[“Bread and circuses” was a satirical term coined by Roman poet Juvenal to characterize how Roman rulers kept the masses compliant with the provision of bread (Roman agriculture was very wheat-intensive) and circuses—public entertainment such as chariot races in the Circus Maximus, and bloody spectacles such as gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum. Here, the target of Juvenal’s scorn was a disengaged, passive citizenry. He also had plenty of scorn for other forms of decadence prevalent in the Rome of his time.]
Republicans grovel, Trump soars, democracy frays, and who cares?
Two days after the Republican-dominated Senate acquitted Donald Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, the President’s public approval ratings shot up to 49 percent. Stunning, until you look back on the week that was and saw that two events, external to the impeachment trial, had shaped the public mood: (1) the Superbowl three days before the acquittal, and (2) the Iowa caucuses, the day before the acquittal. The first drew a TV audience of 100 million (almost a third of the country’s population) and $10,000 per ticket. In the second (the caucuses), some missteps by the organizers delayed the vote count, to the delight of the media who were all over the story like flies on a pile of horse droppings.
The Superbowl buildup during the previous week outshone the impeachment trial in the Senate (viewership less than a tenth of Superbowl-watchers), where the Democratic managers were proving that the President had clearly abused his power, and pointed out that, if he were acquitted, he would continue to do so with a sense of impunity (not just a sense of it, but with actual impunity). Part of the fallout from that week was the precedent set by the Senate refusing to call for witnesses and documents that in the normal run of things would be part of any trial. This pseudo-trial was not in the normal run of things—no run but more like a march toward the edge of a cliff.
All the time the managers were unintentionally proving that the American people care more about football than the rule of law. If 100 million folks watched the Superbowl, you can be sure that at least 30 million of them were feeling a steady upward climb in football fever in the two weeks between the conference championships and the Big Event.
With the Superbowl buildup distracting attention from the impeachment trial, followed by the media making much ado about Iowa’s nothing, the timing could not have been more fortunate for Mitch McConnell and his merry band of Constitution-wreckers. McConnell’s own commitment to the rule of law takes the form of getting conservative judges confirmed throughout the federal judiciary. Those appointments, priorities of the American Enterprise Institute, are people whose judicial standard is the Golden Rule, as in he who has the gold, makes the rules.
Another measure of the command circuses have over Americans’ attention is major league baseball’s sign-stealing scandal involving the Kansas City Royals. Max Boot points out that sign-stealing by a baseball team has provoked more public outrage than the U.S. President blatantly flouting the law.
Finally, the number of “binge-watches” of Game of Thrones, Modern Family, Vikings, Friends, Mr. Robot, and Lost in Space—with The Mandalorian fast overtaking them all in the last few months—has reached astronomical proportions. This is not to say that some of these shows are bad entertainment, just that they soak up so much of their viewers’ attention, that there’s little left over for considering just how thoroughly Trump & Co. is tearing down our democracy.
So much for circuses. How about bread?
We have plenty of food in the U.S.—such a surfeit that a third of it just gets thrown away . Much of it is packed with excess sugar, fat, and salt, on display not only in fast food restaurants, but also on supermarket shelves, where it is difficult to find even tomato sauce or salad dressing without some form of sugar in it. If the ancient Romans could time travel to 2020, they would envy our choices, but would have been stunned by the rampant levels of obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
At this moment, the metaphorical bread fueling the economy Trump brags about consists largely of increasing numbers of low-wage, dead-end jobs, while wages creep up only to be eventually flattened by inflation. (For a revelation of how real wages have dropped and stagnated since the 1970s, take a look at this report from the Pew Research Center). All this ensues from enormous tax cuts for the rich and laying waste to environmental and worker protections . . . not to mention scraping away layers of the Affordable Care Act.
Polls indicate that Americans feel they are better off now then when Trump took office. The wealthy gloat that this illustrates their cherished trope of a rising tide lifting all boats. Somewhat, but the boats are still taking on water. Many couples have four jobs divided among two earners just to balance income and expenses, much less grow a reserve. Crews can keep bailing frantically to keep afloat, but a health crisis for many a family can blow a hole in their boat the size of a basketball.
It’s hard not to see the parallel between where we find ourselves today and the slide of Rome (when Juvenal was writing satirical poems) toward the disintegration of institutions that characterized medieval times.* The times are distinctly different, but you can’t close your ears to the echoes of bread and circuses that rumble in today’s America—and perhaps throughout the Western world.
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* The one institution that held up was the Roman Catholic Church, one of the most corrupt institutions in European history.