1/4 A thread on the real #ThucydidesTraps (there is more than one). No, it's not the banality that rising and established powers can clash, actually.
Instead: 1) Read T actually and you see that he treats both his own side and the enemy with critical empathy, not sympathy...
Instead: 1) Read T actually and you see that he treats both his own side and the enemy with critical empathy, not sympathy...
2/4 ...but critical empathy. Specifically, his Athenians can be cruel and idiotic, his Spartans rational and driven by understandable motives. If you need caricatures instead, T would have scoffed at you. Trap I. 2) His Pelop. War is a giant clusterf***, an enormous...
3/4 ...waste, a descent into barbarity and slaughter on all sides. If you need a simpler, more edifying picture, again T would have considered you at best infantile. Trap II .3) His Pelop. War is also a story of self-humiliation: Here are the same Greeks who defeated the...
4/4 ...Persians just y-day (historic. speaking) and they are so hell-bent not only on fighting each other but going on and on with it that at the end those Persians come back and help settle the outcome. If you fail to see that stunning, bitter irony, T would have wept. Trap III.
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