Now we have the oil companies, the banks, the 'corporate powers'. They don't have dreadnoughts and few of them cultivate moustaches, but do you notice this? Their enemies are their equals, and the people who really get it in the neck are the guys in the trenches, on whichever side. Same as ever. There's always a power elite, and it's always interconnected. The Kaiser was the cousin of the King, the Queen was the sister of the Grand Duke, and do you suspect that if those dynasties had survived, those royals would all now be serving on each other's remuneration committees? Thought so.
There's a pattern that doesn't change. It's neatly summed up by Lenin's question - "Who - whom?" - which pretty much summarises a - what? Compulsion? Need, even? - through human history. Set aside the notion that we contrive this big, indifferent, intrusive, oppressive nuisance, or want it, because we don't; but we seem somehow to bring it into being despites our selves. Look back through history, and it's there.
Do we live in isolation, or is there more to knowing the self than just knowing the self?
To answer a question not asked today: touch another's hand, and you touch your own hand.
A little late, but Happy Birthday, Mr Rust.