God-kings and the deification of the rich

Wealth inequality is bringing back the ancient practice of endowering our rulers with magical powers.

Among the achievements of civilization celebrated in modernist discourse — and still taken for granted today — has been our belated decision to stop revering our rulers as gods. This may seem like a modest accomplishment, but it was not long ago that society thought about power quite differently. In its opening stanza, our earliest work of literature de…