Debate @The Projects about various political stuff

[Breadbassket]

Sulla didn't fix shit, he set the stage for the collapse of the Republic. He started a Civil War, and proved that if you have a big enough army you can just ignore the rules. S to Spit.
That being said, there weren't really any good choices.

Marius normalized political violence and he also apparently used the Assemblies to overturn Senatorial commands which didn't help things. His idea of replacing Sulla as a commander of war was unprecedented because at that time Marius was being given command while also lacking any official title in the state (he was a private citizen). Whatever the strategy was, it backfired horribly. Sulla at this time was consul and had been given the position to be the one to lead this particular war effort. This whole debacle is the reason why he marched on Rome in the first place.

This isn't a Roman history thread so I won't make anymore posts on this subject but let it be known both Marius and Sulla contributed to the collapse of the Republic, it wasn't a one man affair. Neither of them were good or bad, but they were both ambitious and had clashing goals.

 

[The Evil Midnight Bomber]

Mainland Chinese are true believers. They aren’t going to riot. If anything, they’ll simp for the CCP harder and call for a war on America.

They're blowing up factories and smashing up their bosses offices over not getting paid basically everywhere in China right now. You just don't ever hear about it if you don't actively seek that info out. The Tennessee explosives plant that went up and vaporized everyone inside yesterday might be a horrifying occurence to us, but for the Chinese that's just a regular day.

Sulla didn't fix shit, he set the stage for the collapse of the Republic. He started a civil war, declared himself dictator (a role intended only for desperate catastrophic scenarios), and proved that if you have a big enough army you can just ignore the rules. S to Spit.
That being said, there weren't really any good choices.

The Gracchi set the stage, not Sulla. Sulla tried to fix the things the Gracchi broke, it's not his fault the moronic politicians of the late republic reverted most of his changes to the law.

 

[The Projects]

Get it through your thick (possibly brown) head that these are innate differences and the 'culture war' runs a lot deeper than you admit to realizing

W-Well, this- this is me.

Spoiler

 

[The Projects]

To me, it seems like you're stuck in the 60's. Not the real 60's, but an idealized version of them where everyone got along and politics was just respectful debates about tax codes and infrastructure.

Yes, I want everyone to join hands and sing kumbaya, I'm not joking. World peace is within our grasp.

 

[The Secret Sauce]

Yes, I want everyone to join hands and sing kumbaya, I'm not joking. World peace is within our grasp.

That's nice, it would make a great Pixar movie. Here in the real world, most blue voters would be love to see people like me murdered in broad daylight for daring to suggest that men aren't women.

 

[The Projects]

The Republic had long outgrown its usefulness, and it was never intended to be the governing apparatus of a continent-spanning state.

The government worked fine enough given that it was a Classical civilization with a lot of wacky notions about the world, the problem was the massive slave complex that put peasant farmers out of the job, and the rabid expansionists who wanted war to enrich themselves. The slave plantations drove the peasant farmers off their land and into the cities to be whipped into a fervor by populists. The Gracchis tried to institute land reform and were killed for it.

Romans wouldn't have deified the men who brought it down.

They deified themselves via the state institutions they controlled. (Not to mention how often they killed these living gods)

Me myself personally, I think that pic related is something worth aspiring towards.

Oh I love the Romans, even the Imperial era, but they were utter lunatics, and it's a miracle their rapid expansion driven by blind greed lasted as long as it did. The Chinese were more sensible empire builders. Rome was like a functioning alcoholic, the Byzantines were what happened when they stopped drinking.

 

[The Projects]

That's nice, it would make a great Pixar movie. Here in the real world, most blue voters would be love to see people like me murdered in broad daylight for daring to suggest that men aren't women.

You should go talk to them, and see what they actually think of you, most people don't think this way at all. You perceive all of these people as hating you because you are only exposed to the worst of them. You should interact with as many different people in the world as you possibly can, it teaches you a lot.

Honestly, I think if you knew me, we'd be good friends because I'm a funny guy, friendly and chill! :^D

 

[Romulus augustulus]

he set the stage for the collapse of the Republic.

Sulla was a symptom. not the cause. The republic was doomed once Rome gained control the Med and the nations surrounding it. Too much land, people and money for a syndicate of senile senatorial scoundrels.

(fun fact, the words "senile" and "senator" are descended from the latin word "senex" which means "old man")

 

[The Projects]

Sulla was a symptom. not the cause. The republic was doomed once Rome gained control the Med and the nations surrounding it. Too much land, people and money for a syndicate of senile senatorial scoundrels.

(fun fact, the words "senile" and "senator" are descended from the latin word "senex" which means "old man")

Winner winner! So much win!

Mind you, to all those non-initiated, the Roman Senate wasn't like our modern Senate, the Roman Senate was quite literally descended from a collection of rich aristocrats who advised the ancient Kings of Rome! They didn't actually have the legal authority to write laws, they were more there to give their opinion on laws, but the massive co-inky-dink is that nobody ever disobeyed them because they were rich aristocrats who could get you blacklisted! Until Caesar after all.

 

[The Secret Sauce]

They deified themselves via the state institutions they controlled. (Not to mention how often they killed these living gods)

I was talking about the people who brought down the republic, not their successors. Julius Caesar was killed by the obsolete aristocracy that spearheaded the displacement and impoverishment of the common people. The common people burned down their estates and tried to fucking murder them in response. Plebs absolutely loved Julius and Augustus by the time they died, and you're being willfully ignorant if you think otherwise.

Spoiler: Personal advice

You can avoid double posting if you just write the second post, copy it, edit the first post, and paste the second post to the end of the first.

 

[The Projects]

I was talking about the people who brought down the republic, not their successors. Julius Caesar was killed by the obsolete aristocracy that spearheaded the displacement and impoverishment of the common people.

Caesar was a curious character (quote of the last two millennia, I know, it's almost like every single generation has written about him since he lived)
Caesar, not unlike Sulla, didn't seem to really want to burn the Republic, so much as he just wanted a special position for himself within it to do whatever he wanted. I actually quite like Caesar, if it wasn't for his silly notion that he could be a free radical and nobody would A. Have a problem with it, or B. Try to emulate him, I'd have a lot of sympathy for him. And yes, fuck the Senate, this goes without saying.

The common people burned down their estates and tried to fucking murder them in response. Plebs absolutely loved Julius and Augustus by the time they died, and you're being willfully ignorant if you think otherwise.

No lies here gooba. However, it should be noted that Plebs weren't the only people in Roman society, and Julius and Augustus Caesar were both infamous for giving back to the plebeians. It's not hard to buy the support of a bunch of hungry, borderline disenfranchised citizens with hand-outs, grain doles, and public works. Though this is a bit cynical of me to say.
"They made life better for the citizenry! That's cheating!" lmao

That being said, Augustus Caesar was actually a great ruler, if you forced me to just swallow the notion of the Republic being dead, Augustus really was about as good as you could hope for. I don't support his methods for getting there. I'm a rabid Republican, what can I say!

 

[GameratePTSD]

Yes, I want everyone to join hands and sing kumbaya, I'm not joking. World peace is within our grasp.

To achieve utopia the bloodshed necessary would be unimaginable. You would need to put billions to the sword.

 

[The Projects]

Compare that to late stage Roman Empire which had several Germanic generals/politicians in the government that actively worked against the emperors and slowly took over until the western half of the empire was a shell of it's former self.

This is kind of a complicated statement actually. By and large the Germans living in the Empire viewed themselves as Romans, spoke Latin, and a lot of them had Roman citizenship. Most of them payed allegiance and tribute to the Emperor(s), and in fact believed themselves to be servants of the Emperor. This comes down to the fact that the Roman identity had sort of changed through Rome's history. One way of understanding the "Fall of the West" or the "Fall of Rome" is that the progressively decentralizing West finally dropped the notion of having centralized authority, and a bunch of de-centralized states filled its void. To our eye, Romans were living under Vandal, Gothic, Ostrogothic yoke, but to the Romans of the day, a lot of them didn't really see a difference,
"We live under a German guy who pays fealty to the Emperor out East, we still follow the same laws, and life is still mostly the same, but now we live under a German guy"

When Justinian reconquered Italy, he actually broke this common understanding. I think there's a reasonable argument to be made that Justinian trying to centralize authority in the Empire was a good idea, but he bit off more than he could chew, his attempts to centralize the Empire failed with time, and he shattered the notion that these people were ALL Romans by insinuating that there was a more Roman Rome, and they were not a part of it, and needed to be brought back in. This is about when the earliest glimpses of post-Roman European nationalism began in the West, because they had to figure out who they were if they weren't Romans.

 

[The Projects]

To achieve utopia the bloodshed necessary would be unimaginable. You would need to put billions to the sword.

Who said anything about utopia? I just said peace man. Utopia is unfeasible, and I don't want it either. I like our messy world, utopia to me is dystopia to you and vice versa maing.

 

[The Secret Sauce]

Wall of text

Can't find a word to disagree with other than the last two sentences

The key difference is that the Republic had strict qualifications on who could or couldn't be part of the senate. Ilhan Omar being a first generation Somali woman wouldn't have any place in the politics of the Republic. Compare that to late stage Roman Empire which had several Germanic generals/politicians in the government that actively worked against the emperors and slowly took over until the western half of the empire was a shell of it's former self.

If you're going to hyperfocus on the late Empire and pretend it was always that way, I agree with your assessment. If you did the same with the late Republic, it would look just as bad or worse. I don't hate the Republic, but it did fail after 5 centuries. Impressive, but the Empire lasted either 5 centuries or 15 centuries, depending on if you include the Byzantines.
The Republic's "strict rules" for membership in the Senate were made less and less strict over time. Only Roman noblemen Latin noblemen Italian noblemen allowed, guys. There were several Patricians who arranged sham adoptions into plebeian families in the late republic, because the office of Tribune (which didn't exist initially) became more powerful than that of a low-tier Senator. The Empire didn't start the notion of granting foreigners/plebs citizenship and political power, it merely continued it.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

Yes, I want everyone to join hands and sing kumbaya, I'm not joking. World peace is within our grasp.

It must be nice to live such a sheltered life.

 

[The Projects]

If you post about Rome you’re Aryan as fuck. If you post about Soy Trek you’re raped goycattle. That simple.

Why not both?
Why not Zoidberg?!?!

 

[The Projects]

It must be nice to live such a sheltered life.

If you knew me, you'd be laughing with me at this post.

 

[The Projects]

Move over Star Wars, the Trek's got a new rival

 

[The Projects]

>Star Trek for a few pages
>Rome for a few pages
>Star Trek vs Rome for ???
>Not a word of US politics for hours
The Jannies ain't gonna like this. Will they set phasers to stun, or will we all be strapped to crosses come dawn?

Federation scum like you should be lashed to a cross