BREAD AND CIRCUSES

By: William Markiewicz

As far as I know the Roman empire didn’t have state police like the Gestapo or the KGB, nor even the FBI or CIA. Maybe that’s why Spartacus was able to instigate his uprising. Rome had its working formula: bread and circuses, and the civus romanus kept quiet while the Legions abroad did whatever the caesars wanted. The NWO seems to have rediscovered Rome’s formula: today we have Bread — so far so good — and Circuses, like the media and disneylands. As long as those two ‘mamelles’ of society function, the rest of the world can go to hell. And that’s what happens: on the ruins of Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, soon Iraq and-who’s-next, the bread and infernal duo of circuses and conquest endorsed by the new empire will go on. The revolts of the future will not try to kill through terror or war. Loss of life doesn’t impress the empire and the masses become accustomed to living under the virtual menace of death. The new revolts will strike mostly the sources of economy and circuses.

We know that History advances in rocambolesque knots, not in a linear way. Compared to Athens, Rome regressed in many ways. Then the Middle Ages more or less regressed compared to Rome, to rise up toward the Renaissance which gave birth to our modern society. Now we regress again in the fight between terror and a world empire with its enigmatic face but well-known appetites.

History which ought to be a source of knowledge is tainted with the P.R. assassination of History. Even after passions and interests cool, honest historians will continue their detective work, trying to pierce the carapace of lies.

We don’t have a clear demarcation between terrorists and freedom fighters. We don’t know why the Czechs who killed Gauleiter Heidrich are called patriots, and Gavrilo Princip, who thirty years earlier killed the Archduke Ferdinand, is today called a terrorist. We don’t know why the Hapsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire, known for centuries as a graveyard of nations are now called models of tolerant coexistence. Turks impaled their adversaries, while Habsburgs destroyed the Croatian family of Frankopans and put their castle in ruins just because of their drive for autonomy. The twentieth century saw the development of caricatural messianic radicalism, from left to right. They engendered many changes, though indirectly, but of course didn’t change the basic darwinist bent of human nature. So, paradoxes are taken for granted: Comrade Stalin in full Communism and without blushing could become Generalissimus Stalin. Franco became Generalissimo, I don’t know who was the first. China became a Capitalistic society under Communist dictatorship and nobody knows nor cares what that means. In our democracy the same abyss may coexist between credo and fact, particularly in the contrast between internal and external policies. In the latter, the most totalitarian and mafiosi ways, chaperoned by media, can be adopted while the dominant power remains officially a democracy. All this without the need of any state police; only bread and circuses will ensure public peace.