Rome

There's an interesting interview with an historian about the parallels between the fall of the Roman Republic and today.  This section struck me:

I think the erosion of norms really starts when Roman politicians convince themselves that their personal ambitions and the good of the republic are one and the same. In other words, they started acting in their own self-interest but deluded themselves into thinking that it was really for the betterment of Rome.

The other thing you see is that Roman politicians, much like American politicians today, started to believe that all they needed was 51 percent of the people to support them, and that the other 49 percent didn’t matter. But that’s not how the Roman system was supposed to work, and it’s not how the US system is supposed to work.

Representative democracies are designed to cool down the passions of a pure democracy and find representatives who can think more long-term and craft policies that solve problems in ways that also have broad support.

Of course, I believe that Republicans are those that believe their self-interest equals the same as the good of the republic.  I suppose they would say the same about me. Of course, I'd be willing to pay higher taxes for a universal health care system, which doesn't sound like self-interest.

But it would explain why people like Mitch McConnell do what they do.  They genuinely conflate their own self-interest with what is good for everyone.