Episode 113
Burn It to the Ground: What Rome Can Teach Us
Summary:
Dr. Jim dives into the recurring patterns of historical ignorance and its impact on modern society, drawing parallels between the Third Punic War, post-Civil War America, and the rise of oppressive regimes. He critiques the United States' failure to apply harsh lessons from Rome, leading to persistent ideologies of division and control. Dr. Jim emphasizes the need to learn from history to prevent repeating mistakes and questions whether society is ready to finally address these enduring issues, preventing the rise of tyranny and oppression led by powerful elites.
Chapters:
0:00
Introduction to Historical Ignorance
0:25
Overview of the Third Punic War
0:53
Lesson from Rome and the Civil War
1:41
Reconstruction's Missed Opportunity
2:12
Influence on Totalitarian Regimes
2:38
Post-War Mistakes and Operation Paperclip
3:31
Present-Day Parallels and Future Choices
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Music Credit: Good_B_Music
Mentioned in this episode:
Left in Exile Intro
Left in Exile Intro
Transcript
So for those of you who aren't familiar with the Punic Wars, it was a series of three wars between Roman Carthage. But I'm only gonna focus on the third one because that's where the lesson sits. Rome had already engaged in two different wars with Carthage over a period of close to 50 years. The third Punic war was finally where Rome put the nail in the coffin.
They lead seize to Carthage, burned the city to the ground, enslaved all their people and killed everybody else. And the myth goes that Rome salted the earth so nothing would ever grow there again. Now we know that that's not true, but it makes for a good story. That's where the lesson sits that the US forgot.
attributed to saying is that [:And why that's important is because this is a lesson that the US never applied. So let's think about it. The Civil War was fought largely over what the question of whether states are allowed to own people and the Civil War ended with the Confederacy losing. But the lesson that the US failed to understand was the lesson from the third Punic war.
t plucky rebels and all that [:They created a society that was separate from the broader United States and still incorporated a lot of the issues that existed in the era of slavery. It was just packaged differently, and here's why that's important. When we look at the mustache guy, he built a big segment of his thought process from what he learned and studied about the American South.
What should have happened in the American South in the post-Civil War era? Was that it should have been burnt to a cinder. And all those wealthy northern industrialists who wanted to capitalize on the oppression that would continue in the post reconstruction era should have been dealt with at that time.
If that was done, the template would not have been established for the mustache guy to do what he did. So that was the first mistake. The second mistake the US made was that in the era of the mustache guy, the US never went after the billionaires that were located in the us. That helped. Mustache guy gain a foothold.
e after the war. And to make [:So you have people of an ideology that's aligned with the. Jim Crow era South and committed some of the worst atrocities in the history of man are brought into the fold when they should have had their backs against the wall, and the last thing they saw was a flash of light, but the US didn't do that.
mass vigilantes to disappear [:If people in the US from a historical perspective weren't ignorant of history, if they had dealt with the South the same way that the Romans dealt with Carthage in the third Punic war, we wouldn't be here. But this is where we are now, and we see what's happening. And the question becomes, are we gonna let it go a third time and let these ideologies fester?
Are we gonna let the architects of this extermination that is about to take place? Get off scot free. That is a question for the history books. Is this the moment where we finally learn our lesson and do what is necessary?
