When Did America Become Rome?
There has been a fascinating discussion going on over at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish concerning when America became Rome. That is, when did it forswear faith in its leaders and morality for greed and decadence.
The comparison, of course, is somewhat precious as well as a time-worn cliche, but it works well enough for the purposes of trying to figure out why we are going to hell in a hand basket.
The reasons that I enunciated in a post titled “Why The American Dream Is Dead” included the usual suspects: The abandonment of our elderly and its poor, imprisoning millions of citizens for the most trivial of offenses, suffocating the middle class, an enormously powerful corporatocracy, government by paralysis, and ignorance of our own history. In another post titled “We Have The World’s Finest Universities, Why Then Is America Such A Mess?”, I agreed with 19th century journalist-historian Henry Adams that going to a university is “time wasted” and that self-education through life experiences, friendships and reading are ultimately more important. How else to explain the fact that America boasts the best higher education system anywhere but itself is so screwed up?
These, I suppose, are symptoms and the question is still begged of when American became Rome.
A favorite of Andrew’s readers is when the American people, or at least a shockingly large number of them, accepted the notion that John McCain believed that Sarah Palin was qualified to be president should he be elected and something happened to him. It either did not register — or matter — that Palin was unqualified to be president because of an appalling ignorance, the Christianist bilge she spouted, and was a serial liar to boot, attributes that have not diminished one iota as she casts her beady eyes on the presidency three years on.
Alas, the McCain-Palin metaphor does not work. That nadir in our political history occurred in 2008, well after America’s downward drift had accelerated. Besides which, no single event — whether in Rome or in America — can be attributed as turning points.
That so noted, if you put a gun to my head and forced me to name a single event my nominee would be when Bill Clinton swore on national television in 1998 that he “never had sex with that woman . . . Monica Lewinsky.” Beyond setting off a fierce debate on whether blowjobs are in fact sex, Clinton in one fell swoop undermined the credibility of the presidency as not even Richard Nixon had been able. The Oval Office has never been the same.
So much for faith in leaders, and so on to morality. Which is to say greed trumping morality and its little brother ethics.
Like Rome, there have been merchants of greed in America since its founding. Think robber barons like Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and more recently Ken Lay of Enron. But on the cusp of the new millennium the number of greed merchants and even institutions built on greed (think of investment banks) are staggering in number and, lest we need a reminder of their power to inflict enormous harm, their responsibility for the Bush Recession and its lingering effects.
But it took a recent New York Times op-ed piece by UCLA prof John McCumber to point me to where the decline and fall of Rome and the decline and fall of America probably intersected. This was the early Cold War years when the nation’s best and brightest, including RAND Corporation analysts and other brainiacs, sought to understand the inner workings of American individualism with mathematical models first used to understand voting behavior as part of a government-funded effort to push back against the Communist and socialist collectivism then very much in vogue.
America, of course, once accorded unique rights and freedoms to individuals. Putting aside for a moment the fact that the Roberts Supreme Court is chipping away at those rights and freedoms while deciding that corporations are individuals who are to be accorded the rights and freedoms the Founders granted true individuals, McCumber says the overall conclusion of the studies into what makes individualism tick was that the choice inherent in individualism begets, in philosopher G.F.W. Hegel’s terms, a clear and compelling imperative to increase ones wealth and power.
He notes that individualism comes in several flavors. There is the selfish individualism that Tocqueville attributed to post-Colonial America and the expressive individualism of touchy feelys like Emerson and Whitman, while after World War II a third variant emerged defining individualism as the making of choices so as to maximize one’s preferences, a wave that was helped along by the novels of another Rand (Ayn).
Like kudzu weed, this so-called rational choice philosophy — what McCumber refers to as “a point-for-point antidote to the collective dialectics of Marxism” — gradually insinuated itself into university curricula and then out into the real world of business and government. A consequence was that morality and ethics took a hike, something that was oft noted when Wall Street drove the economy into the toilet in 2008 but of course was quickly forgotten.
Hey, I’m inherently suspicious of any explanation for the decline of America that is framed in absolutist terms and includes catchphrases like selfish individualism, but absent a more cogent explanation it works well enough for me.
This leaves a big question unanswered: Can America avoid Rome’s fate? Absent a very close encounter with a meteor or doomsday preacher Harold Camping finally getting it right, it’s hard to see how.
6 Responses to “When Did America Become Rome?”
Shaun
If you wish to make the time worn comparison between ancient Rome and the US, why not just reflect more closely where Rome the Republic changed to Rome the Imperialist State, nd then to Rome the puppet state run from the background? The Fall of Rome did not actually start with Julius, Augustus, or even Tiberius; these men usurped the republic’s power, but they merely demonstrate the ancient world’s example of a “unary president.” Equate the US “manifest destiny” with post WWII’s predominate position of the US, and you can draw that parallel quite easily.
The Fall started with the Praetorian Guard, the security forces originally serving the current Emperor. When Caligula, nick-named “little boots” by said guard started to humiliate them, they simply assassinated him and selected Claudius as next Emperor because they figured they could control him, and thus the world through him. This power behind the throne made selections based on getting paid and holding power. Sort of like lobbyists with swords. No leader was viable without their approval, and the Republic, once challenged by individuals, now became impossible to recover due to the shadow government that was known but not challenged.
A politician caught with his pants down no more has started our downward slide anymore than any story of Imperial debauchery brought down Rome. It is the systemic usurpation of power by those who survive as individual leaders come and go that marked the downfall.
Eisenhower warned s, Nam solidified it.
IMHO
Sullivan? [snicker]
And why the misinterpretation by Shaun? The true question about Rome isn’t whether it meets the test of liberals, with their “cruel and callous” [sic] charges about Entitlement Insufficiency or Reduction, though they reveal something that’s part of the sickness that does apply to the correct interpretation. It also has nothing to do with a far-flung military as well as diplomacy (which liberals ignore) to support our many interests abroad, some vital, or the more correct but still wrong for “empire” observation of our great influence and power abroad simply because of our size and associated economic and cultural clout.
America as Rome is only superficial — the more correct interpretation of America as preeminent in the world, simply because of its size and associated power and influence. (As I have correctly said, that’s primarily, in our case, with economic and cultural clout — which amounts to geopolitical clout. There’s no excuse for anti-military liberal mis-thinking on this issue as if the military and “aggressive” foreign policy is either preeminent or somehow monstrous as in the distorted vision of the Left.) The perceived decline now or predicted decline later of America similar to what happened not only to Rome but to the United Kingdom and other nations associated with “empires” (the more applicable analogies than ancient empires, but which makes use of the “Rome” metaphor useful) has long been accepted, as have predictions made about the USA and the West (and nowadays, Japan; China faces it in maybe fifty years) of population aging and related expected geopolitical decline. (This has ties to the Left’s world view, even if they fail to perceive it, because it brings to mind the Left’s and others’ earlier views of nations as organic.)
Shaun unwittingly reveals where the truth lies, even if he cannot see it, despite how obvious it is and has been. Entitlements do point to the truth. The real, correct interpretation is of Washington, DC and the federal government (not America) as Rome. It’s not just the welfare state (Shaun’s tipoff) and modern or contemporary politics, which is vulgar, not popular, as are demagogic (mostly Democratic and liberal) politics. (As we have even seen with Obama’s campaign and campaign-style speeches.) It’s the true “bread and circuses” part of the Roman analogy.
But what makes it most correct is the size and extent of power within the USA which is the real empire in the analogy, of the federal government. Following the trend set by liberalism in the twentieth century (from original desires and efforts in the late nineteenth, and boosted substantially in the West in the 1930s), the nation has changed from the de jure federal republic to a de facto (and largely fait accompli unitary state (nation). Washington has assumed far greater size and scope, power and influence (as I routinely note) than ever was intended, excess power often usurped by Washington rather than sought by the people (at least, the mainstream). It has hinted more than once at totalitarianism, in fact. It’s Rome ruling its empire as strongly as it can, often wanting to rule even more so. It’s the true Roman analogy in the provinces (states), who are treated as inferiors and subordinates to do Rome’s bidding, and even face in the cities and counties direct action by Rome rather than properly deal only with their provincial (state) governments. And many in the provinces (notably in city governments) suck up to Rome in the hopes of being favored occasionally, not only to be oppressed. The nature of Rome’s reach includes much direct relations with individuals in the empire, in fact. (Demotion of states to provincial and dependent status, and the same for ages with individual citizens, is part of the Roman empirical progress.)
And we’ve come so far (with the correct Roman analogy) as to have in Washington an elitist, removed, disdainful not only of state and local governments as inferiors to do as commanded, but of the people. You’re either a Roman (Washingtonian) or some of the plebe peasants in the provinces, distinctly inferior. In the political sphere, it’s common especially for politicians to see federal superiority and a hierarchical system of government, with Rome (Washington) at the apex, and defining many a political career as seeking ultimately to go to Washington. There’s a great disconnection between Romans and the people in the rest of the empire (the USA outside the proverbial Washington Beltway).
And with Rome’s great power and influence, it’s no wonder that the civilians seeking the same thing (with Rome and also for their own careers), come to Rome. We even have seen a contemporary Roman feature, the development of a celebrity culture surrounding the powerful and influential — even more so part of the correct Roman analogy, a glaring example of the decadence of Rome as in the ancient era. That’s true, for example, of the media and of commenters, e.g.., who enjoy their status as Romans among their peers, as much as more quiet, discreet, more corrupt “lobbyists” and other special interest group activity.
And that brings us to the core of the analogy in the contemporary sense, and the true Roman decadence, if not serious decline yet.
Rome (Washington) has for far too long overreached, expanding its power over more and more, and causing more and more resentment among the people in doing so, not only with the attempts to overreach, but with the results it often has caused in doing so. (The real empire is the United States, and the reach and the overreach and empiricism, not merely colonialism, of Rome [Washington] are really domestic, in depth as much as in breadth.) It not only has spawned resentment for decades, but is now beginning to suffer from the effects of its overreach, not only financially, but socially, with the increased decadence there that we see, and many are anxious because worse financial and social troubles clearly are coming; merely the demographic changes (as in the original Roman empire, but the modern one isn’t limited to immigration, but more importantly to future aging of the society). We see an unsettled population, the worst part of which is calmed with “bread and circuses” politics and media. We see those used to being not only dependent on Rome but active parasites resent the start of the decline and popular resistance to Rome (the worse population outside Rome, as within it, has not only sucked up to Rome, but has wanted Rome to do much more and to the empire and its population than is either practical or possible, or sought by everyone else. They are a peripheral part of the worst of Rome.) We see resistance to admission of decline or to taking the necessary actions to arrest or even reverse some or most of it, by those within Rome, and the suck-ups outside it, in the provinces.
That is the correct, real Roman analogy, complete with the start of its decline, today.
We even have popular stirrings of unrest now, such as in the form of the Tea Party, a tame group, whose perpetrators are seen by the Romans and suck-ups in a negative light, vulgar rather than popular (a Big Lie they use), as subverters or traitors within the Empire. Hence the especially vigorous and vicious opposition, the lies and defamation and slander from the elitists within the Eternal City and the suck-ups outside it, toward the Tea Party.
Were the Tea Party, or other popular opponents of oppressive Empire from Rome (Washington) ever to have those allied with it come to Rome and start engaging in serious reforms to rescue the empire from its decadence as well as its decline, they would be depicted as I have correctly done in the past, the Roman view of Visigoths or other “barbarians” from afar (politically if not geographically) engaging in The Sack of Rome:
http://ajablokov.squarespace.com/storage/bad_posture_2.gif?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1263072505621
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1f/Sack_of_Rome_of_1527_by_Johannes_Lingelbach_17th_century.jpg
(In fact, all that has been missing has been a high wall around the District proper, and another wall erected just inside the Washington Beltway, with strong access control at each wall.)
When the values of self (gross materialism, greed, shortcuts to “self-esteem”, mass distraction, etc.) began kicking into high gear in the late 20th century and began trumping traditional values of character (honesty, merit, empathy, conscience, unity, etc.) that’s when the die was cast. On top of that, government now has no allegiance to the citizens nor feels compelled to do the work it was entrusted to do. Rome on a hellbound train baby!
My knowledge of Roman history is, well, nonexistent. But I will say that “politics as sport” has to be a symptom of the greater problem.
The problem with the Clinton era wasn’t only the abuse of office in the Lewinsky affair, and the subsequent lying about it, but also the right-wing ‘jumping on the baby like a lion’ with the impeachment. There was no need for it and, in the end, it was both a huge distraction and the formation of the rift that drove the country apart. That era really brought right-wing radio to the fore, with their profit-driven motive of “increased rancor = increased profit”.
Then we had the Bush era, which further exacerbated this rift through police-state mechanics, wars without funding, props to the wealthy, and harsher partisan rhetoric. Here, the Left ratcheted up their own rancor with Bush Bashing (although they never got as organized and corporate-ized as the Right).
I see our current era as akin to pre-Civil War days, when the nation were split across an uncrossable divide and Congress and the Presidency was effectively powerless. I honestly think you’d have to go all the way back to Reconstruction to find stiffer, paralyzing, partisan rifts than we have right now. And our economic situation is the most dire it’s ever been.
At least during the Great Depression we had great potential, too. Today, I’m not so sure.
While I appreciate the Roman history tutorial provided by Hemm and DLS, it was unnecessary as I wrote that:
“The comparison, of course, is somewhat precious as well as a time-worn cliche, but it works well enough for the purposes of trying to figure out why we are going to hell in a hand basket.”
In other words, it was a starting point for a discussion, not an opportunity for Hemm to display his history chops and DLS to yet again shoot the messenger.
Shaun Mullen wrote:
If you don’t know the subject you’re writing about as well as reading, why attack those who do know what they’re doing? (along with projecting what you’re doing on somebody else)
You apparently don’t want a discussion, just an echo chamber.
Nothing that others have written here is “unnecessary” [sic].
Meanwhile, others know and are explaining why the nation ails, and why the Roman analogy is apt, indeed.
P.S. Dave: Here at home, Lincoln and Wilson flirted with it, FDR started it in earnest, it grew, and it has continued from there.