Those Who Do Not Remember History

 'The world's oldest profession' is an accolade bestowed jointly on prostitution and politics. After all, the duties and ambitions of each are so very similar. And, if you hold no objection to droll metaphor, even the performance of their respective antediluvian tasks requires an analogous set of iniquitous skills and shameless guile; skills perfected over several millennia of on-the-job experience. In fact, I have no doubt that the earliest wild-haired harlots learnt a thing or two from their bearskin-clad statesmen about selling themselves to whoever or whatever could pay.

Historically, prostitute and politician first appear as recognized job descriptions at the very Dawn of Civilization. Explanations of their dubious offices are scrawled on clay tablets discovered in the lowest layers of excavations at the most ancient of archeological sites. Additionally, both primitive lipsticks and electioneering manifestos are frequently found in the fossil record. Some scholars, such as myself, also claim that the pyramids and Stonehenge were actually ancient polling stations. Such conjectures are difficult to prove but are the only correct conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence, provided you are not some jaded, unimaginative 'professor' with tenure at one of our ridiculously overpriced and increasingly irrelevant universities.

But whatever the academics say, bureaucracy and streetwalking clearly predate the establishment of what we now think of as tribes and settlements. So, since there were no tribes for the bureaucrats to govern, and no settlement streets for the streetwalkers to walk in, how did those politicians and prostitutes from bygone days go about their dubious businesses? Well, they obviously put their deceitful, nefarious heads together and propounded the idea of tribes and settlements to their gullible constituents and clients. And such deceitful quid pro quo is how the parliamentro-boudoir system of order and patronage has screwed us ever since.

An immediate effect of creating tribes, and settlements was the spread of Herpes, a sexually transmitted disease named after the First Kingdom Egyptian pharaoh who contracted it from the infamous courtesan Gonorrhoea. But such shameful personal problems were nothing compared to the misery and dysfunction inflicted on people by the political half of the disreputable duo. For instance, humankind could have invented the wheel much earlier were it not for the interference of Paleolithic politicians. Stone-Age governments also imposed a fire tax on a per cave basis, and stipulated that hunter-gatherers must obtain valid licenses to stalk mammoth with sharpened flint-tipped spears. 

These draconian policies were the beginning of what conservative commentators have named 'The Swamp,' so-called because its low-browed architects often literally lived in swamps, in rudimentary mud huts balanced on stilts sunk into thick slime. Some authorities, myself included, have also termed this stage of socio-economic antiquity the Savagely-Primordial Complex, although not even I know what we mean by that exactly. Nevertheless, the continuity from homicidal maniac crouching in a mud hut with his home made axe to modern day senators pocketing backhanders on Capitol Hill is easy to follow.