As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return! 

The final two stanzas of the poem, excerpted above, are the ones that leap off the screen and slap me in the face.  Kipling wrote this in 1919, following the horror of WWI in which he lost a son.  It conveys a hopelessness, or at least resignation, that history will inevitably repeat itself: Mankind will always be tempted by false promises of something for nothing.  Or, perhaps more fundamentally, mankind will be tempted by ideas that sound good or sound right, might be timely, but ultimately are incompatible with reality: in the end, the laws of life and nature* are unmalleable - and reality asserts itself over mankind’s oft-ephemeral strongest wishes or best intentions.

Considering what was known by 1919 (a lot) and was happened since then (we’d be here all day…), and given that our current political climate is one that rewards a promise of a perfect world in return for the transfer of wealth, I’d say his premise was perceptive, timely, and perhaps timeless.  (One could speak at length regarding critiques of Kipling: arguing about whether he was indeed racist and to what extent, or arguing about his use of rhyme and meter that in modern times is considered passé - but I think those are generally irrelevant to why the poem jumped out at me, so I’d just assume avoid them).  The latest whims of political-philosophical fashion always proclaim to solve the problem, to be smarter and wiser than those who came before, to promise a better life than before.  The problem isn’t with the messengers (politicians, preachers, demogogues of all stripes) - perhaps it’s in our very nature.  But if so, what the heck can we do about it, what can we do to prevent repeated mistakes?

According to Kipling?  Nothing at all: the bandaged finger wabbles back to the fire, as surely as that fire will burn.  Here we go again.

*NOTE: “Copybook headings” is an obscure and antique cultural reference, referring to the various truisms of life that were printed in the headings of pupil’s copybooks, the books in which handwriting or facts were copied ad nausuem as part of the education process.