Bread and Circuses

In the last days of the Roman Empire, in order to keep the masses under control and not question their government, the Roman Emperor and Senate provided what was called bread and circuses to the populace. The thought was that if they kept the people fed and entertained, they wouldn't look too closely at the crumbling government.

Here we are in the modern era and it scares me to think that our government is taking a page out of history and once again providing nothing more than bread and circuses to the people of the USA. For truly our nation is in the worst economic crisis of our time. Even though the term hasn't been used yet, I think that historians will look back at this time, the turn of the 21st Century as a time of depression. It's just that the politicians and economists of today don't want to say it, in fear that they would cause widespread panic. It's easy to see where this may be a good strategy however, their answer to this crisis so far has been nothing more than the modern day version of bread and circuses.

The bread is in the form of greenbacks. Bailouts to the banks, insurance companies and even the automobile manufacturers. We're told that they are "too big to fail." Many people disagree. No entity is too big to fail. That is what the free market system is about. If these companies had done the right thing, they wouldn't be in the position to require a handout. Many of these companies took the bailout and then used it to restructure themselves, jettisoned workers and raised fees to their customers in order to make themselves more profitable. To this day only a small amount of the money provided has been paid back.

Besides the big corporations money has been sent to the individual taxpayer as well. In the form of unemployment benefits, rebates, and tax breaks. Although instead of making real tax reform, the Congress would rather play political ping pong with these benefits in order to hold it out as a carrot for voters come November. They held out on the extension for unemployment benefits until the eleventh hour so that each political party could blame the other instead of putting party differences aside to resolve the issue. Even then, they left it so ambiguous that most unemployed Americans aren't sure of what their benefits are. Today, they still hold out on the "Bush Tax Breaks" because of politics. I wish both parties would put aside their differences for once and put together a plan to fix the economy. I wouldn't expect them to hold hands and sing "Cumbaya" but I do expect my elected officials to stop voting along party lines and to start speaking their individual conscious and then work out compromises.

So, that's where the bread comes in. What about the circuses? Have you looked at TV news these days? There is more stories from Hollywood or the ball field than hard hitting journalism. How is it that a starlet's sentence to rehab tops news from the war zone? Why do we care if some jocks took steroids? It's only a game and has no bearing on the world. While a celebrity's battle with drugs is surely a tragedy for them and their family, it hardly effects the average person.

I find it annoying and insulting when the Sports bleeds onto the front page of the newspaper. To me sports has it's place on the back page. Maybe I have an old fashioned view of things but I truly believe that sports is taken much too seriously in our society. Athletes are overpaid for what they do. They play a game. Do they risk injury? Yes. But so do police, fire fighters, rescue workers, military personnel everyday. The only difference is that the latter group truly lays their life on the line each time they go to work and they don't receive half the praise and rewards that Athletes do.

How can one justify that during the height of our current financial crisis our local governments find the money to build three new sports stadiums? Ar that months after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans that they were patting themselves on the back for completing the Super Dome while people in the area are still without homes to this very day?

Why does today's news read more like Entertainment Tonight? To me that's part of the plan, to distract us from the real news that's going on. Part of it is us, wishing to escape the bleak reality around us. Sure we would rather ponder the next American "Idle" (not misspelled) than think about our troops in Afghanistan. We would rather chart the odds that the Jets will make the super bowl than to calculate how long it will take us to pay back our national debt.

But, we need to face up to the hard facts and come up with some real solutions. Because if we don't, like the Roman Empire, we too may fade into history along with our bread and circuses.