Lunatic Fringe
If you want to see what privatized relief would look like, think of Walmart. That's the face of repugican disaster relief
The
continuing repugican disgust with the necessity of vile government
over a fractious and well-armed citizenry continues to amaze. Tied to
this is the repeated comparisons of our modern secular government with Ancient Rome and its imagined excesses.
Of course, Roman orgies
are the product of feverish and repressed sexual fantasies of christians
through the ages,[1] and the belief that the Roman government was
completely indifferent to the needs of its citizens is another
convenient christian fantasy. Because they present christianity as an
“upgrade,” both of them serve the wingnut christian cause today as
an argument for the primacy of cult over state.
The problem is
that as with the orgy myth, the government myth is simply untrue. Just
as governments today act in response to emergencies, so did the Ancient
Roman state. And if evil Roman state could act in response to disasters,
why should the government of a modern nation state, with far more
resources available to it, do less?
Classicist Jerry Toner
writes that “Imperial intervention during disasters became one of the
expectations that people had of government.”
Contrary
to repugican lies, Democrats did not invent the idea of a government
spending money on its citizens. Just take a look at some examples:
The
reclusive Tiberius, therefore, felt obliged to leave his island retreat
at Capri when the collapse [of an arena] at Fidenae killed thousands.
And the range of actions which subsequent emperors took to alleviate
disastrous situations expanded significantly. During a financial crisis,
Tiberius lent 100 million sesterces without interest for three years.
Losses through fire were sometimes made good by the imperial treasury.
Such assistance could be in he form of cash, a tax rebate, the
cancellation of debts, or acts such as the advancement of civic status.
One law says that in the aftermath of a fire, any Latin worth 200,000
sesterces who spent half that sum in building in Rome would obtain full
Roman citizenship. Dio claims that too many cities to record were helped
by August and senators after they had suffered earthquake damage. Tax
relief was given to cities for five years following an earthquake in
Asia, help which was weighted according to the severity of impact, and
was administered under the oversight of a senior official.[2]
The
emperors would also release state-owned wheat during food shortages and
pay for the burial of dead when plague or other disaster left so many
dead that local efforts were overwhelmed. Canals were dug and rivers
even diverted in an attempt to eliminate flooding. Even christian emperors
continued these traditions.
The question becomes, if christianity is so vastly superior to Paganism, how is it a Pagan
government can be superior to what the religio-wingnuts want today? And
why do these ultra-religious repugicans want to roll back what even
their christian predecessors many centuries ago were willing to do on
behalf of their citizens?
Is a government helping people really
such a bad thing? Can’t we expect as much today as offered by a
supposedly evil government 2,000 years ago? Surely no one has forgotten repugican candidate Mitt Romney calling disaster relief immoral?
The repugican delusion tends to be morally flexible when disaster strikes. While
denying it to others, repugicans always want relief for themselves.
Then big government becomes their best friend. The moment the disaster
is over they are back to denouncing it. For people who claim there can
be no compromising, they can be almighty compromising where the federal
dollars are concerned. The repugicans are drowning in their own disaster relief hypocrisy.
But
grasping greed is not the same thing as compassion, and if there is one
thing the modern-day repugican cabal lacks, it is compassion.
And
even if it is argued that Roman rulers were merely looking at the
bottom line, cannot repugicans find within themselves even a modicum of
common sense? We know Walmart can’t,
but Walmart doesn’t have to be the paradigm the United States revolves
around. Besides, history tells us that even Nero, christianity’s
favorite enemy, provided government relief in the wake of the Great Fire
of 64 CE, and the emperor Titus, we are told by Suetonius (Tit. 8),
showed “not merely the concern of an emperor, but even a father’s
surpassing love…there was no aid, human or divine, which he did not
employ, searching for every kind of sacrifice and all kinds of
medicines.”[3]
Isn’t that the very least a government should do for its citizens, who, after all, pay the taxes that support the government?
The
problem seems to be that there is no profit to be made in this – by
private citizens. And so repugicans would prefer to privatize
government services so we can all pay some more, in addition to our
taxes, for the help we need in various crises. Life, under repugican
governance, would become a “pay-as-you-go” or “for profit” enterprise.
And
guess who will reap the profits? The repugicans, of course. None of that
money will flow anywhere but into reliable repugican hands, as the
examples of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Texas have shown.
Meanwhile,
nasty old “Big Brother” won’t become “Little Brother” because secretly, repugicans love big government. Big Governments can start the Big Wars repugicans love so much. Big Government can intrude into your bedroom
and into your doctor’s office. Hallowed Saint Ronald grew government and
you know how they like to invoke his memory. Reagan repugicans, they
call themselves.
Without myth, the repugican cabal would
collapse, because as has often been noted here and elsewhere, the repugican cabal has nothing concrete to offer the American people. It
has all become smoke and mirrors. The myth of fiscal conservatism, the
myth of small government, all now work in conjunction with the myth
that, as Matt Barber of Liberty Counsel Action
puts it while busily working to persecute millions, “christians have been persecuted for 2,000 years by radical leftists.”
It’s
a great myth, but nobody has ever persecuted christians in the Western
world except other christians. The Roman persecutions are a myth.[4] In
perhaps seven to ten years out of the 300 + christianity existed before
becoming the state religion, the Roman government took action against christianity.
But christianity, meanwhile, has been persecuting other
religions – every alternative to itself – nearly nonstop for 2,000
years and they are the biggest persecutor in history of their fellow christians – not islam.
Myth. Smoke and mirrors. Lies. That is
the stuff of the repugican cabal today. Government isn’t bad. The Pagan
Romans knew this. Their christian successors knew this. How can people
today reject what people all through history have always known? That a
government must act on behalf of its citizenry in the face of disaster?
The repugicans
claim the federal government puts the screws to us. Really? If you want
to see what privatized relief would look like, think of Walmart. That’s
the face of repugican disaster relief. I think an educated public can
do the math from there.
Notes:
[1] Ray Lawrence, Roman
Passions: A History of Pleasure in Imperial Rome (2009) puts it somewhat
differently: “There is no real evidence for [orgies]. They are yet
another case of the fevered imagination of the modern world, which
attempts to sexualize all other cultures past and present.”
[2] Jerry Toner, Roman Disasters (2013).
[3] See Toner (2013), chapter 4.
[4] See, Candida Moss. The Myth of Persecution: How Early christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (2013).
Just because something is named after a place doesn't mean it came from there.
Most
correctional officers today do not carry firearms, unless they're
isolated away from the prison population. But back in the olden days,
prison guards on their rounds needed a little backup power in their
hands, especially when opening cell doors—usually a two-handed job.
