The more things change......................

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the past century, protesting it was only heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy , lust, malice, or ambition could produce.

Jonathan Swift, channeling Gulliver, circa 1726