Standing Up To Dictatorship: How Democracies Thrive

Standing up to “China” is not a risk, it’s a solution. What has been most significantly happening is that the global plutocracy, this metastatic cancer of global democracy, has instrumentalized the Chinese dictatorship in recent decades [1]. Producing cheaply in China enabled Western plutocrats and various lesser capitalists to evade Western taxation, and actually Western workers, their unions and their guilds. Also the plutocrats, by producing in China were able to evade our laws, our socioeconomic environment, which they exploited without quiproquo, and even evade our civilization.

In China even extremely respected doctors may disappear, as if they were mosquitoes: lest they may steal from the glory of virus-man Xi. Doctor Ai Fen, head of emergency at the Wuhan hospital, no less, told the New York Times, in a detailed interview, that she knew about the new SARS virus in early December 2019, and that it made her shiver. She has been disappeared, nobody but tinpot dictator Xi and his goons know where she is. We have not seen this sort of behavior since Stalin or Hitler. She is probably being reeducated with generous doses of electroshock therapy in sensitive places while dealing from injected COVID. Hey, Xi, Virus-man, tell me why not? Isn’t that your way? Don’t you know best?

The same phenomenon, giving to, and getting from, dictators, propelled by the ancestors of the present actors and their culture of greed, helped considerably the rise of fascism in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. For example major plutocrats and organizers of the US Democratic Party, the Harriman Brothers helped considerably both Hitler and Stalin (Baku oil fields, Caucasus). They got medals from both.

Stalin was an instrument of, financed and equipped by, the US Deep Plutocratic State… The same one which fostered Hitler, at the same time. Counterintuitive? Have you seen two cocks fighting? That’s sponsored too, and the cocks are equipped with sharp blades, to kill the other cock. Why do you think the US gifted trillion of dollars of equipment to the USSR in WW2? While Soviet soldiers were fighting the many US corporations operating in Germany, which, like IBM, had been given monopolies by the fascists?And why do you think Roosevelt, ignoring De Gaulle and Churchill, rewarded Stalin with half of Europe? Let’s not be as stupid as the Nazis, or Lenin, and still claim we do not understand what really happened!

That same phenomenon of plutocratic globalization, while imploding socioeconomically the core, caused the weakening of Republican Italy under the fascist Roman empire (The “Principate“). Italy, once the world’s wealthiest region, soon got deprived of work, wealth, power and liberty under the Roman globalization orchestrated by Roman plutocracy and then its chiefs, the emperors. The dilution of the rights of Romans and Italians was accentuated by massive immigration from the Middle East to Italy, which changed the mood of the Roman population from Republican Libertas to Oriental Submission. (In the end the whole thing imploded, and an imported partially Roman creation, the Franks, were put in power by the increasing morbid “Romanitas”, starting circa 400 CE…)

Opposing “populism” and democracy is etymologically, philosophically and logically dangerous. It is done by the plutocrats and their media to insinuate that the People is a form of fascism. The trick is nearly 22 centuries old. In the dying Roman Republic, the plutocrats called themselves the “Optimates“, the “Best“, a Latin translation of “aristocrats“… whereas those who wanted the existing, centuries old legal limits on wealth be respected and who wanted the redistributions of riches, that the application of these laws would entail, called themselves the “Populares” (leaders: the Gracchi brothers, Marius, Caesar; the Optimates tried to kill them all). Demo-kratia means people-power.

Restricting immigration and trade is not necessarily a bad idea. It’s like restricting intrusions and injections. Intrusions and injections are needed when one is sick… but prevention is always better to diseases requiring intrusions and injections. The fundamental question is what are immigration and trade compensating for, why are they needed? What do they cure?

Agreed, in the prehistoric world if one had no flint and no obsidian, to make sharp tools and weapons, one had to trade them. But we are not in prehistory anymore. Most countries have enough material goods. 

For example, there are plenty of Rare Earths outside of territory occupied by Beijing. The only reason we get most of our Rare Earths from China is that political will of the global plutocratic government has contrived the laws of supply and demand to operate worldwide so as to make us dependent upon Beijing. And why is this happening? Because the Big Brother in China is friend with Little Brothers such as Bill Gates. Big hells meet Little Hells, and they help each other, because they have persuaded themselves they are the Best (Optimates). So Bill wants us to be friendly to his Big Brother in Beijing, Bill will get more powerful that way, and look wiser to imbeciles, who are countless. And we will be friendlier to our Big Brother in Beijing  if we end up believing that supply and demand make the Beijing-controlled Rare Earths the result of the noble law of supply and demand. Never mind that “Rare Earths” are not rare at all, and could be extracted from all over.

The same logic apply all over, indeed: no phones, no antibiotics, not even hydroxychloroquine, or face masks, without our Big Brother Xi in Beijing, say those who own and control the media. So to accuse Xi of the corochinavirus is futile, says Gates Of Hell, a “distraction“, as Little Brother Bill Gates Of Hell informed us [2}. This attitude is not new: Gates has long observed he is the government, or at least one of its major prop…. Obama wholeheartedly agreed and gave him and his female prop the “Medal of Freedom” (NSA surveillance freedom). One of Gates’ method is to use his foundation to pay nefarious outfits he is invested in, such as making glyphosate and associated GMOs, and the latest being McKinsey, a consultantship which already brought us the stooge known as “Mayor Pete“.

In the case of Rome, retrospectively, the aim of massive immigration and massive trade was to prevent a republican uprising against the oligarchy which had seized power in Rome, starting with Augustus, by weakening the Italian population with a disappearance of employment, dignity, means, power, intelligence, creativity and population… Only thus was the idiotic, vicious and debasing dictatorship safe. 

Decoupling democracies from dictatorships will enable democracies to decouple from those who rule them, the globalists who have evaded democratic laws by making the deal of sending most employment and power to dictatorships. Besides, it should make it easier to fight pandemics, as those are friendly to dictatorships and incompetent governments. Surely buying everything in China was pretty incompetent. Surely a country which accepts to be led by a dictator, even if his name is Xi, is pretty incompetent.

Caesar’s intuition was correct; the Roman Republic couldn’t survive with major enemies at the gates. Some of the fascists imperial Romans would understand this, but not too loud, and not enough: Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Julianus: those four emperors, among the very best, died while involved in major expansion military campaigns.  The Franks, endowed with Roman imperium, would not rest until they are conquered, or reconquered for “Renovated Romanitas” most of Europe. Thus they insured that Europe couldn’t be conquered ever again (whereas China spent most of the last millennium occupied by foreign powers, and came close to annihilation).

In a similar vein, one could argue that Athens would never reached the same Athenian heights if Athens had not prepared for war with that immense fascist, yet clever plutocracy, Achaemenid Persia which had even conquered Egypt, part of Eastern Europe, and attacked Ethiopia. At some point Athens even embarked on a long war to free Egypt from Persia…

Challenges elevate! The confrontation between Persia and Athens forced both to create and trade ideas, not just blows. Paradoxically, that titanic struggle was good for humanity’s progress. Differently from present-day “Communist” China, Achaemenid Persia, in spite of some hyper brutal and vicious ways, had invented genuinely new progress, such as various economic models and practices, and the Pony Express, which carried news to Persepolis within a week, from the confines of the empire. Also, new for the times, genuine maximal religious and ethnic tolerance: the empire functioned as an alliance of local plutocracies, so-called “Satrapies“…

Democracies are more clever, because they can, and do, fight for higher intelligence. Debate is central to democracy, and it fosters intelligence best. Dictatorship dictates, it doesn’t debate. Dictatorship knows already all there is to know, it does not beat up all possibilities.

Let’s not submit to the stupid dictator Xi, a would-be emperor, a virus-man, who like most of his Roman imperial tin-can predecessors has not learned the most basic lesson, namely that the superior mind can’t think better than the many without debating with the many. Superior is the challenge of trampling all, if genuine. But dictators cheat. Let Xi and his little helpers be submitted in turn to the fiery criticism they justly deserve. Off with their heads at the head! Off with them at the head of our spaceship Earth! It doesn’t belong to them… Nor do we. belong to them. This is why there are anti-monopoly laws, and why those who violate them, from Xi, to Gates, to Zuck do what they do, imposing their will to us.

What is most human is to debate: from dis-battere, to beat down in diverse directions. That’s what real democracy achieves and its product is mental superiority, magnificence of mind, enduring survival of the species. We can’t play with small-minded dictators anymore, be they holding the Heavenly Gates in Beijing or the Gates of Hell in software manipulations inside the devices we write on [3].

Patrice Ayme

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[1] I am not trying to suddenly claim we in the “West” have suddenly achieved real democracy. Not at all! Representative democracy is only part and parcel of real democracy, a much more complicated affair, with much more dispersed power and direct votes (as Athens and Rome had). But surely we are much democratic than a dictatorship.

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[2] I decided to remove my analysis of the outrageous interview of Gates where he claimed that saying the virus originated in China was a “distraction“. This sort of grotesque disinformation poorly educated plutocrats deliberately inflict on us is not just painful, and an oppression, but also an extreme danger, as it makes us all very stupid. Even answering idiots make us stupid… Imagine arguing with a cockroach: would not that be crazy? But isn’t it what we are doing, debating Gates of Hell? Especially deliberate idiots, like Gates Of Hell.

But we have no choice. When Caesar opposed the summary, illegal execution ordered by the Optimate Consul Cicero, Caesar was logical and methodical, whereas Cicero was all emotion. In retrospect, Caesar, the law and the future of the Republic may have been better deserved with a bit more passion (and a bodyguard!)

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[3] Gates of Hell has taken several subterranean measures against yours truly, from having The Guardian (one of GOH’s paid-for mouthpieces) sanction me as a Jihadist (!) to making me impossible to find in his lousy search engine…

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P/S: Excellent news, at last! Female sexual mutilation outlawed in Sudan! What about males now? Why can’t Euro-America show the way? If not for Europe, and its imperial influence, China would still mutilate the feet of high class women…

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52502489

Magnificence of Mind, Kindness, Cosmically Enlightening

Kindness,

A one way stream. 

Is that bitter? Is there better?

Why? What? The greedy will smart.

What’s left of it, if not returned? And they smirk.

Maybe, some will mock, as Caesar, forgiving his lethal enemies?

Forgetting, deliberately overlooking their enmity?

Burning, without looking at it, the damning written evidence,

Of stealthy traitors, lurking in their dark minds,

Pretending to be what they were not,

Documents seized in Pompey’s tent after his defeat,

And ignored…

Magnificence of mind, Plutarch observed,

Who condemned Cicero, Caesar’s plutocratic enemy, for not having it.

10 year old Athena A’s work. Life is a ultimate magnificence enlightening the universe, and it does as it wishes, not as it is

Some will sneer,

What’s the point of magnificence of mind?

How did that work for Caesar? How does it work for us?

Reading and writing, while at the games? Really?

Instead of demonstrating that Caesar was entertained by the vilest human suffering?

Rome couldn’t learn the lesson,

The magnificence Caesar bestowed on it, 

Thus lost everything.

***

You gave and wasn’t the gift enough of a gift, by making it?

For you, who gave it?

Love onto others as they won’t love onto you?

Kindness, a one way stream, knows no other way,

But to give,

Ignoring whether the kindness will be returned or not, 

Yes it can be bitter,

But bitter is the way, bitter is good, it’s a mature, acquired taste,

The cross one has to bear, 

And not because one expects some eternal reward.

Life is a murder most foul, 

Humbling it by creating it better than it really is,

Not just a sweet vengeance. 

Innocents get crushed by large, blind masses,

Yet sometimes luck will come some way,

Neither of which outcomes anybody controls. 

But if kindness you do, 

As a companion with you it will forever stay.

Not much, you say?

What else?

Love?

There too, you can give it,

But if genuine, it’s never an equation,

It’s not that the love you gave, will equal to the one you get,

As the Beatles put it, silly and avaricious.

Learn to give, never to receive,

Learn to be,

What is to be admired. And first by yourself.

Make you that gift,

To be a giver of kindness and love.

***

Even if Caesar never could have his kindness,

For greedy, passionately irrational Cicero, ever returned,

He had the satisfaction of giving to others,

Thus to himself, what they couldn’t return.

The more he gave them, the greater he became,

And the more vile his opponents.

***

Kindness becomes the beholder,

Blossoming magnificence,

In a universe otherwise deprived of it.

Kindness is best,

As a one way stream.

Only then does magnificence

Brings the pleasure,

Of making the universe into artwork,

And the artist is thankful,

Not just for what was given to all,

And the immensity of space,

But also for what the artist became,

And there had never been anything like it.

Bestow kindness,

Not just for what it will give,

But for what it makes you blossom into.

***

Patrice Ayme

 

Rome Genetics Varied Considerably, Apparently Carrying Culture With It. Right Or Wrong.

Among Other Things, The SWITCH OF ROME TO DESPOTISM WAS ACCOMPANIED BY A SWITCH TO AN ORIENTAL POPULATION: 

Ancient Rome was the capital city of an empire that encompassed at least 70 million inhabitants, maybe a quarter of humanity at the time. Genetic studies suggest that, just as all roads may once have led to Rome, so did a great many European and Middle Earth genetic lineages also converged there. Genetic studies reveal a dynamic population history from the Mesolithic era (~12,000 Before Present) into modern times, which spans the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Genetic studies do even more: they show a connection between those genes and the cultures they carry.

No, I am not tying up genes and mental capabilities, as the Nazis and other racists did. Instead, I am pointing out that it seems cultures are carried by physical people.

When one looks carefully, this is astounding: Caesar’s ancestors had nothing to do with those of later Romans… Republican Romans are a completely different population from that of the fascist empire.

It is now well established that, as advanced farming with all its human selection engineered grains, spilled from the Fertile Crescent… literally brought by farmers from the Middle East. So basically Mesopotamian farmers with advanced technology settled Italy, nine thousand years ago. We knew the grains came in. We didn’t know the farmers who cultivated these grains had come with them. Nobody would have guessed this, 50 years ago. But now we have DNA sampled from ancient skeletons (in the latest study,127 genomes from 29 archaeological sites in and around Rome).

It turns out that population dynamics, even in the last two thousand years, is much more spectacular that one could have ever guessed. Consider: “Ancient Rome: A genetic crossroads of Europe and the Mediterranean.” One sees in Rome people coming from all over… this corresponds with historical political events. (The study was headed by the Stanford University team in collaboration with the University of Vienna and Sapienza University of Rome.)

Big History, Big Genetic Mixing

The samples sequenced fell into three distinct genetic clusters. “Mesolithic hunter-gatherers; early farmers (Neolithic and Copper Age individuals); and a broad historic cluster encompassing individuals from the Iron Age to the present…The oldest genomes in our dataset are from three Mesolithic hunter-gatherers (10,000 to 7,000 BCE) from Grotta Continenza, a cave in the Apennine Mountains.” The DNA analyses confirmed at least two major migrations into Rome, as well as several smaller but still significant population shifts over just the last few thousand years

The findings indicated that as the Roman Empire expanded around the Mediterranean Sea, immigrants from the Near East, Europe, and North Africa migrated into Rome. This significantly changed the faces, literally, of the ancient world’s greatest city.

A pictorial representation of where the populations came from, as represented by the blue arrows.

The first major ancestry shift occurred between 7,000 and 6,000 BCE, coinciding with the transition to farming and introduction of domesticates including wheat, barley, pulses, sheep, and cattle into Italy…. And their farmers: Europe didn’t invent colonialism, actually, it was colonized to start with! 

The second major ancestry shift occurred in the Bronze Age, between ~2,900 and 900 BCE … During this period, major technological developments increased the mobility of populations. Advances in sailing technologies enabled faster, safer, easier and more frequent navigation across the Mediterranean. By the time of the founding of Rome, in 753 BCE, the city’s population resembled a mix of modern European and Mediterranean peoples.

Another look

The establishment of the fascist Principate, starting with Augustus, saw a huge shift in the ancestry of people who lived in Rome, now suddenly primarily from the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Hence Rome became Oriental. Thus one understands better the switch of Roman emperors towards a cultural obsession with all things Oriental: Isis, Judaism, Christianism, Manicheism, Mithraism, and, most of all typically Oriental Despotism. Traditional historiography pondered the fascination of early emperors such as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero with the ways of the Orient. An obvious reason was that, since they were despots, they imitated the ways of the imperial despots they knew of, and those were from the Orient. 

***

(There was nothing genetic about the love of the Orient with despotism: the Orient was desiccating, while being the cradle of advanced agriculture; the optimal way out was to establish “hydraulic dictatorships”: big armies to protect big hydraulic works built by armies of slaves.)

Now we can understand why the appeal of the Orient was so strong on the Princeps: the leaders of Rome were suddenly ruling over an Oriental population, fully indoctrinated with the religion of Despotism, with their mothers’ milk. 

It’s not just that the Orientals migrated to Rome from the dense Middle East: the ravages of the Civil Wars had been so great that much of the old Roman and Italian population had been decimated (when Octavian and Antonius engaged the war against Brutus and Cassius, Caesar’s main assassins, they had 43 legions. They finished with just 28 legions. Entire legions, like the famed “Martian” legion ended at the bottom of the sea)… 

“During the Imperial period … the most prominent trend is an ancestry shift toward the eastern Mediterranean and with very few individuals of primarily western European ancestry”, the Stanford-Vienna-Rome team wrote.

The same process of decimation of the population happened in reverse, when the Late Empire collapsed, and ironically enough, Europeans moved back in, as the Franks “Renovated the Roman Empire”.

***

“It was surprising to us how rapidly the population ancestry shifted… reflecting Rome’s shifting political alliances over time. Another striking aspect was how cosmopolitan the population of Rome was, starting more than 2,000 years ago and continuing through the rise and dissolution of the empire. Even in antiquity, Rome was a melting pot of different cultures… within each time period, individuals exhibited highly diverse ancestries, including those from the Near East, Europe, and North Africa… These high levels of ancestry diversity began prior to the founding of Rome and continued through the rise and fall of the empire, demonstrating Rome’s position as a genetic crossroads of peoples from Europe and the Mediterranean.”

Hence the Romans, up to Caesar, had a different ancestry, a European, culturally rebellious ancestry, than the Romans, after Augustus’ long reign, whose ancestors came from the culturally submissive Middle East (Islam, to appear as the straw which broke the Roman camel’s back, in the Seventh Century, actually means “Submission”). 

Modern morality? Immigration is not just about changing genetics. Roman history tends to indicate it fosters dramatic cultural shifts. Sometimes for the best (Agriculture), sometimes for the worst (Despotism).

Thus, contrarily to the cultural defeatism grandly promoted by most self-promoting European intellectuals after World War two, and considering carefully the Roman cultural collapse into despotism, one may want to be more careful at denying that genetics can’t propagate democratic collapse. 

Patrice Ayme

 

EMPEROR CONSTANTINE CHRISTIAN TERRORIST 325 CE (Fall Of Rome Part X)

Legitimizing terrorism by the supreme authority, the Roman emperor, is how Catholicism (hence Christianism) came to be. Nicaea, 323 CE, 17 centuries ago… Had that bloody, mass murdering tyrant, the Roman emperor Constantine, not invented, and subjugated, the Roman empire with his invention of Catholicism, would the apocalyptic collapse of the Roman empire, state, economy, society and population have happened?

Probably not. Constantine launched a causal chain reaction of mental fascism, a quick reduction of the sets of allowed behaviors, thoughts, sentiments, moods and motivations which fostered a firestorm of stupidity, jealousy and viciousness throughout the Roman state, faithfully mimicking those of the Judeo-Christian God Himself… So, for example, when Valens launches against the Gothic camp his hot, thirsty, exhausted legions without proper reconnaissance and deployment, he acts furious, genocidal, righteous and jealous, just like the God who has invaded his feeble mind.

Yes, the Roman State collapsed under the terrible holocausts of multiple invasions. So, at first sight, the collapse of the empire has to do with encroaching barbarians, not the (then) ruling bishops.

But there is direct mental causality chain of increasingly irrational stupidity and darkening moods between Constantine’s Theocratic State and the invasions. Indeed, once Constantine ordered the burning of books, under the penalty of death, as part of what he called Catholicism, launching the concept, principle, and practice of prohibition of learning, and critique, such a mighty blow against intelligence made for generations of self-satisfied imbeciles… thus rendering the survival of the empire nearly impossible.

Because the survival of civilization depended, and depends, upon intelligence, abrasive intelligence, and one can’t have intelligence without reading books, and engaging other media, fiercely, especially those blossoming with ideas and emotions critical of established thinking.

Thus, should one want to keep civilization alive and well, censorship is never a good idea. (Yes the present system on the Internet, with the mobbing effects of “cancelling”, “likes” and “trends”, and selecting only those who are alike, are going against critical thinking, thus any thinking…)

All the more as, since emperor Diocletian, a few years before Constantine, God (“Sol Invictus”) had been made in the image of the emperor, Master (“Dominus”), Dominator, of the universe. And indeed, the leadership of the Roman empire (now known as the “Dominate”) proceeded to make a succession of aberrant decisions, steadily making the situation worse over the Fifth Century.

An example of idiotic decision: using the Huns, yes the Huns, as allies against the Goths, and others, thus giving to the Huns the knowledge and inclination to ransom the Roman empire ever more, and live off invasion and empire, as the Islamized Arab invaders would do in the Eight Century, under broadly similar circumstances… 

Some may prefer to speak about Islam, in light of the latest Islamist attacks in various countries, including Britain, France, and the USA. However, it is the exact same subject. Indeed, in case you ask, the system of thought of Constantine’s Catholicism directly led, three centuries later, to the genesis of Islam, and its most awful practices (the cousin of Muhammad who got the idea of Islam, was a professional Christian, the most famous in Arabia, and it had to do with Arianism, see below). In the West, Catholicism subjugation (Islam means subjugation to the same god as Constantine’s) was mitigated by the survival of the old secular Roman and Salic laws (both written in Latin; Roman secular law’s foundation was a millennium old by the time of Constantine’s birth).

Thought is the architecture of advanced life. Be it with individuals, tribes, and empires. Be it mammals, or birds. Trained Cormorants in Yunnan can bring 50 kilograms of fish a day. They can’t swallow, because of a tight collar. However, they expect a tasty reward every seven fishes. If they don’t get it, they go on strike. The collaboration between a fisher and a bird depends upon intelligence, and even a computation.

Smarts aren’t necessarily very smart: a video just released show an automatic car killing a pedestrian pushing a bike in Arizona. It was at night, 10 pm in winter, and the automatic car didn’t have its high beams on…which any safe driver would have had in such a case, driving on a dark road; I know the car has a LIDAR to see in the dark, but, this is where the nerds went wrong: two systems are safer than one. Learn, stupid programmers!

When Rome and the “Central State” (Zhong Guo, China) failed, it was because of a failure of high level thinking. Typically, the degeneracy of thought took generations to unfold (consider the Carolingians, and Tang or Qing China…).

Thought is the architecture of civilization. Thinking, debating together, is one of the main causes for the existence of cities.

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Abstract: CATHOLICISM WAS INVENTED, AND ESTABLISHED BY ROMAN EMPEROR CONSTANTINE, MOST VICIOUS MASS MURDER, AND IT SHOWS:

Here is my sword…Who Shall I kill Today, among those who I suspect want to displace me? Constantine’s Christian Terror Still Rule! (The beautiful statue above is from… 1998, it sits in front of York Cathedral; Constantine was proclaimed “Augustus”, supreme emperor, by his troops, in York, to Constantinople’s great rage…) This is a cute, boyish interpretation of Constantine’s face. The real thing was more frightening, imperial and domineering, with really ferocious eyes… The entire imperial court was afraid of Constantine when he was barely 16. He also fled the court to join his father in Britain at some point, in the sort of action James Bond himself won’t dare accomplish (Constantine respected “the king”… as long as it was himself…) See the sculpture below.

The historian Gibbon, an Englishman with a considerable bit of French Enlightenment mixed in, rightly accused Christianism to have caused the Fall of the Roman Empire (so the Catholics “prohibited” his famous “Decline and Fall of Rome”).

My point of view on the Decline and Fall doesn’t contradict Gibbon’s thesis, but put it in much more general malevolently degenerating context. Rome took six centuries to degenerate ever more (example of degeneracies in China often take many generations: the Tang went down over two centuries).

I believe that the rise of plutocracy in the Roman Republic led the fall of the latter, replacing it my the Principate (a kind of Republic with one man above all, first, the Princeps, the Prince; the system we have presently is similar. Princeps are Trump, Xi, Putin, Macron, Merkel, May, etc.; the German fürst is an imitation),

The problem is that a Principate works according to the Leader Principle (dear to Hitler as Führer Prinzip, Stalin, Mao, Xi), and smothers rebellious intelligence (China being right now an excellent example). So problems arise, which the state doesn’t have the intelligence to solve: as happened in Rome… Except through more authorianism. Indeed, after 300 years, the Principate turned into a Dominate, under Diocletian, who found Darius, or Stalin-like solutions. Diocletian retired, and was spectacularly succeeded by Constantine (who killed a number of his colleagues, including Lucinius, coldly assassinated in his prison cell, in 324CE).

Constantine imposed the rule of Christ, molding the Trinity God he connived, into a mysterious (Trinity, one as three), jealous, ferocious, omnipotent, vengeful, sadistic, cruel despot, just like him, justifying him and his tyrannic descendants reigning over, and propping up a morally, judicially, socially, politically, mentally and intellectually degenerating Rome!

Some will scoff, that, for example, what does the “jealous” god have to do with the fall of the empire? Because the “jealous” god was jealous of the ideas of all and any. Moreover the “jealousy” of “God” made jealousy a highly respectable emotion, thus one wants to duplicate. Hence emperor Valens, jealous of his highly victorious young nephew Gratian, emperor of the Western empire.

Ideas and emotions are highly contagious. Here is an example out of billions: After “Communist” Prince Ceausescu from Romania visited “Communist” Emperor Mao Tse Tung in China, he was so impressed, that he went back to Romania and established a dictatorship as bad as the one oppressing China. It ended up, with mass starvation, same as in Venezuela today, and for the same exact reason (Ceausescu and his wife Elena, who was jealous, malevolent, domineering, and head of the feared “Securitate”, the Secret Police, thus perhaps more powerful than her husband, were summarily executed, as deserved, when their rule was destroyed).

The officialization and sanctification of mental subjugation to plutocracy got started with the order, by emperor Constantine, of burning books which he didn’t like.

***

Catholic State’s Crimes & Terror:

After seven years of incarceration and torture, astronomer Giordano Bruno was tortured and burned alive by the Vatican, after piercing his palate with a blunt instrument, for alleging that the dots of light one sees in the sky on a clear night were other stars, some with other inhabited planets circling them, complete with men (burned 1600 CE).

This tragedy, testimony of the Christian horror which terrorized Europe for centuries is something that used to be well-known, Giordano Bruno was one case of many. In France alone, in the Sixteenth Century, smart, cultured noblewomen, printers, atheists, were burned alive for reading “prohibited” books. Thus setting back civilization (uppity women, uppity publishers, uppity thinkers were burned alive; those who were not, like Luther, Calvin, Rabelais and Montaigne, were extremely well-connected with, or instrumentalized by, the most powerful of the elite).

For example Buridan’s works were put at “Index Librorum Prohibitorum” in 1474 CE, hiding to history this giant of thought’s enormous contributions to physics, astronomy, mathematics, logics, or even politics… And thus disappearing these enormous advances from even the most advanced circles. All those who attribute heliocentrism to Copernicus are unwittingly collaborating with the fascist theocrats. To this day.

The penalty for having prohibited books was death. Everybody should know this, it’s a historical and moral point of the greatest importance. One has to know it, so as not to repeat it, say with the Islamofascists who have fascinated the so-called European left, since there are Nazis and they think (the Muslim Brotherhood of Tariq Ramadan’s grandfather was closely tied to Nazism; with sheer malevolence, the European pseudo-left, being deprived of Stalin and Mao, fell in love with Oxford Muslim propagandist Tariq Ramadan, a violent rapist prone to beating up women, finally at last jailed in France, after 20 years most loved by French TV and media…).

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Catholic State’s Ongoing Disinformation, Lies, Fake News About Its Own Crimes & Terror:

Then came a big surprise: as I checked Wikipedia, I was told the “Index” started a century later. That’s an obvious lie. Little Christian rats in the Vatican have been busy rewriting history, in the Internet, to further their miserable chewing up of reality into something more digestible to their gullible public.

As I checked around the Internet, googling away, I was so astounded by the amount of fake news, disinformation & outright lies from Catholic and Orthodox Churches, that I decided to write an essay on these rodents, lest the anti-civilizational plague they afflicted by further, and again, contaminate the innocent masses. Indeed a flurry of fake thinkers blathered in recent years, that Giordano Bruno had not been killed for his idea of exoplanets (he was). An article in Scientific American (March 2018) carefully examined the charges against Bruno:

“By analyzing all accusations, I found that the Inquisition’s strongest case against Bruno was, in fact, and contrary to the conventional wisdom, his belief in many worlds. It was the most frequently recurring charge. For example, one accuser testified that in prison one night Bruno brought a fellow prisoner “to the window and showed him a star, saying that it was a world and that all the stars were worlds.”

Thirteen times, in 10 depositions, six witnesses accused Bruno of believing in many worlds. No other accusation was invoked even half as much….. in nine books Bruno did assert his cosmology of many worlds. It was one of 10 propositions the inquisitors censured: “Again,” they wrote, “he posits many worlds, many suns, necessarily containing similar things in kind and in species as in this world, and even men… In 1597, Bruno was confronted by inquisitors, including  the authoritative theologian Robert Bellarmine. Bruno ‘was admonished to thus abandon his delusions of diverse worlds.’”

Nineteen years later, Inquisitor Bellarmine would go on to confront the extremely well-connected Galileo, personal friend of the Pope. Bruno, his palate pierced, was burned alive in 1600 CE.

***

The viciousness of Catholicism emanates from his author, Roman emperor Constantine:

Saint Constantine, emperor, inventor, Apostle, and murderer: I kill, therefore I am, just like the God of the Christians. If you have a problem with that, my sword will solve it, although I can get you legally executed, like my son the Caesar Crispus, who didn’t like my Catholicism, or I can get you steamed alive, like my second wife, who had displeased my mom, Saint Helena…

Killing for reading books displeasing Catholic authorities was started by the most vicious emperor Constantine, inventor of “Orthodox Catholicism” in 325 CE! Edicts to kill all “heretics”, those “who have made a choice” were ordained by sole Roman Emperor Theodosius I in 380 CE!

***

SAINT & EMPEROR CONSTANTINE STARTED TO KILL PEOPLE FOR HAVING BOOKS:

Wrote Constantine:”…Now this also I ordain,
that if any one shall be found secreting
any writing composed by Arius,
and shall not forthwith deliver up
and burn it with fire,
his PUNISHMENT SHALL BE DEATH…”
Constantine, one of the greatest criminals ever, is a saint of the Orthodox… (Christo-fascists attacked me on the Internet, specifically, Twitter, for telling the truth about mass murderer and serial killer, wife boiling Constantine, and then added, Christian style… “Sorry”, see in comments…)

Here his Constantine criminal megalomania in its entirety and in full context:

Preserved in Socrates Scholasticus’ Ecclesiastical History 1:9 and elsewhere, the following letter of sole Roman Emperor, Augustus Constantine, self-described as the “Thirteenth Apostle”, a so-called “Saint” of the Orthodox Church  contains explicit references to the banning and burning of books written by Porphyry, and that Porphyrian Arius of Alexandria immediately following the council of Nicaea, circa 325 CE. In his following letter to “Everybody”, Constantine classifies the “Prohibited Books” as:

(1) Evil, wicked, rebukable, rejectable, unlawful, and anti-Christian

(2) To be the subject of righteous destruction, along with their memory

(3) to attract the death penalty: if found in possession of any “banned books”

(4) The banned books and the heretics were to be dealt with by fire.

Here it is in its megalomaniac entirety:

“CONSTANTINE THE KING,

TO THE BISHOPS AND NATIONS EVERYWHERE:

“Inasmuch as Arius imitates the evil and the wicked,

it is right that, like them, he should be rebuked and rejected.

As therefore Porphyry, who was an enemy of the fear of God,

and wrote wicked and unlawful writings

against the religion of Christians,

found the reward which befitted him,

that he might be a reproach to all generations after,

because he fully and insatiably used base fame;

so that on this account his writings were righteously destroyed;

thus also now it seems good that Arius

and the holders of his opinion

should all be called Porphyrians,

that he may be named by the name

of those whose evil ways he imitates:

And not only this, but also

that all the writings of Arius,

wherever they be found,

shall be delivered to be burned with fire,

in order that not only

his wicked and evil doctrine may be destroyed,

but also that the memory of himself

and of his doctrine may be blotted out,

that there may not by any means

remain to him remembrance in the world.

Now this also I ordain,

that if any one shall be found secreting

any writing composed by Arius,

and shall not forthwith deliver up

and burn it with fire,

his punishment shall be death;

for as soon as he is caught in this

he shall suffer capital punishment

by beheading without delay.”

So much for the goodness of “Saint” Constantine.

Speak as you wish, little Patrice! Catholicism survived me 17 centuries! Me, Constantine, I am God, I decide who God is, you are nothing! And, anyway, you owe your 21st century to me!Instead my thesis is that, as soon as book burning Catholicism was in power, the Roman empire was condemned. In China, the prohibition of “one hundred philosophical schools”, and the destruction of related books (but not of historical, accounting, science and tech books) preceded only by a few years the destruction of the Qin dynasty, which had just unified China (greatly, I believe, like Rome, from respect for the law; the state of Qin had blossom for centuries, its swift demise after prohibition of variegated thought is no accident; however, in that case, the replacement regime, the Han, immediately pursued the Chinese “central state”, whereas Rome fell to thoroughly destructive invaders…)

What Gibbon said about Augustus, Rome’s first tyrant, mostly hold for Constantine, with just two details vastly different:

“The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of Cicero, and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

One difference: Constantine replaced the Republican Constitution, what was left of it, by  that Catholicism he had invented. The other difference: Constantine was no coward, but just the opposite. (oh, by the way, the Vatican put Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, on its “Index” of its “Prohibited books“)

***

What does this all mean? The place of the Logos! Thus of Tyranny!

Arius clearly argued that the Logos had a beginning and that the “Son” (the mythical creature so-called “Jesus Christ”), therefore, was not eternal. Moreover, and more importantly, the Son is clearly subordinate to the Father, the Logos being the highest of the Created Order.

In other words, when logic confronts Jesus, logic should win!

In particular, when logic confronts the tyrant, the Roman emperor, Constantine, logic should win!

No wonder the fascist murderous tyrant Constantine, who had just invented “Catholic Orthodoxy” (translation: “Common Sense Universalism”), was upset, and couldn’t let it be. Bishop Arius (of Berber origin) was dismissed and exiled. But he had a huge support throughout the world of Christians. Upon returning to Constantinople, in 335 CE, Arius was apparently poisoned (a violent “descent of his small intestines” having affected him suddenly).

I am not making this up from secondary sources, like a vulgar Internet parrot, but from my own reading, as like Arius’ god, I tend to be a primordial being. Here it is:

…”ἡ σοφία σοφία ὑπῆρξε σοφοῦ θεοῦ θελήσει. (Wisdom came to be Wisdom by the will of the Wise God.)

επινοεῖται γοῦν μυρίαις ὅσαις ἐπινοίαις πνεῦμα, δύναμις, σοφία, (Hence he is conceived in innumerable aspects. He is Spirit, Power, Wisdom,)

δόξα θεοῦ, ἀλήθειά τε καὶ εἰκὼν καὶ λόγος οὗτος. (God’s glory, Truth, Image, and Word.)

σύνες ὅτι καὶ ἀπαύγασμα καὶ φῶς ἐπινοεῖται (Understand that he is also conceived of as Radiance and Light.)”

***

THE FALL OF ROME INTO STUPEFYING STUPIDITY:

Forbidding books is NEVER a good idea. Either a book is not terrible, and it shouldn’t be censored, or it is, really, terrible. If the latter, it shouldn’t be censored either, as it is a testimony of the terrible ideas and emotions people can have, and, thus, a warning and a data set. (However categorisation, plausibility and significance indexes should be assigned, whenever possible, as I argued; not a question of censorship, but of providing some assistance to the unsupported reader…)

Things went quickly from bad to worse: under the pretext of Christianity, all creative though was “making a choice” (which is what “heresy” means), punishable by death by burning, typically. The formidable Qin dynasty quickly succumbed after its own book burning…

***

Civilization is, first of all, a mental phenomenon, and plutocracy attacks minds, to subjugate them:

Plutocracy, the power (kratos) of the Dark Side (“Pluto”!), the Invisible Side (Pluto could make himself invisible) over society, an exponential disaster, has struck many times Rome, Egypt, China, France. It rots intelligence, individually, and socially. Plutocracy happened to Venice, Baghdad, Florence, Spain (chronically, starting with Ferdinand and Isabella), 17th, 18th century France, the German Second Reich (twice). Mental decay implies political, moral and then strategic decay, military defeat, extermination, or revolution.

Paradoxically, economic decay doesn’t necessarily follow plutocracy, far from it: consider Great Britain, which thrived in the 18th century under a plutocracy so strong, revolution was avoided, differently from the US and France. But, in Britain, soldiers and sailors could die from flogging (differently from the French and American armies, where the practice had been stopped).

Archeology of the Roman empire, pioneered by the work of a French archaeologist in the 1950s, has SHOCKINGLY demonstrated clearly in the case of Rome that the economy was thriving, prior to the invasions by bloody savages determined to kill as many as they could, to avoid the Roman authorities military backlash (the smart idea of the bloody savages, considering their small numbers, was to deprive of men and taxes the potentially massive Roman counter-attack: the invading Germans and Huns after 406 CE did this deliberately, so did the Arab Muslims of the first Caliphs…)

Both around 406 CE, when the Western empire collapsed, under Germanic and Hunnic pressures, and under the Muslim aggression started by Muhammad himself, the local economy and demography was at its peak, when the invasions occurred… And it is why they happened, actually!

The exact phenomenon was at play when the Carolingian empire, or what was left of it, was attacked by the Hungarians, the Vikings, and the Muslims. As in the case of Rome, original version, enormous internal fighting (plutocracy at work!) made the invasions possible. As in the case of Rome, an enormous collapse ensued, especially from the Scandinavian invasions: Western France, dismayed by the inability and apparent unwillingness of the imperial army to defend the core of Western France, exploded in 60 states, after subjugating the Viking; however Charlemagne’s Roman empire, Saxon led version(!) was able to throw out both Hungarians and Islamists (Eastern Rome helped for the latter)  

The same happened clearly in the case of Egypt, or China’s Song dynasty. Actually the Jurchen in 1127 and then the Mongols invaded China in 1237 CE, just when new rice cultivars enabled a doubling of production, hence population. One lends to the wealthy, one also invades the wealthy: that’s where the money is. It happened to Egypt, Babylon, Rome, China, Aztecs, Incas. The massive illegal immigration flux into the European Union is an example.

***

Conclusion: Rome fell militarily (twice: once in the West, from Germans and Huns, circa 406 CE; and then in the East, from the Islamists in the Seventh Century). Military collapse was one consequence of political collapse, itself a consequence of mental collapse.

Emperor Constantine, and his imperial successors (Julian excepted) were looking for a metaphysical justification for their bloody rule, and a way to make it sustainable, while, added bonus with a dreadful consequence, making all their subjects stupid. (Yes the present state of the Internet makes people more stupid than they should be, and even dangerously stupid; I have proposed remedies, such as a government of We The People sanctioned voluntary validity and significance ratings…)

The Roman tyrants found, in the invention of Catholicism, the ideal weapon against intelligence and creative minds. However, the first most significant effect was military collapse: first, with Valens god-like jealousy bringing the crucial defeat of Hadrianopolis, second when British legions revolted, defeating Gratian, and then killing him in Lyon, the bottom line was hatred with Gratian’s ways, the imposition of Catholicism (“Nicene” faith). Magnus Maximus became emperor.

When Magnus Maximus lost to Theodosius, five years later, Britain and part of Gaul became practically independent and fell off the empire. Details are important: emperor Maximus’s edict of 387 or 388 which censured Christians at Rome for burning down a Jewish synagogue, was condemned by Milan’s bishop Ambrose, who exclaimed: ‘the emperor has become a Jew’. Ambrose, patron Saint of Milan, was no doubt, malevolent by 1946, Nuremberg tribunal standards… I propose to demote him as a Saint…

Saint Ambrose was the deus ex-machina of several emperors. You look for Hitler? Contemplate bishop Ambrose! (One of the so-called “Doctors of the Church”… The notion of “Doctor of the Church” itself is dissembling, as the true father, the self-described “13th Apostle, was Constantine!.. )  And yes, it connects to the burning of G. Bruno: the Catholic church, the world’s oldest institution is very consistent with itself: in 384 A.D. the belief in many worlds was categorized as heretical by Philaster, Bishop of Brescia, in his Book on Heresies. This condemnation was echoed by subsequent hateful Catholic authorities, including Saints Jerome, Augustine and Isidore.

All of this can be repeated today. The monopolies of some media outfits, and the governmental manipulations of public opinions they bring inaugurate, should they persist, a little Dark Age. However, in the thermonuclear age, a little darkness will go a long way… The considerable darkness of the Catholic Church has gone a very long way. Its malevolent descendancy was not just crusades such as against the cathars (millions massacred), and centuries of terror, Inquisition, and religious wars, but even the creation of Islam (directly inspired and launched by a Catholic monk, cousin of Muhammad’s wife…).

Some may say it was all a mistake, a good Christianism, not book-burning Catholicism, could have been devised. However, the omnipotent god is obviously not omnigood, or then suffering is good (as Christ said, squirming on his cross in ecstasy). Yes, suffering is good, said Constantine, and for reading books Constantine doesn’t like, Constantine shall be good to you, and burn you. Amen. 69 years later, the empire was collapsing beyond repair as several small tribes streaked through the dumbstruck empire, destroying all in their path….

Patrice Aymé

***

Some technical notes:

A (Small and Partial) Depiction of Rage And Destruction of Antiquity By Savage Roman Emperors:

Constantine is probably the emperor who killed the most of his closest relatives and friends… (And Constantine had lots of competition, in the realm of relatives’ massacres from Claudius, Nero, Commodus…) Constantine unified the empire and imposed the intrinsically fascist and violent religion known as that of Christ. But truly that Christian violence was enacted by Constantine,

Constantius II, Gratian, Theodosius I, all tyrants, so-called “emperors” who buried Rome, or, at least, the Roman spirit, what was left of it.

Late in his reign Constantine ordered the pillaging and the tearing down of pagan temples, in particular the Temple of Aphrodite in the Lebanon. Constantine ordered the execution of eunuch priests in Egypt.

His son, Constantius II passed laws dating in the 350s ordering the death penalty for those who performed or attended pagan sacrifices, and for the worshipping of idols. After the unfortunate death of Julian in an ill conceived war in Mesopotamia, the army scrambled to nominate Jovian as emperor, and the burning of libraries became systematic (363 CE). “Men In Black” (monks) would destroy the libraries, for example in Alexandria.

Gratian played a major role encouraging raging Christian superstition: like his uncle Valens, he took advice from the ilk of (“Saint”) Ambrose, bishop of Milan (and so would Theodosius). However, he dressed too much like a Scythian (meta group including the Huns), and an insurrection from Britain defeated him in Paris, killing him in Lyon. Gratian had selected Theodosius as co-emperor. Theodosius reiterated Constantine’s ban on pagan sacrifice and haruspicy on pain of death. He criminalized and punished magistrates who did not enforce the anti-pagan laws. He broke up pagan associations and temples.

Between 389-391 Theodosius imposed the infamous “Theodosian decrees,” which established a practical ban on paganism: visits to the temples were forbidden, remaining pagan holidays were abolished (although Christ’s birth was moved from Spring to the Winter Solstice, the Saturnials, so the Saturnials won Christ over!) The Sacred fire of Vesta in the Temple of Vesta in the Roman Forum was extinguished, the Vestal Virgins disbanded, auspices and witchcraft punished. Theodosius refused to restore the Altar of Victory in the Senate House when asked to do so by pagan Senators.

In 392 Theodosius became sole emperor of the whole empire. He authorized or participated in the killing of pagan priests, destruction of many temples, holy sites, images and objects of reverence throughout the empire. The Franks Arbogast (military head of the Western empire) led a rebellion against Theodosius’ mad Christianism… But was defeated by a hurricane wind blowing the wrong way, on the second day of a crucial battle.

Theodosius later decrees were effectively an extermination of tradition. Anyone caught practicing the ancient cults, was killed, his or her property confiscated, even for private familial rites within the privacy of a home. Many covertly still chose to do so in defiance of the edicts, despite the risk to themselves and their heirs. As a symbol of his wanton rage and destruction, Theodosius also cancelled the Ancient Olympic Games; the last record of the Olympics being celebrated in Greece is from 393 CE.

***

The Edict of Thessalonica was jointly issued by Theodosius I, Gratian, and (nine years old!) Valentinian II on 27 February 380:

The edict came after Theodosius had been baptized by the bishop Ascholius of Thessalonica upon suffering a severe illness in Thessalonica. Like the modern French (and Americans, Romans loved abbreviations). I reproduce it as it was, this depicts well the authoritative mentality imposed on  “We The People”. Actually, such a notion has disappeared, all what are left are “populos” (“nations”) which are ruled (“regit”) by our “clemency” (“clementiae”): in other words, the “populos” are ruled by “imperators” who are gentle, placid, mild… Just like the Christian God.

IMPPP. GR(ATI)IANUS, VAL(ENTINI)ANUS ET THE(O)D(OSIUS) AAA. EDICTUM AD POPULUM VRB(IS) CONSTANTINOP(OLITANAE).

Cunctos populos, quos clementiae nostrae regit temperamentum, in tali volumus religione versari, quam divinum Petrum apostolum tradidisse Romanis religio usque ad nunc ab ipso insinuata declarat quamque pontificem Damasum sequi claret et Petrum Aleksandriae episcopum virum apostolicae sanctitatis, hoc est, ut secundum apostolicam disciplinam evangelicamque doctrinam patris et filii et spiritus sancti unam deitatem sub pari maiestate et sub pia trinitate credamus. Hanc legem sequentes Christianorum catholicorum nomen iubemus amplecti, reliquos vero dementes vesanosque iudicantes haeretici dogmatis infamiam sustinere ‘nec conciliabula eorum ecclesiarum nomen accipere’, divina primum vindicta, post etiam motus nostri, quem ex caelesti arbitro sumpserimus, ultione plectendos.

DAT. III Kal. Mar. THESSAL(ONICAE) GR(ATI)ANO A. V ET THEOD(OSIO) A. I CONSS.

EMPERORS GRATIAN, VALENTINIAN AND THEODOSIUS AUGUSTI. EDICT TO THE PEOPLE OF CONSTANTINOPLE.

It is our desire that all the various nations which are subject to our clemency with moderation, should continue to profess that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition, and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title of Catholic Christians; but as for the others, SINCE, IN OUR JUDGMENT THEY ARE FOOLISH MADMEN, WE DECREE THAT THEY SHALL BE BRANDED WITH THE IGNOMINIOUS NAME OF HERETICS, and shall not presume to give to their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of the divine condemnation and in the second the punishment of our authority which in accordance with the will of Heaven we shall decide to inflict.

GIVEN IN THESSALONICA ON THE THIRD DAY FROM THE CALENDS OF MARCH, DURING THE FIFTH CONSULATE OF GRATIAN AUGUSTUS AND FIRST OF THEODOSIUS AUGUSTUS[4]

— Codex Theodosianus, xvi.1.2

Why The ROMAN STATE COLLAPSED (Part I; Plus Contemporary Analogy)

The climate is, and will, collapse incredibly fast, at some point in the near future. Same, potentially, for civilization.

The hints of climate collapse are in, they are piling all over. Irma, a hurricane packing recorded gusts of 363 kilometers an hour appeared. It got enormous: 330,000 square kilometers. At the same time, hurricane Katia attacked the Caribbean coast of Mexico. Behind Irma, Jose, a category 4 hurricane, nearly as nasty as Irma. When things collapse, they collapse fast: think of the proverbial Twin Towers of “9/11” twisting, turning and leaning, and then down in 8 seconds. This is what happens during a transition to a new equilibrium. 

Collapses of civilizations have happened many times before. The most famous case, by far, is Rome. Roman society was the most complex, and the one most similar to the world civilization we have today. It collapsed, and it was first a psychological collapse.

Rome collapsed amazingly fast. Early in 379 CE, there was a refugee crisis, caused by a million Goths (including women and children) begging to enter the empire. The empire was at the height of its powers. By 406 CE, the empire had collapsed. The one million Goths  had been allowed to enter the Roman empire. Under the condition of coming, unarmed. They cheated. Disaster ensued.

By 400 CE, though, a German Confederation, the Franks, had been put in charge of insuring the defense of the two Germania and the richest Roman province, Gallia (Gaul). In 406 CE, the Frankish curtain broke when the Rhine surprisingly froze, and many tiny German nations broke through Gaul, and even Spain and North Africa. By 410 CE, the city of Rome herself had been conquered by the Goths.

The Vandals, with 40,000 warriors, went quickly all the way to the Roman province of Africa, where they established a maritime empire, comprising the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Malta (439 CE)… 

The Great Barbarian Invasions By Tiny German Nations Were Preceded By Roman Mental Collapse of the “Antifa” Type. Situation in 435 CE, after 29 Years of Invasions.

The Romans tried to dislodge the Vandals many times, but failed. In 455 CE, the Vandals sacked Rome (their fleet just went up the Tiber). Having seized control of the sea, the Vandals were able to control and cut the grain supply to the city of Rome (and much grain came from North Africa). This starved Rome, and the population collapsed. The Vandal empire would last more than a century, until an army sent there by Roman emperor Justinian defeated them.

By the late Fifth Century, Italy had fallen under the control of the Ostrogoths (who were relatively benign, except they killed the president of the Roman Senate, the philosopher Boethius; the king of the Ostrogoths had believed, erroneously, some lies about Boethius, he later bemoaned).

Emperor Justinian, the same one I just mentioned, decided to grab back Italy, and, in particular, Rome. The city was lost and taken several times. Ultimately, Oriental Romans won, and the Ostrogoths got annihilated (I say “Oriental Romans” because “Byzantine”, is an erroneous concept and word I try not to use: the Romans were calling themselves Romans, not “Byzantines”; the Romans had selected Byzantium as Oriental Capital; Byzantium, an ancient Greek city, had not selected them). However being besieged many times destroyed the city of Rome. Especially, most of her aqueducts. It was said that there was just one individual observed living in the ruins.

In ancient historiography, the Roman empire is described as declining, and then falling. However, the bias may have been introduced by the Christians, who controlled which books were worth saving. Christians hated (the) Greco-Roman civilization (which had created them), and were crucial to its demise, with the supine mentality which they promoted. So they committed a crime, and had interest to present the victim, civilization, as so decrepit, they had nothing to do with it. In truth, their fanaticism helped bring down a thriving civilization.

This is a clear bias, not supported by recent archeology. Archeology shows that the Roman State was actually richer, and more powerful, just before it collapsed. On the face of it, the army was the largest Rome ever had. Roma was much powerful in 379 CE than it had been, facing Hannibal. By a factor of ten. Rome should have been able to rise armies numbering millions in 379 CE (because a ten, or twenty times smaller Rome was able to rise armies numbering hundreds of thousands, facing Hannibal, or the German invasion around 110 BCE, by the Cimbri, Teutones and Ambrones!) The difference between the Punic and Cimbrian wars, when the Roman Republic faced annihilation, and the Germanic invasions of the Fifth Century, when it didn’t (the Germans being then half-civilized and anxious to become Romans), was mood. The Roman mood.

So what happened? How come that mightiest Roman army ever could be defeated, again and again and again, or shrink from battle? The Goth refugees had done whatever was needed (such as prostituting their wives and daughters, on an industrial scale) to keep their weapons. Mistreated by corrupt local Roman official, so corrupt that they didn’t take basic military precautions, the Goths, ably led by a charismatic leader, Fritigern, rebelled.

The Collapse of the Roman empire was sudden. This is the situation around 440 CE.

Emperor Valens rushed from Mesopotamia with the Oriental Roman field army. Thanks to an hubris reminiscent of that French generals around May 13, 1940, Valens rushed its dehydrated, exhausted army into battle on a hot August day, without having figured out where the mighty Gothic cavalry was.  The Occidental Roman army chief of staff, the Frankish general Richomeres  advised Valens to wait until the Occidental army arrived. The Oriental Roman field army was annihilated, Valens killed (in unclear circumstances). Richomeres kept discipline and saved part of the force (he would later become head of the army in the Orient, magister militum per Orientem, and a Consul).

We have some of the ingredients of the fall of Rome there: dictatorship by the emperor not listening to advice, and most of the top military genius of the empire having to do with Frankish generals.

The Roman State was severely defeated at Adrianopolis in 379 CE. That battle, against the Goths, was reminiscent of the massacre of Cannae, 600 years before. Cannae was a tremendous Roman defeat originating straight from Hannibal’s genius. Roman legions, including 60 Senators found themselves so compressed by Hannibal’s army of mercenaries, that they couldn’t fight: they had been drawn to the center by Hannibal himself, at the head of his Gallic troops. Adrianopolis was more of the same. However, whereas Hannibal was crafty at Cannae, the Romans were stupid at Adrianopolis.

After Cannae, the Romans rose another two large armies, and Scipio “Africanus” landed the main one in Africa, next to Carthage. . After Adrianopolis, the Romans didn’t rise a new army so much as they showed Constantinople to the Gothic king, who was mesmerized. The Goth thus decided to make peace. And to celebrate so much, that he died from it (his successor honored the accord).  

Clearly, by the end of the Fourth Century, the immensely wealthy empire, much richer than Rome six centuries earlier, was able to rise armies (hence the systematic recourse to Frankish armies, forces and general; even emperor Constantine had a crucial battle won by the Frankish general Bonitus; another Frankish general, Arbogast, was emperor in all but name, as he tried a secular, laic counter-coup).

This lack of armies explains why the empire of more than 60 millions was defeated by tiny German armies (the Goths had by far the largest army, around 100,000 men).

Gibbon would perhaps point out that the Christian mentality was antagonistic to war. Right. Actually the Christian bishops were heading the empire by 400 CE (this government of bishops had started under Gratian, when he became weird after Adrianopolis; maybe he was weird because he had to name Theodosius emperor of the Orient; Gratian was barely 20, Theodosius, 33, and accomplished, however his father had been executed earlier for high treason…).

The Late Roman empire had become a very strange place. While the Germans threatened to roam all over the place, with their own Sharia (although they were Aryan Christian, but for the Franks, who were obdurate Pagans), the bishops declared that murderous highwaymen should not be executed (so the roads became impassible).

All this weirdness was there to hide the main fact: the Roman plutocrats prefered experiencing German invasions to paying taxes to the Roman State, to feed the prodigious army Rome could have had, and the Roman plutocrats had the means to NOT pay taxes by influencing people and blocking others. They married the invaders, and that was it.

Does this remind you of today?

It should!

Meanwhile, Trump operated a 180 degrees (long announced). He announced a deal with his new-found friends “Nancy and Chuck”. The buxom Nancy Pelosi has headed the Democrats in Congress since before 2006 (when she acquired control of Congress); “Chuck” is the head of the Democratic Senators. So the rising of the US debt ceiling was passed (it had been attached to 20 billion dollars heading to the relief of Houston). I wonder if all those who called racist whoever had a nice word about some aspects of Trump, will now direct their fury towards “Nancy and Chuck”. Probably not: too complicated for their simple minds.

To come back to Late Imperial Rome, all the wealthiest families had a bishop in their ranks: Christianism was a smokescreen for plutocracy. Among plutocratic families, Christian propaganda was basic civic service. By superficially embracing Christianism, and imposing it deeply, plutocracy made We The People into We the Sheeple.

The empire, in tatters, rose again thanks to the Franks, but the destruction caused by the collapse was beyond a force 8 hurricane. Because the minds, the rational, republican, democratic culture, had collapsed so entirely.

It would take seven centuries for civilization to rise higher. Even then, it got poisoned again by the second plutocratic wave known, with misleading semantics, as the “Feudal” system. That rose again with a second Christianization wave known for the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Religious Wars,and various terrors, which wrecked Europe for another eight centuries after 1026 CE (when burnings for “heresy” got launched again, after centuries without.)

More than 200 potential or known causes for the Decline and Fall of Rome have been listed. The plutocratic explanation therein suggested implies them all, so it is the master explanation.

Why was the collapse of the Roman state so thorough and so fast? Contemplate the present North Korean crisis. Suppose it would evolved in the way most unfavorable to civilization: Kim threatens the West, atom bomb a few cities, like Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Paris, London, and then one makes a treaty with him, and North Korean and Jihadists become the overlords, under special laws applying to them alone. Meanwhile the “antifa” are in charge of the justice, police and military systems and impose to not fight crime in any form.

This is roughly what happened to the Roman state, and it happened within a few years. At the time, some Romans were indignant, and tried to react, to prevent the Decline and Fall of the Roman State. Maximus in Britain led his legions into Gaul, defeated (next to Paris) and killed emperor Gratian (in Lyon), because Gratian was roaming around dressed like a Scythian, and had put the Catholic bishops in power. Maximus became Augustus, and Theodosius had to live with him. Yet, the rot within average minds was already too deep.

The facts above are mostly ignored in the major universities, because such facts would disrupt them by disrupting their major sponsor, the plutocratic system, which feeds so well the top university leaders (they earn up to 2 million dollars a year in the USA). Still we, humble philosophers, shall obstinately preach the truths, just because they are there, and need to be conquered even more than the highest imaginable mountains.

Patrice Ayme