I’ve been flogging the Spartacus horse for awhile. The movie production had some interference that changed the writer’s intent, and the studio insisted on the subtle changes in spite of the protests of star, producer, director and screenwriter. Adam Weishaupt used it as a pseudonym. The Roman Empire tried to remove him from history in the manner of the Ministry of Truth in 1984. I accidentally discovered that the ID Spartacus was a restricted name on AOL in the 80s.
Heap big juju.
We will now take a short recess as I perform the Scotto Dance of Vindication.
OK, so let’s say that there is more to 9/11 than what we see on the news. Illuminati, MJ-12, the New World Order and Military-Industrial Complex, the Evil Old White Men — whatever.
Wag the Republic
In 70 BC, when Rome was still a republic, Marcus Licineaus Crassus was well on his way to being an Evil Old White Man. The spin machine made much of his creation of the fire brigade in Rome. What a citizen, huh? However, it turns out that the operation resembled a protection racket more than a volunteer fire department. It seems that when his fire-fighting slaves rushed to a fire they didn’t do much when they got there but watch. Crassus would arrive and offer to buy the property from the owner for a fraction of it’s worth. If the owner refused the property was allowed to burn. Most owners opted to salvage *something* from the disaster, and Crassus eventually became the largest single private landowner in Rome. That kind of clout guarantees all kinds of respectability. Hmmmmm, I wonder how many of those fires occurred without any prompting?
When a group of gladiators broke free and led a minor slave revolt down around Vesuvius, Crassus saw an opportunity. First he managed to get the Senate to send the garrison of Rome off to crush the rebels, leaving the capitol virtually undefended. Spartacus defeated them.
Spartacus and the slaves wanted nothing more to do with Rome. They wanted out. Most of their looting was to gather funds to pay a mercenary fleet to take them away. Crassus found the situation too useful to let it end so soon. He paid *more* to the mercenary fleet so they would sail away, then brought legions in from the borders to crush the rebellion. He had the legions placed in positions that where obviously meant to trap Spartacus with his back to the sea. Oddly, they moved at such a slow pace that Spartacus and the slave army were able to escape the trap, and in fact found themselves marching in the direction of Rome.
Suddenly, a minor rebellion in the provinces was a clear and present danger to Rome itself. Emergencies require emergency powers; the Senate declared Crassus Praetor. The legions defeated the slave army and the survivors were crucified along the road to Rome as an example. The following year Crassus was declared Consul of Rome.
This effectively ended Rome as a republic. Soon the first Triumvirate of Crassus, Pompey and Julius Caesar took control, leading to the rule of god-like emperors from then on. Much later, Marcus Aurelius tried to hand the empire over to Russell Crowe and complications ensued.
Wag the Empire
Cicero was Julius Caesar’s political opponent. He ran on a law and order platform and pulled a few McCarthy tricks, making anyone advocating controls on government suspect. He hired thugs and hooligans to cause street disturbances, which provided evidence of how dangerous Rome had become and the need for stronger law enforcement.
Wag the Reich
Take Cicero’s street thugs and put them in brown shirts. Hitler was granted extraordinary powers to end the violence. And sure enough, the violence *in Germany* ended soon after he got the powers.
Wag the Maine
From the desk of William Randolph Hearst: You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war.
Remember the Maine?
Oh well, we got the Philippines out of the deal. For awhile. Still have Hawaii though.
Speaking of which…
Wag the Emperor
OK, US still in throes of Depression, and all of the routes out leaned towards Socialist solutions. That would never do. Something big that required lots of manufacturing and funding and emergency measures was needed. Like, oh I don’t know — a war maybe?
Hitler was dumb enough to attack Russia, but he wasn’t dumb enough to take any of the bait Roosevelt offered. He even let the sinking of German ships slide.
So since the Germans, Italians and Japanese had a mutual defense arrangement, getting into hostilities with any one of them opened the gates to declare war on all of them. So, oil and steel embargoes were placed on Japan, which effectively forced them into conquest in Indonesia. Then the Pacific Fleet was moved from San Diego to Pearl Harbor. You know, as if they were being prepared to move on Japan. Hmmm, the last time Japan had a war,they lead with a preemptive surprise attack.
Wag the Maddox
Lyndon Johnson needed to reward those fellas that made him President with some juicy arms contracts, so that little brouhaha in Vietnam needed to be escalated. Suddenly the story came out that there was an unprovoked attack by Vietnamese torpedo boats on the USS Maddox. Johnson already had the report from the task force commander that the “attack” was the result of an
over-eager sonar man when he went on TV to announce the beginning of air strikes against North Vietnam.
Wag the Gulf
Who wants to fight for oil? Well, certainly not the people expected to go over there and do it. Not even the people who get to stay home and pay for it. You need something truly horrifying to get people mad. Like maybe the awful story about Saddam’s brutish troops dumping infants out of incubators onto the cold floor so they could send the equipment to Iraq.
Now, how much screen time was devoted to the Kuwaiti nurse telling that awful story, and how much screen time was devoted to updating that story with the revelation that the “nurse” a) wasn’t, and b) was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US?
Oh yeah, and the whole thing was concocted by the PR firm of Hill & Knowlton.
Wag the Willy
Take note: given a choice between sex and death, sex wins. You know, you’d think sending a cruise missile after Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan would stay in the headlines for awhile — but not when the alternative is blowjobs and creative cigar usage. I wonder if OBL got any use out of an American cruise missile taking out a mosque? Oh yeah, and a Sudanese aspirin factory.
This whole train of thought is inspired by my musings about how the beginnings of the Cthulhu Endtimes would look. I don’t think they would start with overtly mythic happenings. I think everyone would already be whipped to a frenzy over events that appear homegrown, and then bit by bit the strangeness would trickle in. Essentially, I’m looking at history as a series of attempts to reach a sort of critical mass to kick them off.
See how often major events are influenced by small actions by a few people. Consider this: WWII was possibly the closest we’ve come to tipping over into the Abyss. All the big powerful countries and empires at war with each other, the industrialization of war, concentration camps, death camps, human experimentation and culminating in the use of two nuclear weapons, and it
still wasn’t quite enough to kick off the Endtimes. Thank goodness.
The real thing would *really* suck. (Behold, maste rof the understatement!)
Also notice how often events could be precipitated by a single individual or mere handful, possibly influenced by some inspirational talks with a persuasive fella offscreen.
