Posted on 10/26/2020 4:35:04 PM PDT by Bull Man
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” — President John F. Kennedy, 1962
Mark Twain reputedly quipped, “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Whoever actually said it, the rhyming of history is nowhere better illustrated that the resonance of events during the last four years in America with the events that ushered in the final descent of the old Roman Republic into tyranny.
From swamp creatures to political disruptors; from endless wars to corrupt and avaricious politicians; from politicians who go to any lengths to further their wealth, expand their power and control the population to organized disinformation campaigns to destroy political opponents – the parallels are uncanny and disconcerting.
The unhappy fate of the Roman Republic is known; ours is still in the making.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldtribune.com ...
Debasing the currency came much later.
Some hateful monster, Charlotte Clymer, says the 63 million votes already cast while this “sham (confirmation) process is going on.
She and another half dozen of the leading tweets showing for Barrett on google are the most hateful things i’ve read in a while.
wow
Thanks for letting me off the hook :)
GO TRUMP!!
We're well past a Gracchi moment. It'll either be Sulla or Caesar. Republican control of Congress when Clinton was elected more closely parallels the Gracchi approach and recall how easily the Republican leaders who kept the party in line were thrown in the Tiber with the greedy Republican Congress Critters willing to run along with Clinton as long as they got the seats nearest the hog trough their majority "entitled" them to.
JMHo
I don’t know the real story, but as I understand it Julius Caesar was killed by Brutus and the other 7-8 senators in part because he had taken the role of emperor, and in part because he wanted to expand the Roman Senate and citizenship rights to people of the lands he conquered to the north and west (Germans and French by today’s name).
To me it makes the comparison a little more real. They call Trump the dictator and the racist, just like Brutus, Cassius and the rest did but what Caesar really did was usurp and dilute the role of the power structure that was, and ‘let the deplorables’ have a voice.
I agree with the comparison between The Romans and America but the flow of information goes from horseback to the speed of light. Adjust the timeline accordingly and we’re well into decline. It’s time to break it up and go our separate ways because it’s going to happen one way or another.
Scary parallels....
Freepers should spend a few minutes reading this superb article.
“Imagine, if you will, a Roman politician in 133 bc pontificating about how great things were because of their forward-looking policies – cheap labor and more leisure time – oblivious to the fact that cheap labor and leisure time to the plebs simply meant no work, no property, no money, no life.”
The Bushes and Clinton’s were Roman? Who knew.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.
If 134 BC is where were at, compared to Rome, we’ve got 4 centuries of civil war & tyranny ahead of us if Trump’s apparent plan to drain the swamp is thwarted.
Unfortunately true, the political elites effectively see us as nothing more than modern plebs expecting us to stay in our place and obey their diktats. God forbid an outsider crash their party and give them a voice.
Late in the 130s bc, the Roman Republic metaphorically crossed the Rubicon (although Caesar's actual crossing would not happen for another 80 years). In 133 bc, the tribune brothers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (the Gracchi Brothers), took it upon themselves through largely extra-constitutional means to drain the Roman swamp of corruption and dismantle the avaricious elites that comprised a sort of Roman Deep State located within the Roman Senate and extended throughout the Roman administrative-state apparatus. The Gracchi Brothers' efforts at agrarian reform set off a chain reaction of intense, to-the-death struggles - a tit-for-tat spiral of extra-constitutional measures between the tribunes and senators and leading eventually to the assassination of Tiberius and later, his brother Gaius. The Brothers Gracchi saga greased the skids for the Old Republic's final descent - already underway nigh on a century since the end of the Punic Wars - into tyranny, with the rise of Julius Caesar, dictator perpetuo, in 44 bc.
By 133 bc, Rome had fallen under the control of what today we would call political crime families ensconced in the Senate, who worked hand-in-glove with government functionaries and actors outside the formal political system. These elites were amassing vast and unprecedented wealth while the rest of Rome was being impoverished. Senators were manipulating the Roman political system to their personal benefit and to the great detriment of the Roman people. Foreign conflicts that had turned into "forever wars" were draining the Roman treasury. The burden fell especially heavily on the land-owning Roman Legionnaires, who not only had to fight the wars but also were helpless to prevent their farms from deteriorating and failing in their absence and their land reverting to state (i.e., Senate) ownership.
Hey, not bad, the author almost got it right. However, the brothers Gracchi and Julius Caesar were similarly fighting against the oligarchy and trying to open Roman government to those ruled by it.
The so-called Roman Republic was run for centuries by about three dozen extended families, the Senate was not elected, and Senators served because they volunteered, but had to belong to one of those families.
The Roman city-state started its empire with the conquest of Ostia around 400 BC. Rome was sacked by the Gauls around 390 BC, and Gallic settlement of northwestern Italy was something Rome learned to live with, but the Gauls were always seen as a threat.
Carthage was similiarly ruled by a small number of families, all of them rivals but more or less equals. The Carthaginian army was run by them, but largely mercenary in character. The city had a great navy, not surprising for a Phoenician colony. It was the expanding power in the western Med, and in continual conflict with the other Phoenicians colonies, with various locals, with the Greeks, and ultimately with Rome. After Hannibal spent more than a decade fighting Romans and others in Italy, and was finally evac'd to defend Carthage from the brilliant Scipio Africanus. Rome wound up with a fulltime standing army, a practice that endured until the Turkish sack of Constantinople in AD 1453.
BTW, Hannibal was a real psycho, and while he had his moments, basically he's been grossly overrated; also, Carthage was the aggressor in the Punic Wars.
Roman conquest of Iberia (Spain and Portugal) took almost 200 years to finish up, and began as Scipio's way of depriving Carthage of valuable territory and a source of military manpower.
Due to the Alexandrian successor-state in Greece having supported Carthage, forty years after Hannibal, Rome decided to settle that old score and conquered Greece in 146 BC, the same year Carthage was finally destroyed. About ten years later the first of three slave revolts in Italy (1st, 2nd, and 3rd Servile War; Spartacus led the last one, 73-71 BC) began, and the necessity of a fulltime Roman army was greatly clarified, although lifting the burden of slavery apparently never occurred to the oligarchy.
Pompey the Great (who was a mere six years older than Julius Caesar) served under Sulla, served in the Third Servile War, defeated and/or had murdered various surviving members of the faction of Marius, cleaned up a mess in Anatolia and added one of the top two or three most prosperous and profitable provinces to the Roman holdings, added Judea, defeated pirates, campaigned throughout Italy and Transalpine Gaul, and his third wife was Julius Caesar's daughter (died giving birth). He was ruthless, effective, resourceful, and very highly interesting. When he turned on Caesar, Caesar knew what he was dealing with, and he wasn't going to just lay down his arms and go off to retirement someplace where he'd be murdered by Pompey's agents.
Imperator was an acclamation bestowed on great leaders in Roman history, including Pompey the Great himself. As an office, beginning in earnest with Augustus, it represented the development of a fulltime executive, officially as Consul. Consuls had always served in pairs, with veto power over each other; starting with Augustus, the emperor appointed his consulsar colleague, typically a member of the family, usually much younger, and that consul would serve and train by administering Roman city affairs. The fourth emperor, Claudius, revived the office of Censor to give himself a fallback authority and additional powers.
The Senate became more representational, a necessity in a far-flung Empire. Roman society and politics became upwardly mobile.
Caesar was murdered in an extrajudicial act. Visitors to Rome today can see the place where his body was cremated by the grieving Romans. AFAIK, there's no trace anywhere in the old Empire where his murderers have marked burials or any other honors.
Later
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
