Bread and Circuses, 2021 Version

“We soon forgot the taste of bread, the sound of wind in the trees.  We even forgot our name.” – Lord of the Rings

I promise I won’t make too many bread jokes; I’m not a gluten for punishment.

One of the reasons I keep mentioning the Roman Republic and Roman Empire is that they were an amazing civilization.  Many of the things that we take for granted as being a part of our civilization were a part of Rome 2000 or so years ago.  They invented the Slap Chop® and Sham-Wow™ even before it was cool.

I recall reading Letters from a Stoic – which were the collected letters of Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (whose wife said, when she was mad, “Lucius, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”) to one of his friends.  I recommend it.  Some of the details Seneca mentioned in his life were stunningly similar to life today:

  • Seneca wrote about government regulations.
  • Seneca wrote about stopping overnight at a hotel.
  • And, while at that same hotel, his room looked out over the weight room where men were pumping iron and working out.
  • I’d joke that he complained about the free continental breakfast, but, hey, everyone knows you’ve got to get there early to get the good waffles.

What a Roman hotel might have looked like.

The Romans, it seems, are not so different than we are.  In some ways, their technology has outlasted time in ways that many of today’s structures won’t:

  • They had concrete that was objectively better than almost anything we could produce until the 1950s.
  • They built aqueducts that brought clean, fresh, water to hundreds of thousands. Some of these are still in use today (though some have been reconstructed).
  • Roman roads and bridges are still in use today.
  • Romans invented algebra, but, sadly, X was always equal to 10.

One of the earlier mistakes was in 140 B.C. when Rome was still a republic:  it was called the cura annonae, which was just welfare in the form of grain, or, later, bread.  Why bread?  I assume the Romans had yet to master Hot Pocket® technology.

Regardless of what you call it, it was Roman welfare.

Why?

Why do politicians create welfare?  For votes.  Duh.

Just like Goldilocks, I wondered if a food could be hot, cold, and just right at the same time.  Then I remembered Hot Pockets™ exist.

Don’t get me wrong – just like there is a proper time to have a roll of duct tape, rope, a sharp knife, and garbage bags in the trunk, there is a proper time and place to have welfare.  Sometimes people are too old, too unwell, or too mentally deficient to work.  But enough about Joe Biden.

Eventually, though, public welfare always proves to be corrosive to freedom.  It creates a class that votes for sustenance instead of working.  And since it’s a government program, the only way that it can be administered is if (eventually) everyone is caught in the snare.

So, that’s the bread.

What are the circuses?

Entertainment.  Generally, entertainment of the lowest common denominator type.  It’s an amusement for the masses.  Why focus on learning?  Why focus on things that are difficult?  Don’t study physics, it’s hard.  Study gender studies.  They have cookies after class.

I hear a chopper is the best way to get the aristocracy out of France as well as the best way to get commies out of the United States.

That’s what the circus brought to Rome.  The Roman citizens wanted action now.  They wanted the gladiators spilling blood in the Coliseum.  They wanted plays performed on the streets.  And Senators (and Senator wannabees) and Emperors alike provided games and carnivals and distractions.

Generally, what distracts and amuses one generation isn’t enough for the next, so the idea is that the amusement has to get progressively edgier – more violent.  More degenerate.  It’s all fun, right?

After the fall of the Republic and the rise of Empire, a humor author named John Wilder no, Zeus Ferocior (I expect certain people, cough, cough to fix my poor translation of John Wilder into Latin, but Zeus Ferocier just sounds so cool, as long as no one calls me Dr. Zeus), no.  The guy’s name was Decimus Junius Juvenalis, (but folks just call him Juvenal) and he made this wonderful observation:

 . . . the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

Actually, it looks like a picture of a person drawn by someone who has never seen a person.

Think about that.  After a period of hundreds of years where civic virtue was defined by participation and improving the public welfare, civic virtue became defined by being good at getting free stuff.  Hard times, of course, caused the politicians to multiply the amount of bread and circuses given to the people.

Why?

The leaders were smart.  The easiest way to keep the citizens quiet is to keep them well-fed with glazed eyes – something people who own sheep already know.

The object was simple:  to keep the sheep citizens thinking, not of the Republic, but of themselves.  Bread and circuses wasn’t an appeal to the strongest and best parts of man, bread and circuses was an appeal to the lowest and weakest parts of man.  Rather than think of what a wonderful civilization we could create, how about we think about the greatest pleasure we could create for ourselves, right this minute?

Want to hear a sheep joke?  Stop me if you’ve herd this one . . .

COVID has been our multiplier.  It’s pushed the people to their most dependent, and pushed the bacon-wrapped-shrimp class to their most manipulative.

What is beyond the Federal government now?

  • Landlords in the several states can be forced to provide property for free. Forever, apparently.  Depravation of property without due process?  That’s rookie talk.
  • Entire economic sectors can be shut down at will. The final victory of large corporations over small owners can be enshrined forever.
  • Mandates can be issued that people can be forced to take experimental injections of a dubious nature that appear to have limited benefits and unknown side effects. Because?  Because we said so.
  • Coordinated public/private attacks on speech have become the norm. Have an unpopular idea?  Have facts that contradict the narrative?  Shhh, comrade.

So, nothing is beyond them.  Property isn’t protected.  Livelihood isn’t protected.  Bodily autonomy isn’t protected.  I’d say that Netflix® is still there to account for “the pursuit of happiness” but have you seen the shows on Netflix™ recently?

Ugh.

Momma always said life is like Netflix®.  It has a monthly price and hates you.

I guess that’s a wrap.  Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are out.  Bread and circuses are in.  Give me freedom or give me Doritos® and Hulu Plus©.

The end result is a difficult one.  Collapses in liberty lead to collapses in economic systems.  And vice versa.  When the economic freedom drops out, the Doritos™ and Hulu Plus© become gruel and occasional candles at the GULAG.  If you’re lucky.

When a culture is young and vibrant, economic liberty leads to prosperity.  That freedom to create results in economic winners and losers.  Winners are rewarded, losers drop out, or join the winning team.  That’s in a free market.

Unlike real communism, real free markets have been tried.  And they’ve resulted in the greatest prosperity and freedom that the world has ever seen.

We have reached the intersection of economic system collapse, collapse in the faith of the governance structure of the nation, and collapse in our trust for each other.

I stopped burning bridges in life.  They’re made of steel now.

How long can that go on?

Well, Juvenal was writing not from the period of the Republic, but from the period of the Emperors.  As I’ve written before – the choice that will exist is far larger than the ‘Rona ever was:  the choice between dissolution of our country and a new Emperor, whatever he may be called.  Czar Wilder sounds nice, but hey, I could stand being a silly old king.

And I can assure you, that Juvenal’s observation of (panem et circensenes) bread and circuses, will be on the mind of whatever new Emperor might emerge.

It worked for the Romans for a few hundred years, after all.

I wonder who will be writing about us in 2000 years?

I hope he’s a steely-eyed blonde dude by the name of Zeus.  Or, John.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

32 thoughts on “Bread and Circuses, 2021 Version”

  1. And in a stunning not-coincidence, the Senate approves gargantuan “infrastructure” spending that promises to send the dollar to Zimbabwean heights of worthlessness any minute, to be followed by a budget bill that will probably create a shortage of pork barrels for decades, if not centuries.

    “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Zimbabwe isn’t real. Wakanda is real. Go back to watching the TV. Be like Biden: totally oblivious to whatever’s happening in Washington DC, particularly in the White House. Have another donut and some beer.” – ABCNNBCBS

    1. Oh, silly, that’s only a trillion. You have to wait to get the budget so we’ll all be millionaires!

  2. The problem with bread and circuses is that you have to keep ramping it up in order to keep the lid on and that might be tough to do. On the other hand, the heritage American capacity for shoving their heads in the sand is nearly boundless.

    1. TV shows have been dropping to lower and lower levels, especially rapidly lately. And this is despite a clear message from viewers that quality shows are preferred.

    1. Reading, writing and arithmatic are not for peasants and serfs.

      They might let us keep fainting in coils.

  4. 2021 is the year we understood that Zombies are real. They eat brains, not flesh. Not yet. We all thought the zombie-making factory would have bubbling green fluids and electrical bolts, but it is just a radio signal broadcasting vulgar entertainments, worthless factoids, untrue truths, slogans, lies, and people who style themselves as gods. Peer pressure does the rest. It’s a circus, all right. Clown-world is aptly named.

    Can the madness continue longer than Costco can stay supplied? We’re going to find out.

    There won’t be bread this time. They think we’ll supply our own meat. They just might be right.

    1. Yes. And, with 100 years worth of data, they are excellent at triggering fear centers and pleasure centers.

      And they make you pay for it!

  5. John – – Again, you are at the top of your game (The Boy: “Mom, Dad seems a bit gamey today….Does he always smell like this?”).

    As we get more of a command economy, more fascistic-ly, to be exact, I think we will see “bread” used as a weapon. I expect to see rural and less woke/communist/progressive areas being shorted in their food supplies. Supply interruptions will be the daily experience except in the Blue-Hive cities where one will wonder why they rarely suffer the supply interruptions evidenced in rural Amerika.

    Politicians will destroy and have destroyed whole swaths of society to remove dissent using selected delivery of limited resources to help only those who swallow their political swill (consisting of those easily manipulated and controlled). It has happened before: Stalin’s Holomodor, Turkey’s treatment pf Armenians, Pol Pot’s starvation of farmers….

    1. First, I showered.
      Second, Thank you. This topic just popped into my nugget.

      Bread can be a weapon. But what about bandwidth? Social Credit system inbound.

      One YouTuber I (sometimes) listen to was banned. He has no idea why.

      Immediate self censorship. That’s goal number one, which leads (eventually) to the genocides you list.

  6. Since you serm like a classy guy, Mr. Wilder Glph and I got you

    Secundus Feri Ridiculi Americani Ionnes

    1. Soooooooo careful to type in the Latin correctly and double check and… SERM 😅

      1. I am also doing this glasses-free for a bit, so… I got John wrong as well. But that is because I did not use Glyph’s translation.

        Secundus Feri Ridiculi Americani Ioannes

        (If we have the naming conentions wrong and it is not “of the wilder” (genative) but nominative all the way, baby…)

        Secundus Ferus Ridiculus Americanus Ioannes.

        Based on Caesar Augustus, we think this might be correct and it sounds cooler!

        Gotta get back to work.

        1. Heh. I looked it up and I got the order wrong. The gens comes before the Cognomen. Here is the source: http://www.therthdimension.org/AncientRome/RomanNaming/romannaming.htm

          Praenomen: Secundus
          Nomen: Ferus
          Tribus: Americanus
          Cognomen: Ridiculus

          If you want a cognomina “ex virtu” may I suggest “adnominatio” (word play, “magnus” or possibility “horribilis” depending on what you think of puns.

          How one creates the Caesar Augustus version is left as an exercise for the student.

        2. I like it. Remember thou art mortal, and all that.

          “Secundus Ferus Ridiculus Americanus Ioannes” would look hella cool on my gravestone.

  7. JW, delete if off-topic.

    Vox Popoli is back up at voxday.net and milobookclub.com. It’s a temporary location according to announcements on Social Galactic; they haven’t enabled comments, the sidebars are not working properly, and all comments on previous posts are gone. He does have an interesting war post up…

    Only mentioning here since I think there is a lot of cross-readership.

      1. Hah! I totally scooped you then 🙂

        Of course, I’m bummed because my ‘Ask the Spork’ advice column piece I was going to run tomorrow won’t flow. Grrrrr… stupid humor muse. Another rerun, and I think it might be the ecosexual piece. Yeah, it was a thing. A funny, funny thing.

        Maybe my grand Cartoonist Advice will be ready by Tuesday. Le Sigh.

  8. *** delete after reading ***

    Marge, thank you so much. I love it when you find these. – (JW)

  10. The spirit of resistance inside the US was rekindled by Black people. The power and strategy of the civil rights movement, SNCC, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party offered all other rebellion. They created a form of struggle called direct action: awoke a common identity, history and dignity for Black people as a colonized and oppressed people within the US: drew out and revealed the enemy through a series of just and undeniable demands such as the vote, equal education, the right to self-defense, and an end to Jim Crow,
    The police, the troops, the sheriffs, the mass arrests and assassinations were the official response. The Black Movement was pushed forward into a revolutionary movement for political power, open rebellion and confrontation with the racism of white people and the racism of institutions.

    Billy Ayers, Prairie Fire, 1974, Page 6

    The left must make clear at every point its unswerving and militant support for the liberation of Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Native American and all Third World peoples. It must refuse to compromise this active support for short term “gains” or to win the approval of whites we are trying to organize at the workshop, in the schools or the communities.
    This is true for the whole movement and for every individual in the movement.The creation of an anti-racist white movement is the necessary foundation for the functional unity of the Third World and white enemies of the empire. Anti-Racist organizing and action can create this unity. Where this kind of work has begun, it should be broadened and expanded.

    Billy Ayers, Prairie Fire, 1974, Page 11

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