I have focused in past efforts on what Montaigne has to say about leaders of the ancient eras who ruled within modest means, mostly comparing his handful of anecdotes to leadership stories from today.

Perhaps I’ve missed Montaigne’s intent in the process, because he was drawing a comparison to the rulers of his era and their attachment to wealth and pageantry. He couldn’t do so directly, so he inserted this short, quiet reminder that rulers haven’t always been corrupted by power.

And maybe he was so subtle that the message was lost — one finally received with the guillotine in the French Revolution a couple centuries later.

We are headed for an era of reckoning in the years ahead. The trappings of wealth and power have grown beyond all common decency. Already there’s a backlash and already violence — I’m convinced it will grow stronger.

At this point you might expect me to add an “unless” … but we may be beyond the point of a pullback from this abyss. We would need the current generation of wealth to do a rapid about-face and find a social conscience — and for a new generation of elected leaders to purposefully limit their own power, despite Supreme Court leeway. Does anyone feel confident that this will happen, and if it does, that it can hold for more than half a decade?

Beware of people who build palaces and memorials of their own glory. They may, perhaps, escape the whirlwind of retribution, but in time others will be punished for their public sins.