Bread and Circuses

... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, 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

Bread and Circuses. Last night, in tribute to the late Charlton Heston, TBS ran the classic Ben Hur. In that wonderful Lew Wallace classic, directed by William Wyler, Heston races Stephen Boyd in the great Circus chariot race. The term "bread and circuses" comes to us from the Roman poet Juvenal. According to Wikipedia the term has become a "metaphor for people choosing food and fun over freedom." As so often happens with Wiki, they manage to get it at least half right. Again, from Wiki:

Juvenal here makes reference to the Roman practice of providing free wheat to some poor Romans as well as costly circus games and other forms of entertainment as a means of gaining political power through popularity. The Annona (grain dole) was begun under the instigation of the populist Gracchi in 123 B.C.; it remained an object of political contention until it was taken under the control of the Roman Emperors.

More than just food and fun, Bread and Circuses has become a metaphor for the degradation of a society through the expectation of its citizenry to look to government for support and sustenance. Bread and Circuses has come to be a symbol of all that is wrong with a government that has become so big, so all encompassing, that the people come to believe that the government should provide for all of their needs, comforts and wants.

Bread and Circuses has become a term that defines the beginning of the end. It is a term that has come to identify the decadence of a people no longer able to function for themselves without the benevolence of their "elected" leaders. I put the term "elected" in quotation marks for the simple reason that, more often than not, the simple God-given right of selecting those people to lead, are more often than not, thrown away by the populace; their votes bought and sold by the politician with the best offer of largess.

Often, as in the case of Venezuela today, that vote was bought with promises never properly fulfilled. By the time the enormity of the loss was fully known, essential liberties were gone, perhaps never to be returned. Tyrannical promises of bread and circuses, now of lesser and lesser value, as the Venezuelan people fall ever deeper into despair, become less a promise than a threat.

Decades upon decades of benevolent promises of bread and circuses kept the citizens of New Orleans from saving themselves, when an act of nature that each and every one of them knew could hit at any moment, destroyed their city. A people, descended from pioneers who hewed a city out of wilderness, stood helplessly by as their homes flooded, looking for help that was always going to be late in coming.

Bread and circuses provide entertainment in the form of WWF, Pride Fighting, Cage Fighting and worse; spectator sports broadcast daily on television channels across the fruited plain, to the enjoyment of, mostly young men, 50% or more of whom have failed to graduate from high school, or acquire the basic educational skills to obtain or hold a job; impregnating young women, who obtain their sustenance with food stamps, WIC and other government programs. Their circuses are tamer, Oprah and Springer, and other mindless television personalities who assure them that their particular perversions are mainstream.

Bread and circuses for the masses take the form of American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, and Surviver; celebrating mediocrity in the pursuit of fame; making heroes of the mundane; making Andy Warhol the victim of his own wit and wisdom. In a society where all are famous for their fleeting moment, none are sublime. Where greatness can be achieved by the accidental whim of a lottery drawing, no greatness exists at all.

When great achievement is denigrated; when a Condoleezza Rice or a Clarence Thomas or a Thomas Sowell is castigated for their own brilliance, because they are not "black" enough, there can be no brilliance -- no striving for excellence.

This nation stands upon a precipice. Bread and circuses -- empty promises from politicians to care for us from cradle to grave have landed us upon this cliff. Below lies ruin. The Siren Song of pleasant promises calls us ever closer to that edge. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama take turns throwing alms to make us all poor. National Health Care, free to all, paid for by the government. Social Security benefits, administered by the government, guaranteed. Free education, from preschool to college, all guaranteed through government run, union taught schools.

Nearly 2000 years ago, bread and circuses were the harbingers of the end of empire.

Bread and circuses. Give me mine, and I will promise to forget the lessons of history.