Twitter Thread: American Caesar

Part One

Rome is often compared to modern America. History rhymes. We examine a pair of decaying superpowers, perhaps doomed to collapse.

In this thread, I will explore 2 questions: What are the parallels? Major differences?

When can we expect to find our CAESAR?

Similarities begin with the rise to power.

America began as 13 colonies, which then grew in POWER, wealth, and prestige through a relentless cycle of expansion and consolidation.

This cycle lasted from around 1776 (independence) until 1898 when Hawaii was annexed.

Manifest Destiny was a period of unstoppable growth.

The frontier existed as a social, cultural, economic pressure valve for internal American discontent.

Even bloody attrition of the Civil War (1861-1865) was unable to reverse an overall trend of settlers, conquest, building.

Rome took nearly 300 years to achieve similar MANIFEST DESTINY over the Italian peninsula.

Rome's early history is usually forgotten.

The Samnite Wars were a ferocious struggle between rival Italian tribes. Romans vs. Samnites.

Nearly 60 years of merciless bloodshed, fractured into 3 wars.

1st War: (343–341 BC)

2nd War: (326–304 BC)

3rd War: (298–290 BC)

I could try to compare the Samnite Wars with the Indian wars of the American Frontier.

But when you dig into the history, the similarities break down fast.

The Indians were never strong enough to reverse American conquests.

The Samnites were true EQUALS, true Rivals to Rome.

This was an ancient Italian cage match between King Kong and Godzilla.

Rome's victory guaranteed dominance over the Italian peninsula, and the smaller tribal city-states who were their neighbors.

Sometimes history seems like a video game.

A tribe starts small, like a player at level one.

Ambitious tribes expand, build, and level up.

They defeat the local boss.

Every victory makes them bigger, and introduces a new, bigger BOSS Monster to fight.

In similar fashion, Rome's reward for conquering the Samnites (290BC) was that they grew big enough to frighten Carthage.

30 years later, Rome's expansion triggered the First Punic War (264-241BC).

Carthage was the new Boss Monster.

Up until this point, Rome and America don't share much in common.

Here, the superpowers begin to converge and parallel.

Rome's Punic wars vs. Carthage are similar to America's immersion in WW1 and WW2... in terms of geopolitical consequences.

After the Samnite Wars,

Carthage dominated the Mediterranean Sea, with a superior navy and a foreign, mercenary army led by the Barcas (Hamilcar Barca, and then his more famous son Hannibal Barca).

Rome was contained.

In similar fashion, America before WW1 was contained to the N. and S. American continents.

European colonies dominated the globe, from Africa to India to Japan to Australia.

The United States was a regional power.

Strong, but culturally weird and geopolitically irrelevant.

Almost by accident, America inherited a global empire.

Both WW1 and WW2 were grand projects of the political American elite, which the common soldier and citizen wanted no part of.

After WW2, the Cold War began.

A prolonged tournament of proxy wars, espionage, assassinations, coups, sabotage, and scientific discovery.

All of you are deeply familiar with this history.

A frantic, desperate ARMS RACE.

In many ways, this competition inspired America and Soviet Union to true excellence.

Scientists and astronauts were celebrities.

We saw incredible technological progress, fueled by the fear that the other side's nuclear weapons would destroy the world.

I don't want to waste time repeating old lessons that you are already familiar with.

What interests me is the Aftermath of victory.

What happened after winning the Cold War?

What happened after the fall of the Soviet Union?

And how does this relate to Rome?

There's a line in The Dark Knight Rises that always stuck with me, and this dialogue sums up my overall theme.

Bane humiliates Batman.

Wrecks him.

Batman defeated Ra's Al Ghul... he defeated the mob... he defeated the Joker...

Gotham was finally at peace.

Bruce Wayne retired, hiding in the shadows of Gotham manor.

What happened?

Complacency.

Bane says to Batman, "Peace has cost you strength. Victory has defeated you."

This is what happened to Rome after the destruction of Carthage.

This is what happened to America after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Incentives matter.

We all like to believe in the higher ideals of mankind — romance, friendship, morality, religion, brotherhood, freedom, courage, honor, and PATRIOTISM.

But what keeps a nation together is a combination of aspirational ideals and ANIMAL desires.

What happens in victory?

Why does winning break up a franchise?

You see this in sports all the time — Koby and Shaq won together, but eventually they got tired of Winning.

They wanted money, glory, fame, control...

They wanted MORE.

Shaq and Koby split up because their egos grew too big.

They couldn't play together anymore.

"O'Neal and Bryant won three consecutive NBA championships (2000, 2001, 2002), and made an additional NBA Finals appearance in 2004."

Total Dominance is boring.

Empires are similar.

When Rome faced total extermination, hunted by the famous general Hannibal, Romans had all the reason in the world to work together.

When America faced total extermination, threatened by Soviet nuclear missiles, Americans rejoiced in patriotism.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the American elite began to devour the rural heartlands at full speed.

A golden age for parasites began.

The manufacturing economy was sent overseas.

What replaced it was the gig economy, the information economy — an inferior replica.

"Global Labor Arbitrage" began after WW2, but when the threat of the Soviet Union vanished, so did the last traces of patriotism among the American elite.

Betraying America was now acceptable.

Elites lined up, then raced to steal as much as they could.

Horrors began.

For 50 years, normal Americans have been stripmined down to the bones.

Any pretense of a "Social Contract" between citizens and government has been betrayed.

What is the Roman parallel?

After Carthage was defeated (Third Punic War ended in 146 BC), there was a scandal called the Jugurthine War that happened 40 years later, (112–106).

This was a minor war in Africa that the Roman military won.

The importance is SYMBOLIC.

During this minor African war, the Roman Senate openly accepted bribes from an African king named Jugurtha (of Numidia), and deployed the Roman legions as mercenaries to settle a foreign dispute.

Roman troops were the world's most fearsome infantry.

Romans were outraged because King Jugurtha butchered some Roman citizens after conquering a city named Cirta.

This was a political scandal similar to the embassy in Benghazi, when Hillary Clinton allowed soldiers to die.

Famously, Hillary Cliton said about these dead troops, "What difference does it make?"

She was flustered, because the CIA was secretly running guns thru Libya.

These guns were transported to Syria, where they were used in a proxy war with Russia.

Hillary Clinton's secret in Benghazi

was the same secret

as the Roman Senate's secret in Africa.

Benghazi and the Jugurthine War are the same scandal, 2000 years apart.

Imperial military is secretly freelancing for the political elite.

Here we begin to see the true burdens of Empire.

Ordinary citizens are exploited, bled, forced to carry the full weight of a global hegemony.

Macroeconomic patterns, vectors lead to same convergent parasitism, the same suffering and social decay.

Human nature never changes.

John Michael Greer says that "every Empire is a wealth pump".

Money flows on 3 tiers, 3 levels.

Blood, manpower, and treasure is drained from the American heartlands to the imperial periphery — to our vassal states.

Vassal states send their profits to the Imperial core.

The internal discontent of the Pax Americana has become obvious by now to anyone reading this.

Rapidly the Western standard of living is plummeting.

Old television and cinematic examples of losers (Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, and Travis Bickle) are now seen as aspirational for Zoomers and Millennials.

All around us, we see a new aesthetic in advertisements:

Poverty-Cope.

Only by watching old movies do Americans remember what life in the world's richest nation used to be like.

Western civilization's widespread discontent mirrors Roman popular discontent, after defeating and exterminating Carthage.

Modern Globalization has created winners and losers, in a brutal Pareto distribution.

Coastal cities get rich.

Rural towns wither and die.

Carthage was destroyed in 146 BC, and Rome enjoyed a brief Golden Age of prosperity.

There were feasts, honors, orgies, and fortunes to be made.

But eventually the party stopped.

Unity, patriotism regressed into ugly internal competition and exploitation.

I feel a sense of fatalism when I read about failed reformers, who attempted to stop Catastrophe from happening.

Everyone can see where the future is heading,

but history glides forward in a slow-motion trainwreck for decades.

Until disaster, momentum favors Entropy.

You can look at the French revolution, which all of the nobility saw coming — and ignored.

Or the Bolshevik revolution — there was a man named Pyotr Stolypin, who attempted to implement land reform for the kulaks, and was then murdered.

The crisis of the Roman Golden Age was also about land reform.

Rome was rich from constant expansion, seizing Carthage's trading routes in the Mediterranean.

Where did all the money go?

To the Roman Senate.

Land was officially seized by the Roman government, which in practice meant the Roman Senators.

The richest citizens of Rome devoured all of its territorial gains, leaving nothing for the common soldiers who had fought and bled for these conquests.

Two brothers stood up for the common man:

Tiberius Gracchus, a veteran of the Third Punic War, and his younger brother Gaius Gracchus.

These charismatic populists achieved some marginal reforms.

Both of them were assassinated by the Roman Senate.

Often the Gracchus brothers are compared to JFK and Bobby Kennedy, as a pair of idealists who attempted to reform the system and were murdered for it.

Tough comparison — timeline is different, Gracchus brothers were more politically savvy, but there are definitely parallels.

But what should be obvious to anyone reading this is an Eternal conflict:

Land, and ownership.

Gracchus land reform is similar to the zoomer, millennial housing crisis.

Today, Blackrock buys up neighborhoods with taxpayer $$$ funneled thru the Federal Reserve.

The increasing poverty of the American Empire, and its vassal states, is fueling massive Rage.

Americans accepted the fiction, illusion of representative democracy, so long as their standard of living remained steady.

Wokeness is largely a form of ideological Poverty Cope.

Trump was an early manifestation of this widespread Rage, a rejection of the status quo.

In my next thread, I will build on this thematic exploration of the current era we live in...

And I will answer these questions:

What era of Rome resembles the modern West?

What are the differences between modernity, and antiquity?

How should we prepare?

And the most important, fascinating, intriguing question — where can we find our CAESAR?

The people cry out for a HERO!