As American society creeps closer and closer to feudalism, we've just had a very narrow escape, I continue to retreat into the works of Mark Twain for solace. I'm currently converting my recordings from reading The Innocents Abroad into mp3s to be compiled into audiobooks. A recurrent theme throughout The Innocents Abroad is Twain's criticism of "The Old Masters". The works of these fellows are a significant part of what we today recognize from feudal societies. They portray the "1%ers" from those times. What we rarely see are the lives of the rest of the populations. If we could there might be more reticence about supporting or at least ignoring the greed and avarice found among the elite. Anyway, here is a quote from Chapter 14 of The Innocents Abroad:

 "We visited the Louvre, at a time when we had no silk purchases in view, and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters. Some of them were beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about them of the cringing spirit of those great men that we found small pleasure in examining them. Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons was more prominent to me and chained my attention more surely than the charms of color and expression which are claimed to be in the pictures. Gratitude for kindnesses is well, but it seems to me that some of those artists carried it so far that it ceased to be gratitude and became worship. If there is a plausible excuse for the worship of men, then by all means let us forgive Rubens and his brethren.

 But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the old masters that might as well be left unsaid."