Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

Dear Juliet

"Who watches the watchmen?"

(Juvenal)

I was wondering how to make an interesting story out of being jabbed for Covid at the nearest clinic when Dr Mary Beard came on TV talking about her latest book, Talking Classics. I think I tried to contact her about the Book of Deer years ago and may even have got a reply, but it did remind me how much I liked using old quotes. That there are lessons we can quite easily learn from antiquity, though for sure we never do.

Dallas. 22nd November 2013.

With my usual luck plus a red-eye flight from Austin, I'd stumbled on the 50th anniversary commemoration of John F. Kennedy. It was one of the great days. I essentially covered it for the Huffington Post UK, wrote this article and also took this photograph:















Sadly, the script was taken from the text of a speech President Kennedy would have made at the Dallas Trade Mart later that day, but he didn't get there...

You should be able to see the word "watchman" quite easily, and it elucidates that ancient question of who polices the policemen with reference to America's current role as a global security guard, hoping (I think) that Uncle Sam won't end up buccaneering around with neither check nor balance. That some greater power would never be needed to bring the shining beacon of democracy back in line.

Trouble is, to whom would that greater power be accountable?

I think Watchmen (2009) made a few good comments about that, and I found a good clip, but...

But I think it's too violent for you, so I'll skip it.

Anyway, I think there are good quotes we can learn from. I put one in Macnab, and it goes like this:

"We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were trying to form up into teams, we’d be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganisation and a wonderful method it can be for creating an illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation."

(Petronius. AD 66)

And there are other times. There was this girl at work once who didn't like the fact I always put a quote at the top of my monthly New Books List. One time, she asked me whether we should do this or perhaps that, so I sagely said:

"That is the question: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them."

I think she came very close to hitting me.

Well, you could always try a couple of them on Scooby Dru. I'd be interested to hear her reaction...

A few clips of classical Greece:



And the Bard:


Where there's a Will, there's a way!

Have a nice day.

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