When in Rome…

Well, that was unexpected. NH caucus goers are way past the ‘vagina thing’. This was after a state that’s overwhelmingly white got way past the colour thing.

It’s real easy to look through the early returns and say America is breaking new ground. Is America to have its… First Woman President… or its … First Black President?

Unforeseen sex scandals and financial irregularities to one side, in my humble opinion the Democrats are in the process of selecting the next President. So it is easy to get all gushy and say, hell, the primaries really are about change, about making firsts.

But what if Hillary gets four years?

Well, actually this would mean that the US has been ruled by two families for over three decades.

That’s 300 million Americans ruled by Bush Snr (Veep ‘80 to ‘88; PotUS ‘88 to ‘92), Clinton (PotUS ‘92 to ‘00), and Bush Jnr (PotUS ’00 to present)... and Clinton ’08 to ’12?

Two families dominating the lives of US and global citizens for over 30 years.

Suppose it’s not without precedent… y’know, a Republic raised to greatness through the myth of its patriotic past and its super-power military, a pleasingly muscular foreign policy, the continuum of establishment rule vaguely disturbed by cyclical plebiscites, massive finance the only real ticket for getting into the candidates club, a federation of states administered by a milksop senate, a Capitol(ine) Hill dominated by a handful of patrician families, and a Juvenile media chronicling a nation’s descent away from traditional values while taking gutter-grade pot-shots at the ruling classes.

All those checks and balances, all that Enlightenment thinking, the benefit of sharing neither geography nor epoch, and yet there's a distinctly Roman flavour to proceedings. Or again we learn how ancient evils transcend the conscience of history.

Y’see, no matter how much things change, the more they stay the same. And no matter how much Hillary says the word change, we can only be sure of more of the same.

Shouldn’t complain too hard. This is what the real world looks like across the pond. The Clinton machine knows how the game works. NH was a big win for Hillary, and the age-old status quo.