They say history rhymes, and right now it seems to be nearing the end of a stanza, so it rhymes in big structural ways. The periodicity seems to manifest itself in the parallels to previous lines. Perhaps it's just my brain looking for patterns, but there are very clear and consistent patterns that share certain continuities.
One thing that seems certain is that moustache man was revived, or rather, had two (and one bastard) abominable offspring, and his cohort had their own as well. It is also interesting that Julius Caesar found a Rome that had overreached their military capability, after having established their empire as the most militarily powerful force in the mediterranean, and at home the Republic was crumbling, amidst political instability and civil war, and took advantage of this to make a perhaps inevitable change that would end up in his concentration of power as emperor of Rome. We all know how he ended up the day after, as the Republic had managed to resist previous attempt to this end, under the political philosophy of "No kings!"
Coming back to the nearer history, let us remember moustache man came at the turn of the world order of the time. Ahead of his time, he anticipated the 2020's fashion of weaving flags with swastikas on the streets¹ . More than this, it comes to attention that he had two big allies. They called them the Axis of Evil, a coalition of exactly three fascist countries who were complices on a genocide.
There are recurring themes, of course. Such as those times when the degradation of a social order, usually the hegemony of a ruling class faces some major crisis, brings about a de facto dissolution of the order, and develops into an era of warlordism. The Eastern Zhou kept their formal status as the ruling family, though in practice their dominion broke up into kingdoms who for centuries waged war against each other and eventually the state of Qin subdued them all, starting with the proper imperial era. Formally, the imperial era ended in 1912 when the Qing dynasty was deposed by the Democratic Republic of China. On the other side of the world, nobody keeping up with the developments would dare say that the time of empires is yet behind us. I imagine people on the Sinosphere would agree with us.
This, though, is barely worth mentioning at all. The history of civilization is the history of almost uninterrupted war on a large scale. Periods of peace do come and go, but I would be surprised if there was a year in the whole of human history that the whole world was peaceful, that no military conflict hadn't happened anywhere in the world, nor that there was ever a time without empires exploiting conquered peoples and poweful narcissists declaring war on each other.
Recurring is also the narrative of the end of a social order, usually the decline of an empire, marked by debauchery and extreme poverty, political instability and social unrest. Historians often talk about the accounts of these periods as "likely exaggerations" written later by those who came on top. Certainly these declining kings and emperors couldn't have possibly done most of the things of which they are accused, could they? One is reminded that such cartoonish evils couldn't possibly exist in the real world, right?
There are other rhymes at larger scales: little ice ages and increases in temperature, mass extinctions, even the "pulsating rythm" that Howard Odum describes where a frenzied consumer evolves and rapidly consumes the accumulated biodiversity of perhaps millions of years. Life as small and """insignificant""" as bacteria have, by their collective action, come to nearly freeze the entire surface of the planet.
Meawhile, I consider buying a bike, I could certainly use some sense of perspective!
¹ Hardly surprising, for it's an old symbol shared by most peoples of indo-european descent. In fact, mr Caesar, moustache man and wig carrot all share some very ancient symbols in their branding. There seems to be a running joke in this club.