This is about as close as I get to bipartisan: When you vote, you are basically voting for your elite group to govern as opposed their elite group. The big wheels run the show either way, or, as Senator Durban once said of the Congress, "The banks own this place."
Perhaps it's small consolation to know that the late Roman Republic operated in a similar fashion. We have Republicans and Democrats. They had the optimates and the populares.
They weren't organized as political parties the way we understand them today, but the optimates represented the oldest, most patrician, Roman families--the real snobs, you might say. The populares--"favoring the people"--tended to represent the broader Roman base.
Both the optimates and the populares, however, were comprised of patrician and noble families. Whoever became Consul that year, that person represented either one elite or the other elite.
John Lee Hooker has a song called "Welfare Blues" in which he opines that he gets a new pair of shoes if the Democrats get back in. After a fashion, the Democrats are the modern day populares--the elites who nevertheless give a sop to the people or the poor every great now and then. (That, as much as any single thing, is why I'm a Democrat.)
Our modern day optimates don't want to do even that, even though the ones in Roman times at least gave support to the bread dole.
Julius Caesar was a populares. Was he assassinated because he was a tyrant who wanted to rule as king, as the optimates said, or was he about to broaden the benefits of the Republic and assassinated because he threated the status quo?
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