The Who

I’ve always felt that being a musician was to be part of a pretty exclusive club that I partly envied, but partly thought wouldn’t really fit me. I loved a lot of the music I heard, but thought of having to go through a lot of misses to get to the good stuff, and then how old it could get having to play the same songs each night. The Grateful Dead both improvised and played LOTS of covers, but they got bored.

But part of what fascinates about music is how people can join together all pulling in the same direction to come up (at least occasionally) with greatness.

The Who were pretty much the most basic form of rock band, but what they did with that was unusual, and I think those variations are interesting.

They started by playing covers, like most bands, before they began writing their own songs: lots of blues and r&b, plus early rock & roll like Summertime Blues, one that they kept in their repertoire later.

But what I find interesting is how they evolved in playing. They were founded by Roger Daltrey who gradually brought the others into the band. He had originally played lead guitar, but at some point stopped doing that to just sing. In a documentary he tells how he found a jar full of amphetamines the band were using, threw them away, and was thrown out by the others. They let him back in a couple of days later, but he said that since the band was his life, he realized he couldn’t get his way with them by fighting, though he wasn’t reluctant to fight. And although he was the lead singer, he was somewhat overshadowed by the rest of the band.

Townshend had been influenced by a guitarist in another band who played both lead and rhythm, and became the primary songwriter. He also evolved a kind of windmill action with his right arm to play power chords, which made them more dramatic, and bounced around on the stage in a way that made it very plausible that he was using speed.

But the instrumental geniuses in the band were John Entwhistle, the bassist, and Keith Moon, the drummer. Moon was very fast, doing things other drummers wouldn’t even try. An interesting comparison is with Bernard Purdie, a top session drummer seen in a documentary about the making of Steely Dan’s Aja. Purdie, who had experience with many artists, was a very precise and efficient drummer, and in the documentary demonstrates how he plays a shuffle. Moon, by contrast, was very busy and athletic as a drummer–much different and, according to Entwhistle, difficult to play with, but his role was different too. He really propelled the band and was the one who kept them together.

Entwhistle took on a different role than most bass players in playing lead and rhythm too. He’s the one playing the power chord in Pinball Wizard, as I was surprised to see when I saw him do it live. He said he played lead and rhythm as well as bass, while Townshend only played lead and rhythm. He also helped make Marshall amps popular among musicians of the time. The Who were one of the really loud bands then.

I’m pretty sure the first song of theirs I heard was Happy Jack, apparently about a developmentally disabled man bullied by children, who was happy anyway. That was followed closely by Boris the Spider (“That’s not music!”, said a scandalized German friend). After them came, pretty quickly, Substitute, I Can See for Miles, and Magic Bus.

At that point I thought they were just a singles band. They hadn’t done an album that impressed me yet. The Who Sell Out did have them playing commercials between songs, which was kind of a cute idea, but wasn’t exactly compelling. But better was to come.

They were, after all, very ambitious, perhaps especially Pete Townshend, the guitarist who wrote most of the songs. Their next album was Tommy, which had a tremendous concept, and became one of the most famous albums of its time, also spawning a movie, and goodness knows what else. I didn’t think the execution matched the concept, though, personally.

Besides Pinball Wizard, which I lately read was almost an afterthought, and which turned into the best song on the album, I thought the best song was Eyesight to the Blind, though it was done much differently than its author, Sonny Boy Williamson II did it. The rest I wasn’t too crazy about, and that was after seeing it performed live almost fifty years ago. I saw Townshend leaping around playing guitar in what I thought was a pretty disconnected way, and wasn’t terribly impressed. Listening to the album again after about 50 years confirms that opinion. The concept and story were great; the music mostly wasn’t. It was the same problem Pink Floyd had with The Wall. Some of the songs were exquisite, but there were too many for many to be really good. That album was an example of their reach exceeding their grasp.

The concept, though, had a lot to do with Townshend’s interest in Meher Baba, a Sufi teacher. Tommy is a deaf dumb, and blind boy because of his hysterical reaction to trauma. But MOST of us are deaf dumb and blind to the life we live and which goes on around us. When Tommy has a breakthrough and recovers his sight, hearing, and speech, he tries to teach others how to live more abundant lives, but discovers they don’t want to know. That’s a story that has been repeated many times.

Sometime after the concert mentioned above, I was in a grocery store in Holland, heard a song playing and immediately fell in love: Won’t Get Fooled Again. As soon as I got back to the USA I bought the album and found it was excellent. I still love it.

I especially appreciated Won’t Get Fooled Again because it was a song about revolution, and the idea of revolution was superficially popular just then because of the Vietnam war and what people had begun to realize when thinking about it. I had already begun reading about Nazism and Communism in my teens, trying to understand why anyone would want to behave that way, and had come to the conclusion that violent revolution was a bad idea unless there was simply no other option. You never know what you’re going to get from it.

The American Revolution had its difficulties and dislocations, but overall it was very fortunate. Although the colonists loyal to Great Britain got persecuted, it was a lot less violent than later revolutions. The French revolution had the Terror, and Napoleon became dictator because of it. They had several further revolutions too.

The Haitian revolution should be admired because the slaves who began it managed to win and expel the French slave owners. Unfortunately, they were only part of a small island in an area in which there were four great powers hostile to what they’d done: Great Britain, France, Spain, and the young USA, whose slave owners were nervous about revolution being exported by black seamen and others. Had Toussaint l’Ouverture, one of the leaders not been kidnapped by the French and imprisoned in the alps, where he died of pneumonia, the Haitians might have continued to support and improve the army that had won them the revolution. Without that army, they were easy prey to the great powers, and there has been a rift between the very rich and very poor there ever since, so Haiti remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

The Russian revolution was supposed to overthrow autocracy, but turned into an even worse autocracy than the Czarist regime. The Chinese revolution was much the same.

Townshend apparently realized that there are humans much attracted to autocracy. In a documentary about the making of the album, Who’s Next, he says the song Won’t Get Fooled Again is  a plea: PLEASE don’t get fooled again. Its last line is, “Meet the new boss/same as the old boss”, which says it pretty clearly.

That album was the exact reverse of Tommy: it began as a concept which refused to come together for Townshend, but the songs were much stronger (and fewer) than on Tommy, and the music was generally better.

And on this album I really loved the guitar playing, which I thought was much more connected than when I’d seen them in concert. Maybe especially in conjunction with the synthesizer music in Won’t Get Fooled Again, in which he and the rest of the band interact with the synthesizer–which turned out to be difficult when they tried to reproduce it onstage, and the recorder didn’t work, or the band came in at the wrong place. It’s gorgeous on record, though.

I don’t really know why I didn’t buy another Who album until several years later with Who Are You? I liked the title song, but very little else.

By this time I think they’d begun to decline as a band. Amphetamines and maybe cocaine and other substances had begun to take a toll–Keith Moon was to die not long after the album was released from an overdose of brandy and horse tranquilizers, supposedly, and Townshend was also deep into substance abuse. They recorded an album in 1982, and didn’t record another until 2006, by which time Entwhistle had died too. I haven’t heard any of those later albums, though I mourn the loss of their very different voice, and of the very talented and able musicians who contributed so much to it.

But I did recently listen to Quadrophenia, the album that followed Who’s Next, and which inspired another movie. Townshend and the critics seem to agree it was their last great album. I’ll have to listen to it more, but I’m inclined to agree.

It’s a shame they let the substances get to them, and had only a relatively short time producing really GREAT  music, but they’re far from the only ones in that boat. The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles all hit a peak early in their careers, and never seemed quite as good again, though they still had facility. The Rolling Stones postponed their decline until their thirties, but also declined precipitously. I guess it’s a difficult position to be in, trying to produce creative music while dealing with touring and business, to say nothing of the temptations of wealth, particularly at that time. Creative people in many fields tend to be better when they’re young (not always), and pressures and temptations make it difficult to continue.

The Who were never my favorite band to the exclusion of all others, but they had a period in which they were ONE of my favorites, and that”s how I feel about them (at least the period between forty and fifty years ago) right now.

World Series 2019

We had a really odd World Series this year. First, while Houston won 107 games in the regular season, Washington only won 93, the same record as my Cleveland Indians, who couldn’t even make the playoffs.

And Houston was a National League team for most of its history until it was changed to the American League a few years ago. Washington was an American League team the whole 20th century until not one, but two teams relocated to more radiant pastures. This Washington team began as the Montreal Expos until they were moved about 14 years ago.

On top of all that, was another rarity: each team won only in the other team’s park. Besides that, Washington made the World Series in any version without their arguably biggest star, Bryce Harper, who left the team as a free agent last year. Nobody expected them to do anything.

Houston especially didn’t expect them to hit their two best pitchers, but they did–and DIDN’T hit their non-star pitchers. Houston’s biggest star pitcher was Gerrit Cole, whose season record was 20 wins, 5 losses in the regular season, and who hadn’t lost since May before starting the first game of the Series. But Juan Soto, who wasn’t even 21 yet, is a great hitter, especially of high fastballs.

The rest of the team hit Cole too, and gave him his first loss after 19 straight wins. Max Scherzer struggled through five innings, but didn’t give up any more runs.

The second game was started by Justin Verlander, who won 21 games during the season, opposed by Stephen Strassburg, who had had his best season with 18 wins. And Washington overpowered Houston, winning by 9 runs.

The scene then shifted to Washington, and the Nationals stopped hitting, shut down mostly by Houston’s second-line pitching. At that point, I pretty much gave up on them. How could they possibly beat Houston again, who not only had great pitching, but great hitting and fielding? And if they couldn’t win at home, how could they win in Houston again?

I couldn’t tell, as the last two games weren’t on any channel I could get. So I was amazed and delighted when I found Strassburg had won the sixth game, and Washington began hitting again. They didn’t hit much against Cole, but managed to knock him out and hit the relief pitchers.

Scherzer had had to miss an earlier start, but managed to make the last start of the year. He struggled again through five innings, but Washington continued to hit, their relievers continued to pitch well, and they took the game and series. It was only the second time a Washington team had won a World Series, and the first time in 95 years.

That team had the great Walter Johnson, near the tail end of his career on it, and he had been the hero of the final game after having lost two previous games in the series. And this was in the Babe Ruth era, just to make the win even more impressive.

The Washington Senators (first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League) made the World Series twice more (the last time in 1933), but couldn’t win one. Then, in 1959, the Senators moved to Minneapolis and became the Minnesota Twins.

Not only that, but after Major League Baseball replaced the team, it was moved AGAIN, this time to Texas, to become the Texas Rangers.

Will Washington be able to repeat, or at least compete? They do seem to have a lot of talent, but that doesn’t guarantee anything. Houston has a lot of talent too, and that didn’t translate to a World Series win–this year. The New York Yankees have a lot too, but couldn’t get past Houston. The LA Dodgers were in the past two World Series, but couldn’t win either one, and couldn’t get there again this year.

In fact, baseball has a tradition of talented teams being humbled. Probably the most impressive was when the Chicago Cubs, who had won 116 games out of 154 in 1906. They had to play the Chicago White Sox, whose nickname was the Hitless Wonders. But they hit in the World Series, and against arguably the best pitching staff in the Major Leagues.

That was in 1906, so not many people remember it. More recent was the 1960 World Series, in which the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the almost certainly superior New York Yankees, who were in the midst of a streak of winning 15 pennants in 17 years, and 13 World Series wins.

And baseball is essentially a humbling game. A hitter can fail 70% of the time and be a great player. That percentage guarantees failure in almost any other sport and, on the other hand, players who have been unimpressive in the regular season often manage to play well in the post-season.

Such a team was the Oakland Athletics of the 1970s who had an excellent pitching staff and played great defense, but most of whose hitters couldn’t be considered great (Reggie Jackson was an exception). But in the playoffs and World Series the team not only made great defensive plays, but got unexpected decisive hits. They won three World Series in a row before a number of their best players became free agents and went elsewhere.

I am currently rereading Jim Brosnan’s The Long Season, about his experiences as a major league pitcher during the 1959 season. It’s different because it was written by the pitcher himself, without any ghostwriting help, and the pitcher wasn’t a star. You’ll find few baseball books that AREN’T about stars.

The time period isn’t quite archaic baseball. By 1959 the Boston Braves had moved to Milwaukee (and would later move to Atlanta), the Philadelphia Athletics had moved to Kansas City (and would later move to Oakland), the Saint Louis Browns had moved to Baltimore and become the Baltimore Orioles 2.0, and the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants had moved to Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively.

It was still and era in which major league players had to take off-season jobs to survive, and Brosnan worked in an advertising agency, which must have been unusual. And he’s a creature of his time in enjoying drinking and chewing tobacco (the latter only at the ballpark, apparently). He also likes jazz, and tries to make the most of his trips to other cities. He’s married, with children, and his inlaws live in Virginia and South Carolina before desegregation, which REALLY makes the period seem remote.

His point of view makes the baseball player’s life seem enjoyable, but precarious. He pitches well in the preseason, but gets off to a bad start in the regular season, and is traded. The rest of his season goes better, so he’s more fortunate than some, who can no longer hang on to a major league paycheck, or will never be able to play in the majors except for brief periods.

His desire to pitch well falls somewhat short of desperate. He’s trying, but he’s also professional, which means he doesn’t allow himself to get either too high or too low too often. When he calls the season long, that’s exactly what he means: getting too worked up about one’s performance is counterproductive. For six months there will always be a next day to prove one’s self, so failures must be forgotten, lest they snowball from being allowed to affect one too deeply.

I first read the book in probably the first year that I began following major league baseball and bigtime sports generally. I liked his second book, Pennant Race, better because that was his insider’s view of the Cincinnati Reds pennant winning year, 1961. Unfortunately for them, they ran into the New York Yankees, who that year had Whitey Ford win 25 games, Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, Mickey Mantle hit 54, and a cast of thousands of less known but still very talented players. The Reds never had a chance.

Luckily for those of us who like to root for underdogs, the Washington Nationals this year DID have a chance. And made the most of it.

A Treasured Memory

My uncle and his family came to visit us in southeastern Kentucky once. I might have been three years old. The thing I remember about his visit was his reading the beginning of C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Of course he didn’t get far, but I always remembered, and a few years later made my acquaintance with that book and the rest of the series.

Having been a book lover as soon as I learned to read, some of my favorite childhood memories are of books (and not just childhood, either). My mother used to read to us at night, which is almost certainly where my interest started. I’ve probably forgotten some of the books she read to us, and some I read in that period, but Lewis’s Narnia books were among my favorites.

And one of my favorites in the series was Voyage of the Dawntreader. 

Lewis is well known for having been a Christian writer. He didn’t always write fiction, but usually wrote it quite well when he did. I think his first essay into fiction (in real life he was a professor, at Oxford I think) that I know of was the series that began with Out of the Silent Planet. I learned within the last decade or so that he wrote that in answer to the novels of Olaf Stapledon, another English writer with a vivid and far-reaching imagination. But Lewis didn’t like the point of view from which he wrote, and wrote his three novels to try and refute that view.

The novels were written from a specifically Christian point of view, though an idiosyncratic one. In that first novel Earth is the silent planet of the title because the angel (?) in charge of that world had fallen, and refused to communicate with the other those in charge of the other planets. The hero of the story discovers this because he is kidnapped and taken to Mars where he meets an interesting collection of intelligent beings.

This particular plot line is unconventional because the idea that this world is run by Satan is a Gnostic one, and the Gnostics were cordially hated by the orthodox Christians. It’s not hard to see why people could believe that, though.

The second novel in the series, Perelandra, is a reenactment of the story of Adam and Eve in which the two first humans (or the equivalent) on the planet Venus manage to resist temptation, partly with the aid of the hero of the first novel, who is resisted by one of the men who kidnapped him in the first place, and is now possessed by the evil angel of planet Earth. The first two novels are quite well done; the third, That Hideous Strength I thought was less so. To me, the Narnia series was much more successful.

It too was specifically Christian, though not preachily so. In the first novel the sacrifice of Jesus is reenacted, though Jesus in this story manifests as a lion named Aslan. Aslan reappears in all the following novels, too, sometimes to save the main characters actively, sometimes to give them instructions.

In Voyage of the Dawntreader Prince Caspian, who had been made king of Narnia in the previous novel, has set sail in the Dawntreader to find the eastern edge of the world. Lucy and Edmund, who had also appeared in the first two novels suddenly find themselves in Narnia again, but this time with an unpleasant cousin of theirs, Eustace.

Eustace doesn’t want to be there, and is most unpleasant about it. He tries to act superior, but clearly isn’t. He gets his comeuppance later in the novel, though.

The ship docks at an uninhabited island, and Eustace goes exploring. He climbs a small mountain and below him sees a dragon, which very coincidentally dies while he watches. He clambers down and finds the dragon’s hoard–dragons always have hoards of gold and jewels. Eustace sifts through the pile and finds a large bracelet, which he puts on his arm. By this time he’s worn out with his exertions, and goes to sleep. When he wakes up he has been transformed into a dragon himself, and the bracelet he was wearing on his arm has become much too tight and is causing him a great deal of pain. Do I need to explain the symbolism here?

Eustace has been missed by this time, and everyone is searching for him. His cousins find him, and he manages to write in the sand well enough to tell them who he is. Of course they can’t change him back to human form, so they go back to the ship for the night.

During the night Aslan appears to Eustace. I don’t remember exactly, but I think he helps Eustace remove the bracelet from his arm, which is now a dragon’s leg, but the problem of his being a dragon remains.

Aslan tells him to shed his skin, so Eustace tears at his skin, and manages to take it all off, but he remains a dragon. He does it again, and gets it all off again, but that doesn’t do it either. Finally, Aslan says he’ll help. He claws Eustace so deeply Eustace thinks he’s going to die, but all the dragon’s skin comes off, and Eustace is transformed back into a human being. His attitude is changed too, and the symbolism here is pretty clear too.

The ship goes on, visiting other islands with unusual inhabitants, one of which is an old man who was once a star, who has been exiled to earth for an infraction he refuses to tell the travelers, saying it’s not something they need to know.

Beyond that island the seawater turns sweet, and the travelers see merpeople in the depths. Even further along the sea grows quiet and becomes full of water lilies. Unlike the earth, this planet has an edge over which the sea pours. One of the travelers, a large talking mouse, decides he wants to continue over the gigantic waterfall. King Caspian wants to accompany him, but is told by Aslan in no uncertain terms that it is his duty to return to Narnia to rule. Then the novel ends with the English children being returned to their native land.

I read that novel in early 1966, and I can’t explain why I associated it very strongly with a song by the Rolling Stones: 19th Nervous Breakdown. That probably sounds ridiculous, but I had been hearing their songs on the radio for almost two years, and had slowly been warming up to them. 19th Nervous Breakdown was the one that made me a fairly rabid Stones fan for two or three decades.

I hadn’t liked the first song of theirs I heard, Not Fade Away very much. It was too harsh a sound for me at that time, and sounded sloppy. But over the next months I liked their successive singles better and better, and that one pushed me over the edge.

For one thing, the lyrics sounded compassionate, something the Stones weren’t often to be accused of, and the music had a lot of color for just two guitars, bass, and drums. The rhythm guitar sounded like sweet water, while the guitar fill after “…you will stop/and look around…” was satisfyingly powerful. Then the bass player played a succession of notes from the bottom of the neck to the top, followed by a cymbal crash that satisfied my soul. But you probably had to be there to appreciate it.

Was there anything significant in my identification of the song with the novel? It made me a Rolling Stones fan, but how significant could that be? There was certainly significance contained in the novel, and I may have realized on some level what that was for me, but I didn’t really pursue it, other than intellectually.

But at the very least, it’s a treasured memory, whether it was ever actually significant or not.

 

Class Warfare

Franklin Roosevelt was one of the most effective presidents the United States has had, and still towers over contemporary politics. Some applaud what he did, some revile him, but few have tried to emulate him in recent years. With the current popularity of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and others, that may be changing, but remains uncertain.

Roosevelt tried to combat the Great Depression, and wasn’t entirely successful, but accomplished more than Herbert Hoover, most of whose administration was challenged by it, which he was unable to effectively resolve. Roosevelt tried to get Americans working again by creating agencies to employ them in repairing and creating infrastructure, among other things, paying individuals for work that in many cases private employers wouldn’t have undertaken. He also undertook reforms for which ordinary workers had been advocating for decades. Conservatives hated him for all this, and still do.

It’s interesting that class warfare has been a recurring phenomenon for over 2,000 years; perhaps even longer than that, though the examples we have the most details of are ancient Greece and Rome. The parallels are instructive.

First, let’s look at Sparta, one of the foremost powers of Greece, especially militarily. It was an aristocratic society of about 30,000 citizens dominating some 470,000 slaves, serfs, and Helots. The Helots were citizens of one or two cities conquered by the Spartans in the Peloponesus (the southern promontory of mainland Greece). The Spartans resorted to secret police to surveil the Helots, with the power to arbitrarily kill any individuals who seemed dangerous.

Lycurgus was the reformer who militarized Spartan society, taking male children away from their parents at about age seven to be raised by the state and trained to be soldiers. They became very good soldiers indeed, and were the dominant military power in Greece for about 300 years.

But this came with a cost. Spartan citizens were trained only to be soldiers; the only art the Spartans encouraged was music, which could be performed communally. Spartan boys were trained to eat little, to sleep outside in all weather, and to steal food, but not get caught, if they were in enemy territory.

They were only allowed to leave Sparta for war, and trained not to be curious about other peoples. To the extent they used money their currency was iron instead of silver or gold, so they couldn’t spend it elsewhere and get a taste for luxury. Eventually they (perhaps especially their leaders) did become corrupted, collaborating with the Persians to impose their will on other Greek states. When Epaminondas of Thebes beat them in battle in 371 BC, which effectively ended Spartan power, the Spartan state fell apart, and there’s now very little left to indicate that Sparta was ever a powerful nation.

Sparta was widely admired by ancient conservatives who didn’t have to live there, including by Plato, who resented democracy because it had executed his teacher Socrates unjustly.

With all its flaws, Athens was very different from Sparta, and few other Greek city states followed Sparta’s example.

Ancient Athens was the capital of Attica, an area of mainland Greece whose land wasn’t very fertile. Farms were subdivided so all sons could inherit, to the extent that they became too small to support the farmers, who then borrowed from aristocratic landowners or merchants, were often forced into bankruptcy and either became serfs tied to the land they previously owned, or were sold into slavery to pay their debts. Eventually this state of affairs aroused great discontent.

At this point Solon became the leader of Athens with the agreement of most citizens. To resolve the problems he first canceled all debts, including mortgages, and liberated all slaves and serfs. He divided the citizens into four groups based on income, and devised both honors and taxes to apply to each group.

The wealthiest class, for instance, was the only one allowed military leadership. Other classes were allowed to hold political office, and the lowest class formed the jury pool. A graduated income tax was instituted and used for public works.

Perhaps the most notable thing about Solon’s accomplishments was that he achieved them with little or no violence. This would not be true of many later instances of class warfare and revolution.

Solon was succeeded by Peisistratus, who made himself dictator, but was a benevolent one, something unusual in world history. He consolidated the changes made by Solon, and redistributed land which, according to historian Will Durant, prevented agricultural discontent for centuries afterward. Peisistratus was succeeded by his two sons, who at first were benevolent, until one was killed for sexual harassment by a jealous lover, whereupon the other became tyrannical, was overthrown, and democracy instituted.

Democracy accrued great credit after Athens was one of the leaders in repelling the Persian invasion of the early fifth century BC. Since Athens had been burned by the Persians, the Athenians rebuilt it, most famously including the Parthenon, became a center for the arts (attracting actors, musicians, dramatists,  architects, painters, poets, sculptors, and philosophers from all over Greece. Some of the first historians were also from Athens.

Unfortunately, Athens got too big for its boots, beginning to treat its allies like conquered nations and beginning a war with Sparta that lasted for thirty years and ended in Athens’ defeat. Their greatest years were finished, but they retained fame as a university city (the university founded by Plato) for centuries afterward.

Class warfare also took place in ancient Rome, and the results were much different.  Rome conquered most of its neighbors in Italy, then began finding excuses to invade countries further afield for profit. One of these was their primary competitor in trade, Carthage, located on the northern shore of Africa, and a great trading city. Three wars destroyed it, and Rome turned its attention east.

But Tiberius Gracchus cause turmoil in Rome by advocating for land conquered in war to be divided more fairly so Roman veterans could get enough good land to support themselves after their service ended. This so infuriated the conservative party that they murdered Gracchus and a number of his supporters.

His younger brother, Gaius, continued fighting for his reforms, but was also murdered. Marius, one of the most able figures of the Roman Republic, followed, and managed to make some of the reforms. He was opposed by Sulla (though they had previously worked together), which became the first civil war caused by the class warfare issue.

The second was set off by Julius Caesar, who wasn’t above breaking the law in his pursuit of power. After serving as consul he took the governorship of Gaul to avoid being held accountable for crimes committed during his term as consul. That’s when he embarked on conquest of most of western Europe. On his return to Rome he set off another civil war. His nephew Octavian (now better known as Caesar Augustus) set off a third after Julius Caesar’s death. He was another dictator (who didn’t use that word) who was relatively benevolent. Those who followed him would often not be.

Another example of class warfare was the rebellion instigated by John Ball and Wat Tyler near the end of the 14th century in England. It was unsuccessful.

So was the peasant’s revolt in Germany in the 16th century, condemned by Martin Luther.

The French Revolution in the late 18th century was largely inspired by unfair taxation, much like the American revolution, but was much more violent, and produced Napoleon, who essentially became a dictator.

It’s clear that when the lower classes of a society feel they’re being unfairly treated they’re inclined to rebel. It ought also to be clear that powerful people repeatedly mistreat the lower classes rather than showing them that they too have common interests in their countries and places of work. Instead, the wealthy and powerful habitually take the lion’s share of any profits made, and show little concern for dangerous working conditions.

Roosevelt undertook many reforms, some of which he was unable to pass because of his political miscalculation in trying to pack the Supreme Court, as well as his belief that America had to help defeat the Nazis, an unpopular idea prior to Pearl Harbor.

Many of his reforms had been anticipated by European countries trying to avoid labor problems. These made Socialist parties and unions legal, and passed legislation to pay workers better and make workplaces safer. United States employers didn’t approve of any of these innovations. They were much more inclined to treat their employees as enemies, not only paying them poorly,  keeping their workplaces unsafe, forcing them to work long hours, but refusing them their Constitutional rights, and often preventing them from seeking employment elsewhere.

Employers especially feared hated Communism, with some justification, since Communism in Russia (which set the pattern for later Communist regimes) had taken on the worst aspects of the regime they replaced: secret police and terror.

But it’s arguable that one of the things American employers liked least (since they employed secret police and terror themselves) was the identification of Communism with workers rights–never mind that that was a promise never fulfilled.

Wealthy American classes (European ones too) were terrified of the Communist promise to redistribute land and wealth. They didn’t want poorer people to own property or to have any say in how the country was governed. Since the time of Franklin Roosevelt wealthy conservatives and corporations have gradually won back any power they surrendered during Roosevelt’s administration, but in refusing the poorest class security of jobs, wages, and healthcare, have created a potentially revolutionary situation in which, if it continues to persist, may persuade the great mass of Americans that they have nothing to lose.

That remains to be seen. There are many things to be frightened of at this time. Considering that this country is the wealthiest country in the world with the largest military, it seems peculiar that there is so much fear, especially among powerful people, who probably live more secure lives than anyone in history–to the extent that wealth can protect people.

But their belief that everyone is envious of them and willing to violently dispossess them frightens them. Were they willing to make the lives and jobs of poorer Americans more secure, and make sure they had opportunities to advance, as has often been the case in this country, they would be a lot less likely to arouse the rancor of people who feel they’ve been forgotten and that their real concerns will never be addressed.

Whether this country will be willing to address these problems with anything but ideology and repression, or whether it will devolve into some form of dictatorship remains, I repeat, to be seen.