In a refreshing change of style in the way that he describes
history, Victor Davis Hanson has published a remarkable piece in which he
compares the current condition of the United
States of America with the way that the Roman
Empire looked and felt two centuries into the Christian era. He
wrote: “The Glue Holding America Together,” an article which also has the
subtitle: “As it fragments into various camps, the country is being held
together by a common popular culture.” The piece was published on July 27, 2013
in National Review Online.
Hanson begins with the apparently depressing thought that:
“By A.D. 200, the Roman Republic was a distant memory” but holds up the hope
that there may be a light at the end of the tunnel with this encouraging sign:
“Yet Rome
endured as a global power for three more centuries,” and then asks: “What held
it together?” You see immediately from this that his obsession is not what is
happening to the country now; his main preoccupation being that the country
hold together for as long as possible to endure as a global power.
And he answers his own question by attributing the
responsibility of holding Rome
together to “a stubborn common popular culture and the prosperity of Mediterranean-wide
standardization.” To expand on this, he says two things, one being a little
bizarre and the other being incomplete. First, the bizarre. Egypt being a Province of the Roman
Empire , he says that the Egyptians, among others, assumed that
plentiful grain was available – which presumably kept them content and willing
to remain part of the Empire. Hey, Mr. Historian of the classical era, the
Egyptians did not have to assume this, Egypt was the breadbasket of the
Empire and the source of its prosperity – and the Egyptians knew it.
As to the part that is not very convincing, Hanson makes the
point that as long as the pirates and the thieves were cleared from the sea and
the streets, and as long as commerce progressed normally, people did not care
how lawless or unhinged the Roman officials and emperors were. But what is not
convincing about this, is the explanation he gives as to how Rome endured as a global power even after the
subjects lost respect for those who governed them.
Likewise, he goes on to say: “Few Americans worry that our
present leaders have lied to or misled Congress … without consequences.” Hey,
Mr. Citizen of America ,
the Congress is the laughing stock of the American people as much as it is of
the world. Ever since Oliver North waved his proverbial middle finger at the
Congress, the nation and the world began to understand that America was
governed by men and women of the circus who can be bought, sold and trained the
way that elephants and jackasses are bought, sold and trained to perform funny
acts and make meaningless noises.
Hanson now draws up a long list of woes he says are plaguing
America then asks: “Why is
the United States not
experiencing something like [what goes on] in Turkey ,
Brazil , Mexico , Syria ,
Russia , China , Egypt
and Europe ?” He answers the question like
this: “half of America
and many of its institutions operate as they always have.” He also says that
most government functionaries are not corrupt, and when it comes to blue collar
workers and farmers, the lies in Washington
are but an abstraction to them. He gives a few examples of what passes for
normal life in America then
makes this observation: “Like diverse citizens of imperial Rome , we are united in some fashion by shared
popular tastes and mass consumerism.”
To sum up the analogy, he renders his own version of the old
saying to the effect that Rome
quieted the people by providing them with bread and circus. The modern version
being that fast food is cheap and tasty, and that video games and reality-TV
shows are available. All of which “for now is preferable to rioting and
revolt,” he says.
And so, with an apparent sigh of relief, he concludes that
“like Rome , America
But maybe it will, who knows? In any case, Victor, what
about the thousand or so who are murdered in America America