Tag: Bread and Circuses

Surrounded by Imbeciles

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I was trying to relax tonight and take a break from the world.  I went to a high school athletic awards ceremony for one of my grandsons.  It was exactly as anyone who has been to such an event would expect.  Coaches make short speeches in praise of the athletes and the kids seem uncomfortable and awkward as they stand on stage and accept the awards and the applause of their peers and relatives.  From my perspective it was very rewarding.  To see the young people behaving civilly and appropriately while the outside world is descending into barbarism provides a splinter of hope for the future.

I came home in the glow of good spirits and was prepared to watch with Camera Girl, the pre-recorded episode of her current favorite tv show, Wheel of Fortune.  But alas, it had been pre-empted by a news report about Donald Trump being indicted by the Justice Department for possession of some supposedly classified documents.  We were fast-forwarding through the recording so I couldn’t hear any of the audio but I could read the banner under the video and that was what it was about.  But what can you do?  When you live in a banana republic these are the things that go on.  So, I looked for some other way to amuse myself, although my buoyant mood was substantially quenched.

I had recorded the Keanu Reeves remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”  Previously I had seen short segments of the film while looking for something to watch and it hadn’t looked too promising but I figured, “How bad could it be?”  Well, I found out.

The original movie had suffered from a lethal dose of sanctimonious pacifism.  This latter edition is orders of magnitude worse.  In addition to having the painfully wooden acting abilities of Reeves on full display for most of the film, it also tried to convince us that John Cleese was an Einstein-level physicist and that Kathy Bates was the Secretary of Defense (although the latter would make perfect sense in a second Biden term).

And in this remake the aliens aren’t going to destroy Earth.  They were going to save it by eliminating mankind.  They even went to the trouble to airlift animal species off the planet to save them for after the Earth had been swept clean of man.  And even after Klaatu is persuaded to save humanity from his swarm of ravenous nanobots, he imposes some kind of draconian solution that renders electrical generation, anywhere on Earth, impossible.  In other words, he saves us but pushes us back into the pre-industrial era.  Here is Gaia’s revenge.  Instead of Keanu Reeves why didn’t they cast Al Gore as Klaatu?  It would’ve been the perfect cherry on the sundae of this pile of crap.

And somehow, I found a perfect alignment between the Trump indictment and the sensibilities of this dismal mess of a movie.  We’re surrounded by imbeciles.  Only an imbecile would believe that the indictment was anything but naked partisan lawfare.  Only an imbecile would enjoy the self-loathing and junk science that informed this vacuous mess.

We’re in a lot of trouble.  The country is run by very bad people.  And unfortunately, the stupid obey them implicitly and the stupid are in the majority.  I’ve been trying to guess what the most likely outcome for all of this will be.  It almost seems that the destruction of our civilization will be accomplished momentarily.  The cities are crumbling and the economic wealth of the country is being drained off before our eyes.  Maybe the speed with which the damage is being done will panic even the stupidest leftist into changing course and throwing out the Democrats.

But somehow, I don’t see it.  I think they’ve figured out the bread and circuses routine sufficiently well to keep the Millennials and Zoomers sitting in their parents’ basements right through the apocalypse itself.  Lately the pediatric transitioning has elicited a response from people.  But is it just a reflex?  Is the brain already gone and this is just the muscles spasming?  Sorry, this is so dark.  But right now, I think we’re in a very dark place.

Lord, save us from the imbeciles.  They’re everywhere you look.

18APR2023 – The Winter of My Discontent

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So much stuff to do.  And so much more coming up.  Here it is almost tomorrow and I’m just getting started on a post.  And I’m groggy from the business of the day.  So, let’s just go with what’s on my mind right now.  I have to say all the indicators are bleak.  In a democracy, if the clear majority of citizens back the government in the teeth of extreme economic downturn, then there doesn’t seem to be much hope for the opposition.  We have reached that proverbial tipping point where more than fifty percent of the people are on the dole and prefer a marginal existence with no effort versus working hard and prospering.

Now that’s the death spiral.  And as the older generation dies out all that will be left will be these bread and circus losers, immigrant serfs and the elites.  I’ve been asking the question whether leaving the country is a viable choice.  Well, I haven’t really even begun that investigation but I’ve got to tell you I’m starting to think that the way things are going, leaving may be the only hope for young people to survive this situation.

I mean, how do you find a spouse, raise a family and make a living in this country?  The school system tells women that giving birth to children is at best a betrayal of their own self-interests and at worst a crime against the planet.  Succeeding through merit is being banned as toxic whiteness.  And children are being indoctrinated by their schools to hate their race and question their biological identity.  Any way you want to evaluate the society around us, it’s a diseased culture that won’t support the continuance of the America we knew.  And it was that older America that we’re trying to restore so if the people that are left are already supporting this new degraded version of the country, then we’re definitely not going to be able to save the whole country.  Places like the West Coast and the Northeast are irredeemable and other areas like the Great Lakes and the Southwest are slipping away too.

Maybe I’m just down because of all the awful stuff in the headlines.  But it does seem to me that what’s going on now is what you expect after that tipping point.  From now on the deconstruction of America will be a continuous drum beat that will only move in one direction.  And maybe geographically, it will be uneven.  Maybe Florida and the South will hold out a little longer but I haven’t seen anything yet that looks like state nullification of federal interference.  I know I’d love to see it.  It would give me hope.  But currently it’s just grumbling.  We’ve never stopped the federal government doing anything.  And we’ve never even heard of reversing any outrage that’s already happened.

I guess now is the winter of my discontent.  Bleak was the word I used earlier and I think it’s apt.  I was tempted to just delete this thing and just go to bed.  But I like to use this blog as a journal sometimes.  So, this is my current feeling about our country.  And even if we’re the hegemon there must still be places outside this country that don’t engage in Orwellian psychic torture of their citizens.  So maybe that’s the consolation.  If this place doesn’t turn around and if the Red States cave, then bailing out is a logical and optimistic choice.  But what a defeat that would be.  My people came here less than a century and a half ago.  Could the American dream have only had that much time left when they arrived?  Well, if they could do it maybe we can too.

I hope in the morning I’m feeling more hopeful than right now.  But there it is.

Bread and Circuses Again

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Today was a work day so I had to … work.  But later on, I wrote what I think is an interesting post.  But at the last minute I decided to let the American Greatness folks take a look at it in case they want to publish it there.  So right now, I haven’t got a nice shiny article to put up on the site here yet.

But I’ve been thinking lately about the situation of us plain old people who were just minding our own business trying to be good Americans when the people in charge decided to change the rules without bothering to get our consent, or even for that matter to let us know they were doing it.

I was trying to think of an equivalent case in history and as much as it’s a hackneyed example I keep coming back to the plebians of the Roman Republic.  Just as with us the plebians were the source of the strength of the Empire.  They were the legions that Rome used to batter the peoples of the surrounding Mediterranean world into submission.  But once they had destroyed Carthage, Gaul, Macedon and the other successor states from Alexander’s empire they were expendable.  Now that most of Europe, North Africa and Asia Minor were the private estates of the senatorial class and resistance could be handled by a smaller professional army the Roman people were just a burden and a nuisance for their patrician countrymen.  And so, they let them rot.  Now eventually that would spell the death of the empire but for a couple of hundred years the rich feasted on hummingbird tongues while their former countrymen were turned into serfs.

And so too have our elites decided we are a nuisance and a burden.  But they don’t want us to rot.  They don’t want us for serfs.  They want us to utterly disappear.  The Romans gave the plebes of Rome bread and circuses to keep them amused and out of trouble as they rotted away.  Our overlords have selected the internet and fentanyl to do the job.

And that should be the lesson to learn.  Do not allow yourself to be engulfed by the snares that they use to rot your mind and will.  Don’t become dependent on the worst aspects of the current system.  Learn skills that have value to those around you and use those skills to obtain things that have real value for you.  Earn a living, find a mate, form a family, build a life.  Mostly everything else is bread and circuses.

Waiting for Caesar to come along and fix everything is a delusion.  When Caesar does appear, he’ll use us to get rid of the other strong men to consolidate his control and continue with bread and circuses.  Only the strong and the smart stay free.  Only a large and vigorous middle class can hold its own against the robber class.  If that middle class disappears you had better find out where they went and head that way too.

I’ve mentioned before the story of Priscus back in 450 AD.  He was one of the ambassadors from the Eastern Roman Emperor to Attila the Hun.  While engaged in his mission at Attila’s base he met a Hun who surprisingly spoke perfect Greek.  Priscus engaged him in conversation and learned his story.  He was a Greek whose city had been overrun by the Huns and taken prisoner.  Eventually he was able to earn his freedom and even become a soldier in the Hun army.  When Priscus berated him for becoming a traitor to his civilization he answered that life under the empire had become virtually a form of slavery and living as a marauder was a happier and much freer existence.

When life under the present regime becomes slavery or worse, then it’s time to look elsewhere for a better life.  That may be in a Red State or in another country.  You’ll know it’s time when you can no longer live the life that gives you the things that make life worth living.  Each man has to decide when he’s reached that point.  A hint will be when they tell you that from now on, you’ll be eating insects instead of meat.

Star Trek – The Original Series – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 25 – Bread and Circuses

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Holy absurdity Batman, here we go again with “Hodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development.”  It wasn’t enough to have Yangs and Kohms in the episode The Omega Glory.  Now we get a planet that has the Roman Empire.  But wait there’s more.  Rome survives into the twentieth century and their version of General Motors advertises for their latest car model, the Jupiter 8, by sponsoring televised gladiatorial games on their version of Wide World of Sports.  Oh the pain, the pain.

Six years earlier a merchant ship the “The Beagle” went missing.  Captain R.M. Merik commanded the ship and is known to Kirk because he washed out at the academy because he was a doofus.  The Enterprise finds the wrecked ship and Kirk, Spock and McCoy head down to the planet to find the crew.  There they are immediately captured, of course, and we find out that Merik is now emperor and called Merikus (nice latinizing).  And he’s persecuting the Sun worshippers.

Blah, blah, blah, Spock and McCoy are forced into the gladiatorial arena.  Blah, blah, blah, Kirk is enticed by the pretty blonde slave.  Blah, blah, blah, Scotty uses some engineering rigamarole to save the landing party when they’re about to be skewered.  Merik dies nobly after being a cowardly worm for the last six years.  Landing party escapes and leaves the planet alone because of the prime directive.  Spock jibber jabbers about the illogic of sun worship and Uhura corrects them that it isn’t “the sun up in the sky, it’s the Son of God.”

Great googly moogly.  They must have had nothing.  Okay, as parody there is some value here.  When the gladiator Flavius fails to convincingly attack McCoy in the arena one of the roman legionnaires whips him and threatens to have a special episode on television devoted to his death in the arena.  The tv announcer at the gladiatorial show is obviously done for laughs and is actually quite funny as satire of live tv production.  He has dials to allow him to add in cheering, boos, catcalls and laughter.  So as comedy the show has some value.  But what are the science fiction fans to make of this.  I guess that Star Trek had devolved into Gilligan’s Island.

The scenes with Kirk and the blonde slave girl allows at least a modicum of Shatner mockery value so I’ll give the episode a 4 // 5.