I'm wary of doing US/Rome analysis online because it's so hard to capture the nuance and/or avoid actively unhelpful 'Western civ' tropes. But 'reallocating money that intended for the public good and spending it on propaganda in the form of statues' has real 'ancient Rome (derogatory)' vibes to me - ThreadSky

rhigarthjones.bsky.social • 1 day ago

I'm wary of doing US/Rome analysis online because it's so hard to capture the nuance and/or avoid actively unhelpful 'Western civ' tropes.

But 'reallocating money that intended for the public good and spending it on propaganda in the form of statues' has real 'ancient Rome (derogatory)' vibes to me

Reposted from Miriam Posner

They’re taking *our* investment—the money that we spent months writing grants for, the hours and hours we all spent reviewing each others’ work, the money that was supposed to go to libraries and community groups—and blowing it on this nonsense.

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turnitup5000db.bsky.social•1 day ago

Masturbatory proclamations and celebrations of greatness are generally an alarm bell I think. Healthy societies seem to have better things to do with their time, focus and resources.

rhigarthjones.bsky.social•1 day ago

The Founding Fathers openly based their ideas for the new republic on their *idea* of the ancient Roman Republican – and, in many ways, they created a society that was quite like ancient Rome, just not in ways we would now generally consider to be positive...

rhigarthjones.bsky.social•1 day ago

Proclaiming liberty for elite men while others were enslaved, violently conquering land to 'civilise barbarians', keeping government roles to a small circle of men, limiting the vote by property, wealth, and gender – these are things we can find in both the Roman Republic and the early USA.

rhigarthjones.bsky.social•1 day ago

Similarly, obsessing over the 'decline' of society and passing laws that restrict who can worship freely, that restrict the rights of women, and other minority groups – there are plenty of comparisons we an make between this current US government and the Roman Republic.

rhigarthjones.bsky.social•1 day ago

To be clear: I think this is bad. I think it was bad then and it's bad now. So did many people who lived in these societies! Lots of ancient Romans criticised a lot of this stuff, as did lots of people in the early USA.

In my opinion, neither of these societies are good models to try to emulate.

rhigarthjones.bsky.social•1 day ago

But there is a reason that the fascists of the early-mid 20th century so often found inspiration in ancient Rome and there is a reason the current US government finds inspiration there too: it was a brutal empire that kept power and wealth in the hands of a few elite men.

rhigarthjones.bsky.social•1 day ago

Then and now, they got/get a lot wrong about the aspects of ancient Rome that they *claim* to be imitating and taking inspiration from but this is one thing they got/get right – and it is definitely where the appeal really lies, imo.

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