Three recent book worth noting This book covers a lot of "crypto bros". It talks about how Steve Bannon realized years ago that these "rootless angry white males" had collective power when they get upset, and also covers how misogynistic they are and how they really are just grifters that hate the government restraining their scams. After reading the book, it is amazing that Bitcoin still goes up, though the author predicted it based upon psychological factors. And stablecoin Tether, which purports to be backed by actual dollars but for which there is a substantial evidence it is not, has not had a fatal run yet. Part of Tether's unlikely durability may be explained by the fact that it is the exchange of choice for international organized crime, including the scammers in Cambodia run by Chinese organized crime, who are themselves essentially slaves, lured by the promise of employment opportunities, and then compelled to send scam "pug butchering" text messages and produce victims and funds, at the threat of beatings and sometimes death, without the possibility of leaving. Very horrifying. And facilitated by Tether. No wonder they all love DT. I will say that SBF, sentenced to 25 years, cones across as less avaricious and predatory than many of his unprosecuted peers, although sophistication and scope of his misfeasance is obviously far greater and more impactful.
Mary Beard's political history of Rome. The Right loves to portray Rome as a city that gained power through the superior virtue and rectitude of it's citizens, and then fell when they began acting licentiously. She covers that Rome gained power by having a political structure that separated powers and being open to immigration and alliances. They had some terrible gender norms, but really fell due to infighting after they became too powerful, and that any decline in "virtue" was of the political variety. Rome suffered far more military defeats than are often realized and was wracked by civil wars, at least one of which (the Social War) resulted from Rome's ambiguous relationship with it's "allies" on the Italian peninsula, which were required to fight and pay taxes but did not have full citizenship. Rome "won" the war but granted full citizenship. She notes that Rome was by far the most culturally diverse polity of the ancient world and celebrated that Emperors could arise from the territorial empire rather than Rome itself. That is not to say that the Roman upper class celebrated multiculturalism consistently. Much like today, every egalitarian movement met a reactionary backlash. When all Roman subjects were granted Roman citizenship, most of the privileges that flowed from citizenship were reclassified as reserved for "Honorable Citizens", i.e. not the new. Many of the class issues were paramount, and many of the most successful emperor's tried to address it, and were sometimes assassinated by members of the upper class for such subversive sentiments. An odd note from the last chapter on the impact of Christianity. Pliny finds Christians weird and really unthinkable, but says they should not be sought out to persecute, reserving persecution for instances in which these strange anti-social subjects publicly manifested their Christianity instead of hiding it, an earlier version of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Also, what most offended most Romans were Christians embrace of poverty as a virtue. Hard to believe that one time that is how Christians were viewed, especially in today's de facto Prosperity Gospel orthodoxy.
Norse America. About how Norse society sailed to modern day Canada and other parts of North America. Reminded me of DeSantis in that it talks about so much of the issue is who got here when is politicized history in service of current claims an political needs. The early Columbus "consensus" eroded once Italian immigrants began using it as a claim to rightful America full citizenship. Suddenly an alternative northern European Protestant founding was needed. When Norse explorers were discovered to have likely gotten here first, it was important to invent a history that they were Christian and explored to spread Christianity, although that wasn't true. There were so many other claims - Welsh explorers, Chinese, English, all supported by "scholarship" contrived to fit a needed modern narrative. The Canadians too quickly accepted planted evidence of Norse settlement in Ontario to claim that the Norse were the original "Canadians", which was also racist to the First Nation tribes. Really, it talks about the fact that though there is archaeological evidence of a limited Norse presence in the Canadian Maritimes, possibly a small incursion into Maine, there is such a desire to fabricate evidence to create a linear heritage and founding that just didn't happen. Some of it was innocently motivated, Scandinavian immigrants facing discrimination seeking to show their "Americaness". But mostly a darker racialized side - trying to claim historical white "ownership" of the Americas. So many forged "runestones" at locations across the country who tried to claim Norse beginnings, which helps explain why Norse culture is so attractive to white supremacists even today. Similarly, the author brings up that Greenlanders consider themselves North Americans, and are offended when their chronology is skipped over in the timeline of Europeans exploring North America. Just fascinating.
