Paul Rosenberg – Finding parallels with Rome is a fun topic for writers, and just recently I came across some very interesting ones. They grabbed my attention, and they may grab yours as well.
These passages (in bold) are from The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, by Peter Brown:
[E]mperor, military, and civilian populations alike needed the idea of a “barbarian threat” to justify their own existence.
Just as our grand states need terrorists to justify their existence, immigrants to threaten the populace, and outsiders to blame.
Note also that the “civilian populations” required a barbarian threat. That directly translates to today’s defense workers, intel agency workers, militarized police forces, and all the millions who’ve merged their identity with “our heroic protectors.” With no big threat, all of that becomes meaningless.
The peasantry had to increase production so as to earn the money with which to pay taxes.
Have you noticed how obsessively young people work these days? People talk about Millennial slackers, and there are some, but I see young families where both parents have to work full time, who work on their smart phones long after business hours, and who are taxed to the hilt without remorse.
It’s inspiring to witness many of the earth’s people, especially in the Western world, becoming aware of the deep corruption in our social system, particularly because society is building its innate capacity to actually do something about it.
Charles Hugh Smith – Regardless of who wins the presidency, a much larger question looms: will the U.S. be ungovernable 2017-2020? There are multiple sources of the question.