Pedro's Corner

Rome was pretty great, no doubt. The question is, is Rome feasible?

Making America Great. Now, servitude, or being saved… First of all, it establishes a distance, between he who serves or saves and those that are served or, ahum, saved. That is the genious of citizenry. There is no distance between President Trump and his people. he is serving no one. He is just making his darndest tomake sure the polity runs well with the obvious aim of making it Great or keeping it Great, it’s weird to put it into grammar. He’s a star player, not the towel boy. Sure, I can agree he “saved us” in the same sense a teammate might remark how Jordan “saved us” that one time we were 40 points down or something with tears in his eyes. Jordan might be a bad example because he was reportedly a dick. A yuge service, no doubt. But from there to the “public service…”

Public, public, the public. That is eminently Roman. There was no public in Athens. Only citizens and slaves. There were others, foreigners and people who weren’t slaves or foreigners but didn’t quite qualify as citizens. Now, before we go saying slavery is constitutive, let us not forget that Rome had vastly more even in proportion. Or maybe not in proportion, you may have got me with that one. And eventually Rome did without the slaves.

Point here being, Laweyrs make Rome. Or Rome require them. And, again, I’m not hating. I think it was pretty goddamned awesome.

America’s severity? Winning. Personal glory.

Whereas Greeks offered glory to the Gods and Romans to the Public, Americans (it’sacontinentfuckgoddamnit) offer their glory to this nigga right here.

Erm, it wouldn’t go over smoothly, necessarily.
Yeah ill admit its not a strictly national concern.
You know what happens. But as you say -

Answering in detail is above my pay grade.

Thats exactly what he is, yes.

No I agree, nothing selfless about it. He wants to, win.

Thats the thing - the last thing the Roman public was, is docile.
A fucking mob of raging berserkers, essentially, who could be disciplined only by being sent out to conquer some rich province. Within the city limits, public servants were often gang-leaders more than lawyers. The successful ones anyway.
Well, lawyers until they ran out of patience.

I wanted to say no but yes.
The frontier.

Cicero. Always at least the semblance of legality. Like I said, this was less about how cool lawyers were and more about containing them.

The way you describe the Roman public pleases me, because that is exactly how it was.

But, by virtue of that very thing, they didn’t blink at choosing Cesar over the lawyers.

Athens and no legality outside of the procedures of the forum, and even those… What they had was the deliberations of the forum. They didn’t check the books, they just decided.

I want to make a distinction too between a lawyer and a scholar politician: the scholar has knowledge on stuff and applies it. The position and the knowledge are one. The lawyer has a body of knowledge separate from the issue, and seeks to fit the issue into the body of knowledge.

And so, Nixon knew this and this and do that. He was working in and on his subject matter. With the lawyer, the body of knowledge is separate. The lawyer takes recourse to his knowledge. The scholar departs from the knowledge, and is constantly updating it. Like Kissinger learning from the Chinese and the Arabs about statecraft, and yet having 0 issues with reconciliation.

I just want to go ahead and explicitly admit here that the what comes from after Octavian is not laweyrs in any clear or obvious way. Or even fully defensible or true way. It is… to understand the collision that was Octavian, the assassination of Cesar and the… It’s a little like understanding the Big Bang in its full mythological setting. Just a clash that created something so weird, so weirdly created a weird, that we can only call it the entire world.

Christianity… I guess it is fitting that it should be such a humble figure. But then, of course, islam too. It is anything but clear, I just want to admit that. But they are lawyers. Of what, representing who, payed for by who, that’s all… That’s where… I have to admit, it is murksh kadurksh at the very absolute bestest. And yet. Laweyrs son. If Christianity strickes awe, it is because its genesis was is awe stricking. Not to get like biblical about it. AND THEN, THERE WAS. No. These were people here. Just… um… Dang. I on purpose wanted not to get into it. For the knights of The Zodiac fans out there, it is like the paradox of Pegasus unstoppable punch and the Dragon’s unbreakable sheild. They work it out by they just both break, but-um. when it happens in the ultimate political center of the Planet, suddenly loose ends demand prescence.

Athens, helpfully, is cleaner. It was not about specific persons, as these were the exception in Rome and thus special, but about the fact of specific personality, which was the commonstance.

What is remembered about the one Athenian we remember as a specific person is that he was a representative of a bunch of specific persons as a group of specific persons. Anyway, it’s cleaner. Citizenship vs Res Publica.

But that’s a misleading vs, as they both rock. It is the best of these vs the Haters. Also, worth noting, neither of these is an end onto themselves. As opposed to commies, which posit themselves, sickly, as their own end.

Nay. Many worlds emerge from either of these, Rome or Athens. My postulations are about strategic possibility and which one technically Makes Greater than the other. Sai.

Just wanted to say that. I am not blind to the intricacies and convoluted depthsiniesitiestations.

sigh

It is the middle of the beginning of the great war, we have no time for convolutednesses. We need yeses, nos, and go forths. The lawyers are in full swing, the energies from our side are invested. Time to get a little Spartan, at the risk of making the whole scheme sillified.

“My son, where you have seen the conexion between 21 Savage and President Trump, then you shall have acheived understanding.”“And Korea.”“And Rome.”“My son, shut the fuck up about it, it’s complicated.”“Athens, my son. seek Athens. She slowly reemerges and calls to you.”

i never thought i’d see ‘21 savage’ and ‘athens’ mentioned in the same paragraph. ‘trump’ and ‘21 savage’, yes, but never that.

this is how you know some real shit is going down in the minds of western people. a hundred years ago such a mention would be so unheard of it might even have been illegal.

don’t get me wrong. athens had its share of problems… but never something so bad as to warrant its mention beside… cough… ‘21 savage’.

almost like a bad version of hunger-games or some shit.

edit: move to borg thread.

shit i’m in the wrong thread. how the fuck did that happen. carleas, be a good sport and put that last one over in the borg thread, yes?

I know. It is not immediately accessible to most minds.

Capitalism with XX values.

The future?

“African Americans built this nation."

Donald J Trump

“… in exchange for a straw mattress in a barn and cabbage soup three times a day.”

donald j trump

Sorry dog. You lost my respect when you told that story about going down to Guatemala someplace to build huts.

I was like “man.” “He’s just another gringo.”

But I love building huts, man. I can’t help it.

See cause you’se a fascist. Fascism is soft. At the center. That’s why they bunch up and build war machines and death camps.

How could a privileged snot face like you understand? What it means to have built America?

Go to Germany and suck a dick. They’ll like it.

I built my first hut in wilderness camp when I was sixteen, ya know. No power tools, bro. Straight elbow grease. We cut the trees down, barked em, dovetail notched em, and fastened the whole fuckin frame together with dowel rods. Rafters too. Softwood pines we’re ideal; easy to cut and drill through. Then we’d throw a leather tarp over the rafters for the roof. Good times, man. Did I tell you about the time we dug and built our own privy? I wasn’t too privy to it, but it had to be done. Built the shit box over it and everything.