2002-04-30 - 5:44 p.m.
Rome was not built in a day. But we are taught in school that Rome fell in the year 476 A.D. If the schools had it down even further, we would be told that it fell on Wednesday, July 7th, at a quarter past two in the afternoon. the truth is that Rome disintegrated over centuries. In its time, Rome changed the face of the world as we know it. Physically, socially, militarily, economically, politically, etc., such that we still feel it today two thousand years later. Many evil people (and as you may know, I do not use the term evil very lightly) were borne of this empire. Many entire groups of people disappeared from the face of the Earth at the hand of this empire. And with all of its might and glory, Rome fell nonetheless. Did the people living at the time of Rome's disintegration understand the significance of their fall, of their actions, of their impact? Did they know what caused it, or how they could have saved it? Did they realize they were living history?
Even if they did, we, who are the students of their history, the ones who are able to see their mistakes in the grander scheme of things, the ones who are once again part of an empire, are committing the same mistakes and closing our minds to the same grander consequences of our actions. Not only that, but we live in a younger empire. We live in a time of enormously more destructive weapons. We live in a world where decisions are made at split second intervals and at the push of buttons. Our "leaders" no longer have the time to delay to figure out the strategy, or the morality, or the efficacy, or the poignancy, or the belligerence, or the evilness of their decisions and actions. We live in a world where nature is bursting at its seams from the pollution, the degradation, the overpopulation, the extinctions, and the usury. Rome did not have these extra stresses put upon it, and it still fell.
How did Rome really collapse anyway? In schools they say that there were slave revolts and barbarians that attacked it when it lacked strong political and military leadership. Let's see...Abe Lincoln set the slaves free, right? December 1865.
Section 1:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2:
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
Let's focus on section 1. Especially the part that says, "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted..." What does that mean? That means that Mister Lincoln, one of our favorite presidents, changed slavery from being a free commodity of the state to being a controlled establishment of the state. That means the prison industrial complex today is a legally run slave operation, as defined by our Constitution. Let's also see that those same majority of people who were enslaved or endentured servants up to 1865, are the same majority who are enslaved now. And they're making money for the state at no income to them. No wonder we have so many cops, and so many arrests, and so much drugs going into the communities where these slaves are to be recruited from. Otherwise, this massive number of people would be a threat to the establishment. They would be the same aggrieved slaves, whom in cooperation with the disgruntled "barbarians" from abroad would bring down this empire.
Let's focus on the second half of that last sentence. The "barbarians". Who are these people? They are the "exotic", "foreign" people who must give in to our needs for "civilization". Our demands that they be "civilized". Our demands that they be like us. Our demands that they give us the goods of their land, water, air, and culture. Our demand that they stay servile to produce our lavish clothing, produce our technological goods, clean our toilets, accept our radioactive-biohazardous-neurotoxic-poisonous refuse. Our demands that they give up their ways, give in to our control, so that we may live more comfortably, knowing that they will not grow disgruntled and become barbarians to overthrow our empire. What do we do to control this?
There's two things we do...
1) brainwash them into a numb stupor in which they believe everything happening is good for them (the barbarians and the slaves). This includes exporting our media. Exporting our lavish tastes and desires. Exporting our good-for-nothing, shiny-tin-can, nothing-but-fluff, disease-causing, never-tested, lying-through-our-teeth-about-its-dangerousness products. Exporting our incredibly destructive attitudes, at a pace that does not allow even a breath of air so as to THINK about the pace we are heading toward the point of no turning back.
2) Exterminate them. This includes using the power of money (upon which everything else I have written here is fouded), global dependence on global markets, military control, sanctions, usury, and "law"-suits to destroy people. By destroy people, I mean shut them up, enslave them, kill them, beat them into submission, or make them disappear as though neither they nor their radical thoughts ever existed. Money does many things. Understatement of all time. Many diary entires ago, I wrote that one day I would write about the evils of capitalism. I will continue this thought in a page to come, but let me finish by saying this:
History showed us how Rome fell over a period of a century or two. Are we now to condense that repeat into a millisecond at the bush of a button, such that no one will be here to learn from that mistake in history?
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