, but it is very effective.
I know one thing. If it matters, it will become personal.
I started thinking about my twisted political theory a few days ago while listening to a lecture on Roman emperors by Professor Garrett G. Fagan. The lecture series is available at the King County Library, and it is very good.
Stay with me for a few sentences and I will tell you how I connected the dots. This isn’t completely whacky, only partially, so hold the lock-me-up keys until I’m done, please.
Over the last 10 years or so I have written about a couple of the more controversial land battles in the state. First was Cascadia in Pierce County, south of Bonney Lake, now called Tehaleh, and the second, the two YarrowBay master planned developments in Black Diamond. While I was in Kent, a number of land use issues were bubbling up to the surface. Land use wars are everywhere.
During the lecture Fagan said something that made the lights flicker on in my dusty brain. He began talking about the seeds of destruction that took down the Roman republic.
He described one theory from Ronald Syme’s 1939 book, “The Roman Revolution.” Fagan said Syme believed the Roman republic was “ripped to pieces by self-serving Roman aristocrats who paid lip service to highfalutin ideals, but were seeking nothing but their own dominance.”
Fagan argued that while Syme’s point is valid, he believes the seeds of the Roman republic’s destruction were in its “normal functioning.”
“The Roman republic didn’t collapse or fall apart,” Fagan said. “It committed suicide.”
Fagan said the inciting incident was a battle over a proposed land use law by a tribune of the plebs (or regular guy Romans). His name was Tiberius Gracchus. (Don’t you just love that name. I wish we had names like today.)
Tiberius proposed a land use law that made a bunch of senators and land holders start sweating up their togas. Without getting too technical, he wanted to reallocate public land to the homeless and soldiers who had fought for Rome. The soldiers had lost their land holdings because they were out marching around eating bad food and
singing dumb Latin songs, and many of them were homeless as a result. Anyway, the senators decided it was a terrible idea, even though the way Tiberius proposed the law was completely legal within the Roman system.
What interested me was the senators attacked Tiberius on how he proposed his law even though it followed the Roman law that was being ignored by the aristocrats and senators so they could keep grabbing land.
The senators said the problem was the way he went about proposing the land law as a plebian.
“He bypassed the senate entirely and proposed his bill directly to the assembly of the plebs, as tribunes had the technical right,” Fagan said.
Technically Tiberius could do this, but it violated the unwritten Roman law of tradition. Not a healthy thing to do.
The remedy was for the senators to grab some table legs and clubs, beat him to death and throw him in the Tiber River. His brother and many friends met a similar fate.
The Roman way of settling a constitutional question.
I imagine some senator whispered to him right before whacking him, “Nothing personal, Tiby, nothing personal.” The story goes he was hit first by his closest friend – very Roman.
What intrigued me was the inciting incident on that day in Rome when Tiberius died began with a battle over land. We have been fighting over land use for thousands of years and we continue to this very day.
Fortunately we seldom see table legs used, but the battles over land use in communities and countries are always intensely personal, and it should be if it matters.
Dennis Box is editor of the Covington/Maple Valley/Black Diamond Reporter and Enumclaw/Boney Lake Courier-Herald. Reach him at dbox@maplevalleyreporter.com or 425-432-1209, ext. 5050.
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