Exploring the Social Imagination

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

The Decadent Emperors: Powers and Depravity...Big Government likes Grazing

Social Engineering is not an incredible feat. It has been practiced for a long time. Before, I tell the connection between then and now (as you read, you likely get it from the start), I want to comment on a popular morning which showed the hidden agenda of the progressive left; now being propelled through basic food consumption. Most Americans are being fed the 'grazer' mentality in that it is better for you. The grazer eats little tid-bits throughout the day. What kind of food are they grazing on? They are being advised to graze on snacks, simply ....puffed grains as the healthiest. Not that grains, or puffed grains are bad for you but I can tell you that I have had more problems eating puffed grains than eating chicken or fish or lean pork. Effectually, what this grazer lifestyle does is break down the family and causes individuals to graze 'wander the buffet of the progressive agenda' like herds on the plain but not of the wide open spaces, on the plain of big government. Grazing, whether food or politics, or ideologies,  is a strategy that causes people to detach from old ways of thinking, old traditions... to detach from each other culturally and from any shared socio-historical politics. Its aim to so allow Big Gov to spread out and bring in more people that it can't feed people so they devise a plan for them to feed on less while making them more dependent and lacking in richer identity. Isn't it enough to be a citizen? Caracalla thought so. Who was he? Does it matter? 
Caracalla was a ruler of a huge empire. He thought it wise to spread the borders of the empire thinner and thinner - farther and farther; gathering more and more people. Caracalla welcomed them all. On the surface this looked generous but as citizens they were now subject to taxes which they would not otherwise have to pay. Caracalla may not have been aware that his reform (to spread out and be all inclusive) contributed to the de-stablization of the empire. he may not even have been aware that the Empire was being de-stablized all the while he was in power. The granting of citizenship to more and more people outside the city/state/nation was part of 'his' larger process; so was the Oriental influence that was beginning to color the lives of ordinary citizens so was the popular 'ism' of the day which had held the upper classes for many generations, inducing them to scorn traditional ways and admire only that which was Modern; so was the extent to which barbarians, some of them only very superficially civilized, were occupying important posts. The once conservative, sturdy nation which stood for government for the people and by the people was turning into an amorphous monster that sprawled all over the world and no longer knew its own identity.
 Adapted from a segment out of the book - The Decadent Emperors: Powers and Depravity in Third-Century Rome, by George C. Brauer Jr.

You see, Rome had the same plan... get people grazing and not paying attention. However, the longer they fail to pay attention, the weaker they get and the foundation that held up Rome, crumbled away beneath the feet of the powerful.

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