Avast!-Bread, Circuses & Public Debt Develops Imperialism

The ancient Roman Empire was famous for providing bread and circuses and public sports spectacles to keep the plebeians happy. Those 'democrats' that were Roman citizens moved into the City and were restive without free bread, gladiator and boat shows, chariot races around the forum and so forth. They didn't have useful work and many jobs were outsourced to foreign colonies while cheap labor'-slaves-worked the farms.

With a Caesar on their side for a time the plebeians had no concern about a restored Republic with those unpleasant Senators and upper class keeping them down. Foreign soldiers were employed to serve in their stead. It worked reasonably well for a time yet of course Constantine eventual moved the Empire east to Byzantion and the Byzantine Empire grew to survive until the 15th century.

The Byzantine rulers were noted for treachery in achieving power. It was quite a bloody succession and losers were often blinded and perhaps set upon a donkey in the countryside. The maxim that location is everything worked for Constantinople. It wasn't really until a crusade-sacked Constantinople and mobile cannon on ships developed that the City really became vulnerable to conquest by the pushing Moslem power of Asia Minor.

The United States today has good location, food stamps for 47 million, outsourced jobs and vastly increasing public debt. By then end of another Obama term the interest each year on the public debt would be more than a trillion dollars. Here is what is wrong with the nation...

The Democrat Party is no longer a responsible majority party as it was after 1929-30 until the end of the Carter administration. It has developed a tax the rich and provide benefits to the middle class psychology. A two-term Obama administration would add more than 10 trillion dollars of public debt-and that may be a little too much for a 2016 Republican President to correct.

The Democrat Party under Obama has moved further toward a dialectical Marxist opposite status to the very rich as if they expect an evolutionary clash to develop to synthesize John Lenin's own brand of godless New World Order. The Republican Party has always had its ideological purists (a.k.a. extremists) advocating for the concentration of wealth. Democrats cannot expect them to become the former Democratic moderates advocating for fair tax rates, no public debt and full employment. Democratic Presidents took up that task from Roosevelt to Carter and even Dwight Eisenhower followed that line. After President Reagan's style of conservatism President Clinton agitated to end Glass-Steagle and signed off on that in 1999 throwing middle class mortgages into the rough ministrations of British and other alien political-economic powers. The Democrat leadership pimping of U.S. middle class economic interests let radical deregulation go ahead and handed the nation to the world's financial sharks on a platter.

Without an economically realistic Democrat Party with theoretical support for directing the economy toward full employment concurrent with deficit elimination, secure borders and protection for the U.S. labor force the national drift toward insolvency and possible economic collapse with unmanageable, vampiristic public interest on the national debt payments the nation actually is drifting toward the classical imperialistic transition in order than none besides the ruler will have actual financial accountability.

Some argue that too much regulation is the problem for U.S. business. The problem is actually not enough good regulations and too many ineffective regulations. Quality rather than quantity is the challenge for good government.

If one compares the ruling classes of Tsarist and Communist Russia there isn't so much difference in the way the upper echelons repressed free speech. A global corporate bureaucracy also represses free speech. One cannot imagine an Exxon or Shell employee lasting long if they advocated against fossil fuel politically and for alternative energy.

 
The Roman Republic and The Roman Empire differed. The Roman Republic grew 7000 years and the Roman Empire was in decline generally. The Empire brought a steady decline with rampant corruption. If one reads Suetonius and Plutarch the sordid lives of the Emperors are recounted.

Bread and circuses bought public support for incompetent political management (#1).

Caesar, the first Emperor got and built the empire at it's height. He was a little like Dwight D. Eisenhower followed by a line of poor leaders with an occasional Reagan or Nixon thrown in to arrest decline for a while.

After Caesar the expanse of the empire sort of stayed the same with Octavian-Augustus and Tiberius I seem to recall. Then it began its long slow period of decline.

Constantine moved the capitol effectively to Byzantium in 316. Rome itself was sacked by Alaric and the Goths in the 4th century. As an empire then, Rome lasted barely three centuries during a time of decline and troubles. It was beset with invasions and defeats even by Attilla and the Huns in the 3rd century.

The Eastern Roman Empire ruled by Justinian had famines and such-and that Emperor sent a fortune trying to hold the lands of the former unified Empire together without luck. The Byzantine Empire lost land for centuries to the Moslems and others yet they had such an excellent fortress site on the Dardanelles they could hold on behind two excellent defensive walls and water barriers for a thousand years. The United States cannot even defend its Mexican border against illegal Mexican migrants and foreign terrorists smuggling whatever they like to cache for later use.