Posted On: Tuesday - October 8th 2019 6:25PM MST
In Topics: Bread and Circuses
The topic key Bread and Circuses has been used here on Peak Stupidity for at least a year, I'm guessing (I'll sometimes update older posts with appropriate keys). Up to now, there are 8 posts already. I think it's time to explain this term, so we'll have a few posts about it, this one being just an intro. - got a bit distracted today...
"Pan et Circenses" is the expression, for all you Latin speakers out there from, like, Latin America or something. No, seriously, back during the decline of the Roman empire, the expression was used disdainfully regarding the lives of the common people.* To placate the masses during the times of decline, giving the people enough basic food to sustain them, and events to regularly entertain them, is the idea. As much as I'd like to sometime, I don't have the time to read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (3980 pages!) just for this one post here.
America is in a decline of many types, and it really would be a great learning experience to read more about what really went on during the late years of the Roman Empire to have knowledge for comparison and guidance. Peak Stupidity is far from the first to mention it, but "Pan et Circenses", or "Bread and Circuses", describes pretty well the treatment of the average modern America by the elites and/including the Feral Government of it's empire.
While looking up the Latin, I came across this 2013 American Thinker article by Jack Curtis. Though it doesn't cover the same material as my examples to show America's version of "Bread and Circuses" in the subsequent posts, it is a nice short summary of the parallels of the Roman Empire's destruction of their finances and America's (as described herein under the Global Financial Stupidity topic key).
I also came upon a Christian Post article by one Ron Hart, coincidentally also written 6 years ago, on this topic. Mr. Hart wrote in quite a humorous manner, and the sportsball (part of the circuses, right?) fans will probably get the football jokes that I didn't.
I'd recommend at least the latter article, if not both of them, as I get it together to write more on the subject, starting off with the "bread".
* Per the Christian Post article: In 100 AD, satirist Decimus Juvenal in Satires X fittingly pointed out that society ends when voters are pacified by politicians with "bread and circuses."
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