The 1960 Kirk Douglas epic, Spartacus, may soon prove to be more than great entertainment. It may also turn out to be a prophecy of the end of the American Republic.
In the movie, Spartacus (Douglas), a Roman slave, entertains Marcus Crassus (Laurence Oliver) the richest man in Rome. He does so by fighting to the death as a gladiator.
Poster for Spartacus
While Spartacus and his fellow gladiator/friend, Draba, slash and stab at each other in the arena, Crassus idly chats with his crony, Marcus Glabrus.
Crassus has just secured Glabrus’ appointment as commander of the garrison of Rome. Glabrus is grateful, but curious as to how he did it.
After all, Gaius Gracchus, the leader of the Roman Senate, hates Crassus, and stands ever ready to oppose his every move.
“I fought fire with oil,” says Crassus. “I purchased the Senate behind his back.”
Draba defeats Spartacus in their gladiatorial bout, but refuses to kill him. Instead, he throws his spear at Crassus and is immediately slaughtered by Roman guards.
Soon afterward, Spartacus leads 70 other gladiators against their Roman masters, forms an army of freed slaves, and marches against Rome.
Just as Crassus bought the Roman Senate in Spartacus, so, too, are billionaires now buying the 2016 Presidential election.
In 2016, Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, ran as the pet candidate of casino billionaire Sheldon G. Adelson. Since 2007, Adelson had spent millions in support of Gingrich and his causes.
Newt Gingrich
Adelson put up seed money and, ultimately, $7.7 million between 2006 and 2010 for a nonprofit group that served as a precursor to Gingrich’s presidential campaign.
Sheldon Adelson
Such a contribution is no small amount to the average American. But Adelson is listed by Forbes as the eighth-wealthiest American, with a net worth of $21.5 billion.
Naturally, Adelson denied he had any selfish motives for shelling out so much money to a candidate for the most powerful office in the world:
“My motivation for helping Newt is simple and should not be mistaken for anything other than the fact that my wife Miriam and I hold our friendship with him very dear and are doing what we can as private citizens to support his candidacy.”
Unfortunately, Gingrich was not the only candidate of the rich, by the rich and for the rich seeking the Presidency.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney relied heavily on a small group of millionaires and billionaires for support.
By February, 2012, a quarter of the money amassed by Romney’s campaign came from just 41 people. Each contributor gave more than $100,000, according to a Washington Post analysis of disclosure data. Nearly a dozen of the donors had contributed $1 million or more.
Some of Romney’s biggest supporters included executives at Bain Capital, his former firm; bankers at Goldman Sachs; and a hedge fund mogul who made billions betting on the housing crash.
Like Adelson, Bain has directly profited from the losses of others.
Fast forward to 2016:
In early May, Adelson met privately with Republican Presidential nominee-in-waiting Donald Trump. Nevertheless, at least this much has leaked:
Adelson promised to contribute more to secure Trump’s election than he had contributed to any previous campaign. This could exceed $100 million.
Meanwhile, Trump is bragging that he’s “not beholden” to any “special interests” because “I’m really rich.” This myth has been a main reason for his popularity as a candidate.
Donald Trump
All of this can be directly traced to the 2010 “Citizens United” decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that ended limits in corporate contributions to political campaigns. The decision is so named for the group that successfully sued over federal campaign finance laws.
The 5-4 decision led to the rise of Super PACs–outside groups affiliated with candidates that can take in unlimited contributions as long as they don’t directly coordinate with the candidate. The overwhelming majority of this money goes for negative ads–that slander opponents without saying anything about what a candidate proposes to do.
Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia brushed aside criticism of the corrupting role money played in politics: Change the channel or turn off the TV.
“I don’t care who is doing the speech–the more the merrier,” Scalia said. “People are not stupid. If they don’t like it, they’ll shut it off.”
On the contrary: A fundamental principle of propaganda holds that most people are stupid–or can be made to behave stupidly. If they are ceaselessly bombarded with mind-numbing lies, they will eventually substitute these for reality.
In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler laid out his formula for successful propaganda: “All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials.
“These must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.”
During the early 1960s a series of movies about the Roman Empire–like Spartacus and Cleopatra–hit the big screen. In these, rich criminals like Marcus Crassus openly bought the favors of ambitious politicians like Julius Caesar.
No doubt millions of moviegoers thought, “Boy, I’m glad that couldn’t happen here.” But it has happened here–and it’s happening right now.
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A KISSINGER-STYLE SOLUTION TO SAVE AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Military, Politics, Social commentary on November 7, 2016 at 9:19 amOn September 4, 1970, Salvador Allende, a physician and politician, became the 30th President of Chile.
More importantly, he became the first Marxist to win leadership of a Latin American country in a free election.
Salvador Allende
Once in office, Allende began carrying out his socialist agenda. This included:
For staunchly anti-Communist President Richard Nixon, the rise of Allende to such power was a nightmare. In September, 1970, he authorized the CIA to spend $10 million to prevent Allende from gaining power–or to overthrow him if he did.
After failing to prevent Allende from winning a democratic election, the CIA plotted to replace him with a military junta.
Henry Kissinger, then acting as Nixon’s national security adviser, infamously said: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”
Henry Kissinger
On September 11, 1973, the Chilean military, aided by the United States and the CIA, staged a coup against Allende.
Allende committed suicide or was shot to death (accounts vary) and a brutal military tyranny under General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was quickly installed.
Only in 1990 was democracy restored in Chile.
So what does a Henry Kissinger remark made 43 years ago have to do with the 2016 American Presidential election?
A November 5 CNN opinion piece explains it best.
Titled, “The World Is Watching America’s Election,” the article noted: “Many months ago” people around the world “sounded a mixture of entertained and puzzled by the campaign.
“People were asking ‘Who is Donald Trump?’ ‘What are Hillary Clinton’s chances?’”
But American elections affect more than Americans–they affect millions of people in countries throughout the world.
“Increasingly, the amusement and befuddlement have given way to alarm and disgust. And in authoritarian countries where ‘democracy’ comes in quotation marks, authorities are deriving visible pleasure from describing American democracy as a chaotic sham.”
During a trip to Japan in May, President Barack Obama said he had found global leaders “rattled” by the rise of Trump.
Donald Trump
Especially alarming to many Americans has been the mutual admiration society among Trump and foreign dictators such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong On.
Click here: The world is watching America’s election (Opinion) – CNN.com
In his bestselling 1973 biography, The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, British historian Robert Payne harshly condemned the German people for the rise of the Nazi dictator.
To America’s shame, much of what he wrote about the Germans now applies to those Americans supporting Trump:
“[They] allowed themselves to be seduced by him and came to enjoy the experience….[They] followed him with joy and enthusiasm because he gave them license to pillage and murder to their hearts’ content. They were his servile accomplices, his willing victims….
“If he answered their suppressed desires, it was not because he shared them, but because he could make use of them. He despised the German people, for they were merely the instruments of his will.
“Many Germans voted against Hitler but few fought actively against him, and of these even fewer fought with clean weapons and clear consciences.”
There is a very real danger that millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans will catapult Donald Trump–a man without kindness or charity–into the Presidency.
And that this man–who apparently received no love, and can give no love–will assume all the awesome power that goes with that office.
Thus, to rephrase Kissinger: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Fascist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”
A first step in that direction would be the legal abolishing of the Republican party as a threat to the American democratic system.
For example: Several Republican Senators, including John McCain, have openly boasted that even if Hillary Clinton becomes President, they will prevent her from filling the Supreme Court seat left vacant in February by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
It’s the President’s duty to nominate Supreme Court Justices–and the Senate’s to vote Yes or No to confirm them.
Ignoring the mandate of a national election and refusing to carry out their Constitutionally-assigned duties is a flagrant violation of their oaths of office.
And that is, in itself, sufficient cause for their removal from office.
To rephrase what Robert F. Kennedy once said about the underworld-dominated Teamsters Union: “Quite literally, your life–the life of every person in the United States–is in the hands of the Republicans and their followers.”
In Germany, the Socialist Reich Party (SPR)–an heir to the Nazi party–has been banned since 1952. Yet Germany remains a strong force for democracy in Europe.
In America, it’s time to remove Right-wing totalitarians–and the dangers they represent to democratic government–from the levers of power they now hold.
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