How About NASCAR Races in the Roman Colosseum?

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
When Newsweek magazine surveyed the industrialized nations of the world last summer to determine what country provided an individual “the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous, and upwardly mobile life” and named Finland, I had that uneasy feeling that our neighborhood was going to remain in decline. And we didn’t get squeezed out of first place in the survey. We ended up in eleventh place, way out of the money. What kind of country will our grandchildren live in, that is, unless they move to one of the ten better ones?

I decided to go back and hit the sources of why the Roman Empire, which at one time ruled what was the known world, took only 320 years to completely decline. I suspect that when the United States goes under it will be a lot quicker. Why Rome declined is one of the great historical questions. The 18th century English historian Edward Gibbon in his “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” catalogued many reasons for its fall and probably is still the authority. Many other historians have tackled the question: as late as 1984 German historian Alexander Demandt published a collection of 210 theories for the fall.
Some Unique Parallels Between the Fall of Rome and Our Fall From First to Eleventh in World Ranking
There are striking parallels why Rome fell on September 4, 476 and why we seem to be in steady decline in late October 2010. After Julius and Augustus Caesar seized power and turned Rome from a republic to a monarchy in the second century, they advanced money to the “barbarians” in the territories to buy influence and armies. I suppose we could call it nation-building and foreign aid in our time.

Think Pakistan and Columbia and our billions for a minute. Think Iraq and Afghanistan and our trillions for an hour. As the Roman Empire multiplied exponentially in size shortly after the time of Christ, it took a huge budget to build roads and aqueducts, the key elements in the survival of empires. 

In 2010 we have 700 military bases overseas in 120 countries—with a huge budget.

As Rome expanded it was fighting “barbarians” all over what is now Europe and the Middle East. Rome had to increase taxes at home and abroad to maintain these forces, which not only caused inflation, but also economic stress through the “colonies” and Rome itself. A parallel might be made in that the United States now spends more for offensive and defensive military equipment and personnel than the rest of the world combined. Our navy has more ships than the combined fleets of the other top ten navies. Why?
The Romans Hired Mercenaries –And So Do We
Gibbon blamed the decline of Rome on the growth of Christianity, the loss of what he called “civic virtue,” and the fact that Rome hired mercenaries from all of their captured lands to defend an incredible hunk of territory. The mercenaries finally turned on them when the Romans grew fat and lazy. Think of our “all-volunteer” armed forces, mostly “volunteered” from failing small towns and poor families in our fly-over lands, fatally searching for the “American Dream.” 

Bob Herbert of the New York Times in “The Way We Treat Our Troops” reminds me of the ways imperial Rome treated its mercenary armies. Rome equipped them poorly near the end of empire, provided cruel and arrogant leadership, and failed to pay barbarians looking for a “dream” in Middle East deserts.

Herbert uses the combat death of Army Sgt. First Class Lance Vogeler while he was serving his 12th combat tour as an example of how our declining nation treats its mercenaries.

I served as a Marine Corps line officer when the Marines did not have a draft – but we had a lot of Marines who “volunteered” for the Marines to escape the Army draft. We desperately need the constant bitching and fragging by draftees to end stupid, unnecessary, corrupt, and futile wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan. We need to draft the sons and daughters of congressmen and corporate CEOs in order to strangle the military-industrial complex in its greedy search for wealth and power.

Let the Phelps family of the Topeka, Kansas Baptist Church surround the cemetery when the daughter of the senate majority leader is buried with military honors. Then watch the Republican Supreme Court.

We have been involved in wars for the last decade, forcing our “volunteer” troops to serve three, four, five tours in 24/7 urban and rural combat. We should either declare victory right now and go home, or call for a ten-million man military draft and get these wars over with.

Vogeler was 29, married, and the father of two children with his wife expecting their third. Are we telling his family he didn’t give enough yet?
320,000 Veterans With Shattered Brains
Our Army is cracking up. Record numbers of soldiers are killing themselves. Record numbers are coming back from their multiple tours with serious brain injuries that require lifetime treatment costing trillions. The estimate is now up to 320,000 with shattered brains–with thousands more to come. What does it cost to take care of a young man or woman who can’t think for the next 65 years?  Stressed out soldiers are overwhelming the capacity of professional shrinks. And we are beginning to medicate depressed and despondent soldiers in the war zones and pushing them back to 24/7 combat. We are turning ourselves into barbarians.
Gibbons and the Lack of Civic Virtue
Gibbon summarized his study of the Roman decline with this all-encompassing message: “The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.”  Your lesson for the day is to read it again and draw parallels with what today’s politicians are talking about.

Perhaps Gibbon’s most salient point is that Rome fell because of the loss of “civic virtue.” This loss of virtue can best be explained by reviewing the events schedule in the Colosseum.

We think the gladiators in combat to the death took the center stage, but a very diverse program of festivals, animal hunting, human hunting, criminal executions and crucifixions, the rape of women by animals, gladiators fighting man-eating beasts, public torture of petty criminals, and NASCAR-type chariot racing ended up being the Improvised Entertainment Devices (IED) that destroyed the brains of the Roman populace. Many festivals lasted as long as 100 days.

Roman politicians came up with some entertaining ways to execute “criminals,” with all executions taking place at high noon during a “break” in the regular entertainment. Some were beheaded, although you had to be a Roman citizen for this quick method. Non-citizens were crucified. Some were thrown to wild animals who ate them on scene. Others were tortured before being executed by fire.

Criminals and Christians were bound by the feet to the tails of wild horses and dragged to death or beaten to death by other inmates. Some were pressed to death between red-hot iron plates. I suppose very few young people have seen the exciting chariot races in the movie “Ben Hur.” These races were held on the Colosseum track with chariots designed to destroy other chariots, often ending in the death of horses and drivers.
What’s So Exciting About Watching Rednecks Turn Left on a NASCAR Racetrack?
I’m convinced that NASCAR races are a sure sign we are in decline. The image of beer-guzzling Rednecks sitting in racetrack stands watching other Rednecks constantly turning left while running into each other does not trumpet civilization’s greatness. NASCAR’s fan base of 75 million is second only to gladiating pro footballers.

If you ever see me at the movie “The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” please shoot me on the spot because I will be in the fifth stage of dementia. Heck, anybody with $30 million can now run a car on the NASCAR tracks, particularly when the lowest-priced ticket is $93 bucks.  I do have a question for NASCAR lovers.  When computer-controlled technology takes over cars in the event of an imminent collision, guaranteeing there will never be another wreck on a NASCAR track, how many will pay $93 or more to see a good, clean race?
Leaving All the Children Behind
A cartoon in a recent New Yorker magazine helps to label the last decade. A naked man wearing only glasses is sitting on a tree branch with a can of peaches next to him. The caption is: “I swear, if someone told me ten years ago I’d be sitting naked on a tree limb talking to a can of peaches in syrup, I’d have said they were crazy.”  That’s the kind of crazy decade coming to an end.

In a short decade we have seen the dumbing down of American culture because of the use of a 19th century assembly-line educational program called Leave No Child Behind. We have dropped the humanities of literature, art, music, and language in favor of vocational math and science.

Of course, jobs are nice things to have, but understanding the lives we live makes life worth living. Louis Menand of the Harvard English Department summarizes the point of education in his book “The Marketplace of Ideas”: “The humanities teach something. Their subject matter is culture, and since everything human beings do is mediated by culture–by language, by representations, by systems of values and beliefs–knowing how to understand other languages, interpret cultural expressions, and evaluate belief systems is as indispensable to functioning effectively in the professional world as knowing how to use a computer.”
Gawking and Gagging at Lady Gaga, the Celebrity Representing Our Decline
There is no doubt we are in a cultural decline. Witness the gawking and gagging at the meat-dressed Lady Gaga or the conical breasts of Madonna. Witness Sarah Palin testifying in speech and interview that educated people are suspect. Her main theme seems to be that celebrity trumps intellect and education—and is certainly more profitable than governing.

The city of New York is the site of numerous “Wealth Clubs” made up of those stretching toward multi-billionaire status. The main topic at meetings is how to make more. The eligible participants meet for a whole day each month to study money management, how to bequeath adequate sums to their children, and how to solve the problems huge fortunes can create.

The wealth clubs are made up of insatiable Wall Street bankers and investors who are on financial steroids.  They use credit default swaps and derivatives to fill their own pockets instead of working for the community. They often meet in first-class hotels miles away from New York public schools where the students have to go a full day without a bathroom break because the toilets are broken in their schools.

With the emphasis on wealth, no wonder we are turning universities into vocational schools rather than centers for learning about nourishing and developing a culture.

The signs of our cultural decline are everpresent. It’s a fact that an eleven-year old elementary school cheerleader was tossed off the squad because she didn’t shake her ass and grind her pelvis enough.

In a desperate attempt to bamboozle youths into Catholicism, Pope Benedict says Homer Simpson is really a Catholic! I guess the Pope forgot the TV show when a hungry Bart Simpson asked his dad Homer: “Can we become Catholic so we can get communion wafers and booze?”  I also love Homer’s “Catholic” table prayer: “Good drink, good meat, good God, let’s eat.” 

How many years we have left as a superpower and role model in the world depends upon our politicians. Frankly, I fear for the country.
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