The US and the Fall of Rome

[Lance31]

I was taken with the parallels between current events and the end days of Rome. With Rome it was a gradual decay. With us our ability for faster transfer of information and wealth, seems to be acclererate the process.

"The Dole and Barbarians
Why Rome
In this article, Grempel says the other side of Roman decadence was the dole. Millions were spent on bread (including pork, by the end of the second century) and circuses for the non-working poor. Barbarians ruled Rome and even when a Roman, Diocletian, regained control, he was influenced by the East. With Constantine came a barbaric Christianity and the move of capital from Rome to Constantinople."

We seem to have that in the form of the Reality TV and electronic cocoons that insulate us from the actual events unfolding around us and we still have a barbaric Christianity surrounding and warping things in the form of Ultrachristians.

"Economic, Military, Gradual
Fall of Rome
Economic (lack of circulating currency and trade deficit, and other factors not clearly economic, like environmental change and decaying infrastructure)" /b]

Sound familar? Decaying infrastructure, unable to support the country really for very much longer. A great example currently is the power outages due to a January storm, and millions without power. An electrical system unable to cope with even a heavy storm.

Our banking system is really for all intents and purposes insovlent. If you take credit swaps into account, the financial industry owes upwards of 1000 trillion. Now if you to take into account that the ENTIRE Planet makes about 60 trillion a year....

Well, it sort of takes your breath away.


"Economic - Hoarding and Deficit
Fall of Rome
Causes of the fall of Rome include economic decay through hoarding of bullion, barbarian looting of the treasury, and trade deficit; military decay through attrition and disorganization; and the lack of an effective military leader."

We already got through that stage. The banks are hoarding whatever bailout they were handed or trying to acquire ANYTHING to offset their loopsided balance sheets. To top it off we are saddled with wars we cannot win and continue to drain us rapidly.

"One of the primary catalysts to the deterioration of the economy was the lack of circulating currency in the Western Empire. Two reasons for the lack of funds are wholesale hoarding of bullion by Roman citizens, and the widespread looting of the Roman treasury by the 'barbarians'. These two factors, coupled with the massive trade deficit with Eastern Regions of the Empire served to stifle the growth of wealth in the west."~ The Economic Collapse "

We are in this portion. The barbarians being the Neocons and Republicans. Again the hoarding is being committed by the banking industry and other recipents of the bail out.



For the article on Rome itself from which I took sections:
http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/romefallarticles/a/fallofrome_3.htm

[Lance31]

1. I think I am just talking to myself here..

[acmavm]

2. Well Lance, you pretty much are. You got one hurdle to leap, and its darn

near impossible to get the trajectory to make it over the gate. That hurdle is love of technology. While technology is a wonderful thing, the love people have for new technology shuts down their common sense when it comes to its applications.

I just posted in another thread that we need to realize (like the ancient Romans did) that we need soem self-enforced obsolescence i order to keep people employed, the economy going. But people nowdays don't want to hear that shit.

That's just ONE of many issues, but that's one of the biggest and we have to overcome our love of the cheap and easy, the mechanically operated, and the automated before we can start to recover. It's not just bringing jobs back from overseas, it's making sure that there are jobs in the first place.

For example customer service. People used to answer those phones and they could immediately direct you to where you needs to go. Now what with automated answering systems, you wade through a selection of choices for two minutes and then end up needing to punch zero fifty times because you still need to talk to a human being and all you're getting is automated crap.

(And just as a matter of small protest, I KNOW DAMN GOOD AND WELL THAT THE PERSON ON THE OTHER END OF THE LINE WITH THE VERY PROMINENT FOREIGN ACCENT IS NOT NAMED 'BRIDGET'. CUT THE CRAP, DON'T GIVE ME SHIT AND LIES. BE HONEST. DON'T TRY TO SNOW EVERYBODY.)

[Peace Patriot]

3. Democracy was supposed to fix all that--the ability of the People to right the ship of state

and correct its course. Our Founders knew all that history, and tried to create a structure that included input from the crew, and the right of the crew to rebel, even to the point of mutiny, to save the ship.

We need to look to the ways that those democratic safeguards were attacked and destroyed, so that our current ship of state could not right itself through the democratic process. Number #1 on my list: The fast-tracking of 'TRADE SECRET' code voting machines, all over the country during the 2002 to 2004 period, with the code owned and controlled by far rightwing corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. Our ship of state should naturally have corrected its course in 2004--after so much egregiously criminal looting and other horrors--but was fraudulently, and quite deliberately, prevented from doing so.

That system is still in place, and, although I believe that President Obama was elected (by a larger margin than we know), neither he nor anyone else can prove it. Further, virtually no one in Congress can prove that he or she was actually elected either--and I think many of them were not. This uncertainty not only thoroughly muddies our right to vote, it also gives these far rightwing voting machine corporations both subtle and bludgeon power over our leaders. The 'TRADE SECRET' control of our election outcomes is not the only thing wrong with our government system; it is more in the nature of the final blockade to change (and ship course correction--with a radical one needed, at this point). But if we are to reverse the suicidal course that the Bushwhacks (and Dem colluders) put us on, it is where we must start. Achieving transparent vote counting is still possible at the state/local level.

[many a good man]

4. You're not the first to make that connection

Thank you for fleshing out some of the details.

What can we do about it? Democracy is still an "experiment" and our founding theoreticians warned often about the dangers imperialism poses to democracy.

Some of the founders also strenuously warned about the destructive influence of the "monied interests" on democracy.

Today's crisis is making both points painfully clear. If democracy does not reassert itself we will surely fall, much swifter and harder than Rome.