The murder of Tiberius Garcchus. Public domain. Public Domain
Posted on 04/07/2023 9:16:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Donald Trump’s indictment makes one wonder if the members of the Democrat party have ever picked up a history book, walked by one in a library, or accidentally heard an episode of the History of Rome podcast. I doubt it because if they had, they’d know that Rome didn’t transition from a republic to an empire overnight, and they’d be familiar with the modern iteration of the George Santayana adage: Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
By the time Caesar became dictator in 49 BC, the Republic was already gone in everything but name only. The Republic’s collapse had been put in motion 80 years before with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus.
Gracchus was a populist Plebeian tribune, essentially the equivalent of being a member of our House of Representatives. Citizens loved him, and the aristocratic Senate hated him. His assassination points the way to Caesar:
[T]he oligarchy had introduced violence into the political system with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus and over the years the use of violence became increasingly acceptable as various political disputes in Rome led to more and more bloody discord.
With Gracchus’s death, violence became an increasingly common political weapon in Rome, with Sulla’s purges early in the 1st century BC as the clearest example. Sulla executed 9,000 rival Marian partisan supporters, without regard for age or sex.
Three decades later, Caesar would take control, only to lose his life at the hands of a cabal of his establishment rivals. This widespread political violence only came to an end (temporary as it might be) when his adopted son, Augustus, become emperor. Tellingly, however, Augustus achieved that peace only after executing thousands of his political enemies.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Great essay. And your summary is excellent.
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It is such a powerful tool that both sides have always feared the other side would use it to take control away from the other. Even an impending Civil war was not incentive enough to get it done. That war ended up modifying the Constitution though bloodshed instead.
How about we avoid the bloody part this time ? We can always go blood thirsty crazy if it does not work and have another Civil War.
It would be well to read the story of Tiberius Gracchus in detail. Tiberius was a populist who, after a career in the army, entered politics seeking to redress great wrongs done to the citizen-soldiers by Senators who stayed at home and helped themselves copiously to the soldiers’ properties while they were fighting in distant lands. He had some success, but that was what led to his murder. The parallels with Trump will be even more striking. If our Swamp succeeds in destroying him, our government will evolve into a lawless contest among oligarchs who will take no notice whatsoever of the welfare of the general population. We will become commodities to them, to be bought, sold, and always exploited. The image of capitalism as Marx imagined it will come true after all.
...and the Romans kept going on conquest, but then found out that the ‘Barbarians’ actually did have brains and started to push back and creating an alternative to the Aureus (Roman currency). Then Rome started blowing up the aqueducts that fed cities that revolted. And then they got their puppet in Greece, Zelenskopolis, to fight a war against Carthage - which was great for the Romacons (never-ending warmongers of Rome), but wound up with a lot of dead Greeks, and served no useful purpose as the ‘Barbarians’ won anyway, due to their hypersonic missiles.
(well, it didn’t quite end that way, but close enough)
Following in the roman tradition started by Caligula, Joe Biden the sniffer has named his horse as his consul.
bkmk
What is a “Marian partisan”?
And - as a 9th grade history teacher pointed out in the 60s, the Roman Empire started going downhill around the same time they started the Dole to support musicians and other artists...when folks didn’t have to be productive to “earn a living” things went downhill.
Vielen Dank!
Gaius Marius. He was first a general. He reformed the Roman Army and turned them from a militia into a real tough razor sharp professional army at a time when Rome was under dire threat from Germanic tribes. His troops were so physically fit and so accustomed to marching long distances at speed with all their weapons and equipment that they came to be called “Marius’ Mules”. They repeatedly used speed and surprise to defeat Rome’s enemies.
Marius was also a political leader being elected consul an unprecedented 7 times. Marius was on the Populares’ (the poor/working class) side against the Optimates (the rich/the Establishment). After some low level conflict and while the top general on the other side (Lucious Cornelius Sulla) was away on campaign, Marius seized Rome and executed a bunch of his political enemies.
But he was old and died. Sulla came back from his military campaign abroad, took Rome and executed even more of his political enemies.
Caesar was Marius’ nephew by marriage and sympathized with Marius......
Marius was the first of the military strongmen who came to dominate Rome, and who fought the civil wars that led to the fall of the Republic and the rise of the Empire. What led to military strongmen doing so was the inability of the Roman Republic to reform.....because the elites murdered Reformers like Tiberius Gracchus and later his brother Gaius Gracchus who followed in his footsteps.
“...makes one wonder if the members of the Democrat party have ever picked up a history book...”
Assigning ignorance of history to the Biden administration is actually granting the ghouls the benefit of good intentions.
I wonder why people find it so hard to perceive that the Biden administration has as its goal the complete destruction of the American nation.
The selling off of the oil reserves, totally unnecessary, is just one indication that it intends to crash the economy beyond remediation. They don’t intend for the country to have a fall-back option for fuel, food, sound currency, belief in the nation, trust, nothing.
“Speed and surprise.”
The essence of winning modern warfare.
How about the wholesale imperial selling of Roman citizenship to the point that being a citizen of Rome was worthless?
The Republic’s collapse had been put in motion 80 years before with the murder of Tiberius Gracchus.
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Well approximately 60 years ago, John F Kennedy was murdered.
And now comes the indictment of Trump, a former President.
Our Republic is no longer a Republic Dr. Franklin.
“In 100 yeafs” “America much faster”
Uh US has been around for almost 250 years. How is that “faster” than 100 years?
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