The State did nothing. Unlike Mytilene where it was everyone’s fault but got projected onto the State, in this case a single guy pretended he was the State so he could do what he wanted, and no one did anything because when it comes to power, better him than them.

But it's easier to blame a leader and worship your conqueror, crown the new tyrant a king and pretend he represents you, now and forever you can take credit for his actions and steal a little bit of satisfaction for yourself. That's the past you want, so it will be the future that satisfies you. Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? The great experiment

That’s what you came up with? 27 years of grinding war, multiple plagues and a giant volcano, countless atrocities and worshipping your conqueror, your democracy had to be wrenched back for you by a man whose name you don't even remember and his crew that you'd rather forget-- and after all this, the first thing you do with your second chance is bl

Thirty years later Socrates annoyed the democrats, “why is it so important for you to believe you have knowledge, especially since it’s fake?” and for this they sentenced him to death, a sentence he readily accepted because, well, he didn't care for the Statesmen but he believed in the state. I disagree, escaping and then returning in force to over

“No, not a tyranny, I just want a government above populist pressures, one that has all the power, whatever it does is just, it acts in the best interest of its people.” That used to be called a Dad. Sometimes it takes 2500 years, but the repressed always returns.

A modern student will spend years studying the secondary sources to understand their meaning, but a semi-literate Athenian would have been expected to get the point from hearing the primary source once, and then use it. And yet they collapsed. So the question is, what happened? And what chance could we possibly have? What happened to them is what's

That could only happen because people did not consider themselves free anymore-- so the state was no longer considered just, let alone ideal. Let's be precise: it came when their state was no longer considered just. Wait, still not right: it came when they did not want to be free and prayed the State was unjust so they could justify stealing from i

Oedipus stood for every single Athenian in the audience, who used to be the state and who now wanted to serve a State; who in theory had all the power, and now did not want it.

For all but a few, math became arithmetic and philosophy became accounting, and getting some power was far less satisfying than depriving the other of theirs. And here we are.