Do our Ruling Party big  shots have Lorenzo’s picture on their walls?

The more things change, the more they stay the same:

First among Florence’s leading citizens in the period after 1434, the Medici began to pilfer public funds in the 1480s and never looked back.

Their stealthy republican power peaked under Lorenzo the Magnificent (d. 1492), as they took control of the city’s complicated electoral machinery and filled the chief offices with their yes men.

Resentment against the family swelled explosively and they were twice compelled to flee from Florence, in 1494 and 1527, with the old republic storming back each time: noisy, dynamic, hopeful.

I refer, of course to the way a Ruling Party tends to act at least after a while.

We do have our Lorenzos in Illinois, do we not?

Source: Deaths in the family | TLS