For anyone educated in the public schools like I was, you may have to struggle for a moment to remember (if you ever knew at all) who Cicero was.
Do yourself a favor, research it so you'll own the knowledge.
Meanwhile, here's what Rome's greatest orator had to say and darned if it doesn't sound like he's talking about our present-day gasbag conglomerate that's running Washington.
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.
Marcus Tullius Cicero [ancient Roman scholar, lawyer, statesman and orator 106BC - 43BC]
Indeed.
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