Le plus de choses change...

On a sultry afternoon, on July 4th, 1892, Ignatius Donelly's preamble to the Populist Party's platform was read at their convention in Omaha, Nebraska.

"The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation. We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the legislatures, the congress, and touches even the ermine on the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the states have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation or bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion stifled, business prostrated, and our homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists..."

The more things change indeed.