The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1034: Parallels Between the Fall of Rome and the U.S. w/ Jeremy Ryan Slate

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

51 MinutesSFWJeremy Ryan Slate is a businessman and did his Master's thesis on early Roman propaganda.Jeremy joins me to give his opinion on how the downfall of Rome can be compared to that of the US.Jeremy's WebsiteVIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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freemambeonthe-wall.com, forward slash support. There's a few ways you can support me there. One, there's a direct link to my website. Two, there's Subscribe Star. Three, there's Patreon. Four, there's Substack. And now I've introduced Gumroad, because I know that a lot of our guys are on Gumroad, and they are against censorship.

So if you head over to Gumroad and you subscribe through there, you'll get the episodes early and ad-free, and you'll get an invite into the Telegram group. So I really appreciate all of the support everyone's giving me, and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Piquino's show for the first time. Jeremy Slate's here.

How you doing, Jeremy? Hey, I'm doing all right, man. I appreciate hanging out with me. I like that mic, by the way. That's a cool mic. Yeah, somebody told me that they thought that I had an old-timey radio voice. So I was like, I need an old-timey radio mic. So when you first got that, did you get on it and be like, Paul Harvey, good day.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Going back even further, I wanted to do some, I wanted to do War of the Worlds. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm not that old, but I mean, I grew up with radio. I grew up with AM radio. So it's like, yeah, having a mic in front of me is sort of a fantasy from way back. But let's start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I've had a podcast since 2014. I run a PR agency called Commander Brand. I've been married since 2015, two daughters, a third child on the way, and I live here in the western part of New Jersey,

which is kind of more like living in the Midwest on five acres with two dozen chickens, a pig, and a bunch of dogs. What people don't realize, Western New Jersey, Western New York, how different they are than, everybody thinks of New York, or think of New Jersey, they think of New York. They think of New York. They think of New York City. But once you get out of there, it's like I've, I've told my wife who grew up in northern Georgia,

the northern Georgia mountains are just like the mountains of New York. We go upstate to Lake Placid a couple times a year and go skiing. That's one of my favorite places. And you're right, man. Like it's, I think everybody wants like New York to be New York City and everybody wants us to be like Jersey City. And it's like it's so dramatically different. Like for me, I grew up working on a farm as a kid. So it's like, my reality is so different than what people expect for the state.

All right. Well, I invited you on to talk about Rome. Apparently men think of Rome every 20 minutes from what I've heard. How did you get into studying Rome? I think you studied it in school, right? Yeah. So my master's is in early Roman Empire propaganda. I studied basically how Augustus built a worship cult.

for the emperor and it lasted about 500 years. So I was very, very heavy into like the late Republic period, but I've studied so much on, you know, the kingdom of Rome and also the empire of Rome as well. So it's, I've been deep into it, man. I've always just been super, super interested. And I got here in kind of a weird way. I've always been like a crazy history nerd, you know, slightly on the autism spectrum, the way I can remember dates. It's a little bit weird. And, you know, I've been very into Alexander the Great was always super, super interesting to me. And, you know, I've, like, studied so much around, you know, Plutarch's Lives and the life of Alexander. And Alexander's an interesting dude as well because if you look at kind of how modern media operates, people have publicists.

And Alexander actually paid this scribe named Aryan to follow him around and write about everything he did. And so he wrote Aryan's campaigns of Alexander and things like that. So it was that interest that drew me to Rome because I read this really obscure article about this Jesuit priest around the turn of the century about after the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, Augustus goes and prays before the mummified sarcophagus of Alexander. And I'm like, wow, that's really weird. I need to know more about this. And it just kind of sent me down a rabbit hole of a lot of the propaganda tools and things like that that Augustus used to basically get people to worship the emperor for another, you know, almost 500 years. Going back to Alexander for a second, this is somebody who understood culture. I mean, he set out to hellenize the world.

And most people don't even know that he actually had a platoon, a cultural platoon, that were teachers that wherever he went and wherever he conquered. It's very interesting how they would intermarry with local folk, and they would basically hellenize them, but still allow them to keep enough of their culture that they wouldn't revolt against them. Is this going to turn into an Alexander talk or you want to get some? It's interesting

because I find it to be such an interesting guy because like, you know, people talk about the Hellenization and I think a lot of times that they forget that Alexander was actually like he was a Macedonian Greek. So they're kind of like, you know, Greek cromagnans, right? Like they're like not quite Greek and they're not as classy and they're not as refined.

But, you know, he had really good schooling early on in life. And that, that was a really important part of his life. His father, Philip the one eye, he actually had had one eye, Philip the second, was this guy that conquered Thessaly. He conquered Thieves. And Thebes is really interesting, by the way. They had their best warrior band was this warrior band called the Sacred Band, the Sacred Band. And basically, it was this hundred band of hundred guys, and they were actually 50 gay lovers. And they found that they would fight harder. for the man next to them than regular soldiers.

So that was like, so Philip the second was actually one of the first military leaders to ever take down the sacred band of Thebes. So he conquers all of Greece. And basically the Macedonians are then in charge of Greece. And then when he dies in around 3.38 is when Alexander takes over and just does this conquest into Babylon and before he finally dies in 323. All right. Let's get to Rome then.

I guess the topic that we were looking at was looking at doing was similarities in the beginning and the beginnings of the downfall of Rome to their downfall and the empire we have here. So let's start here. Is there any similarity between the founding of this country or what this country has actually? become and what you see as far as how Rome fell. It's it's kind of interesting because I think if you look at it, historically, our founders wanted to be a lot like Rome's Republic. And I think to make this make sense, we've got to backtrack just a little bit because

I think when people look at Rome, they don't have a full understanding of, you know, what it is in terms of like government and things like that. And I will preface this by saying, anything I say today, there's going to be historians that agree with me. there's going to be historians that disagree with me. Historians, we're very good at convincing you our opinion is actually what happened. So I'm going to go over a lot of what I studied and a lot of what I've read, and I would definitely recommend you do your own research and take a look at what we're talking about today.

But the thing you have to understand is Rome is founded in 753, and it's founded as a kingdom by this guy, Romulus. There's seven traditional kings of Rome. And the kings of Rome are interesting because they can't actually prove they existed. but they claim their seven of them. And a lot of what the Romans did is they looked at a lot of their, like, you know, parts of their government and a lot of their traditions. And when they couldn't place them, they'd be like, oh, well, this king created it, right?

It was Servius Tullius. He did it. Or it was, you know, Tarquin the Proud that did it. So they couldn't figure out, like, what to do with a lot of these cultural things. So they have these seven kings of Rome. And if you look at the amount of time period they rained, like they all rained an average of 50 years, which is insane. So like you look at it and you're just like, it really doesn't work, but there's this kingdom of Rome, which goes from 753 to 509.

The final king, Tarquin the Proud, is killed by this guy named Brutus. Now, that's kind of interesting because if you fast forward, Julius Caesar is also killed by a guy named Brutus. And the Brutai or the Brutus family are seen as kind of the slayer of kings because in Rome, they really hated the idea of having a king after these seven traditional kings. So, and if I'm going too deep into this, Peter, feel free to stop me, man, because there's kind of a lot to this argument. So then people, people are used to deep dives into history on this show. So then in 509, the Roman Republic starts. And that's what we're most similar to.

And if you look at a republic, it's interesting because it takes several forms of government and it combines them. It combines the best parts of a monarchy. It combines the best parts of democracy. And it takes a lot of these things and mixes them to really function well. So from 509 until 31 BC, we have the Roman Republic. And that's what I would say that we're, and how we're set up we're most similar to. Now, this is the part where a lot of people would be like, you're crazy.

And in fact, Time Magazine just wrote an article about this. And I vehemently disagree with them. My opinion is America ceased to be a functioning republic in 1913. You know, a lot of the vestiges are still there. A lot of the parts are still there. We still do some of the same things. But just like in the way Augustus transitioned that republic to the empire, you know, there was still a Senate. There was still a lot of the same traditions.

But now there was this new guy at the front of it and deciding what was going to happen. We're quite similar because in 1913 during the progressive era, you know, America got a few things right, but they also got a lot of things wrong, which is what took away a lot of the, you know, Republican setup of America. the first being the Federal Reserve Act, right, which passed in December of 1913 and actually becomes law in 1914. You have the 17th Amendment, which took away the ability of state legislatures to appoint the Senate. And it really means that your Senate doesn't really serve a purpose now because Congress is something elected by the populace. And then the Senate was supposed to be like, so the states could have a say in things. So now the states no longer have a say in anything and everything is direct democracy. And the other thing is also income tax because now we no longer have the ability to decide what to do with our money.

So if you look at it through that lens, when Rome moves from in 31 BC to the empire, the empire lasts in the west till 476, I put us in the late stages of empire. And by late stages of empire, I'm looking at something called the crisis of the third century. So we're looking at around the year 180 to about 301, if we're looking at. looking in that time period. And during that time period, Rome was dealing with an immigration problem. They were dealing with up to 15,000 percent inflation. And they had some really bad political problems with central power. And that is very, very similar to what we're dealing with now. So would FDR be our first emperor? I think actually, because that's an interesting concept, too,

because if you look at it, people are like, oh, you know, Trump is Caesar or this person is that. And I think often like history isn't a blueprint, but it does rhyme, right? Like it's not, it doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. It's similar. I think if you want to look at your, your Julius Caesar type character, the person that kind of brings an end to the old thing, I'd say that somebody like Woodrow Wilson and he kind of ends what it used to be to be a republic. I would definitely agree with you that the Augustus type character or First Emperor would be FDR. You know, somebody that really was in that position for life and people kept electing him. And we actually have amendments, we actually have an amendment because he kept running for president, right?

I think that's a really interesting concept. And the new deal could really be seen as that thing that establishes basically the new thing. Because Rome had, you know, Caesar, which got a lot of people upset. And there's this civil war in Rome from 133 to 31, which is kind of the downfall. And Caesar's kind of the final death knell in that. So he's definitely your FDR character. But then you have to have the person that establishes the new thing and how we operate. And I would agree that's FDR.

Okay, so you have follow-ups to after Augustus. You have the Caesars continue. Somebody like Curtis Yarvin would say that after FDR, Caesar became the deep state, became the managerial system. So FDR collected all this power to himself. And instead of passing it on to the person who came next, Truman, showing them how to wield it and showing them how to keep passing it on and keep passing it on, all of that power filtered down into the managerial and the administrative state.

And now we have this managerial system that people like James Burnham were writing about, wrote about even before the end of the war, it wrote about in 1940. So how can we look at a progression of Caesars after FDR if really now we're being run by the managers? See, that's really tough. And as I said, this is where I say history rhymes and it doesn't exactly repeat because the thing in Rome you have to look at is the way the first emperor's worked is they would basically pass power onto their child, right? Whether there was there, you know, Tiberius was actually the stepchild, the second emperor of Augustus. And they would pass it onto their next child. So you got some,

it was a grab bag. You got some pretty crazy ones throughout there. And what happens is the Praetorian guard, which was the personal guard of the emperor, they get to the point where they eventually start deciding who's emperor. And you have, They kill Caligula and they name his uncle Claudius emperor. So you have kind of this progression. Now, that changes in the year 94 under an emperor named, or 93, sorry, under an emperor named Nerva. And he starts a new process where you could actually adopt a full adult as your child.

And what would happen is you would give them your money, your titles, your political position. And it starts what's called the five good emperors. And they reign for an average of 20 years, which is totally unheard of. like 20 years of Pax Romana stability. The last one of those is Marcus Aurelius. And he gets all this credit for being this, you know, brilliant scholar and this smart guy. But he actually changes that and names his 16-year-old son,

Comitus Emperor. And that's what kind of causes this whole thing to collapse. So this is where history doesn't repeat. It rhymes. Because as you fast forward through Rome, in the fourth century, the late fourth or the fifth, 5th century is where you start getting military commanders being named emperor by their

military commanders being named emperor by their their actual troops. So that's the kind of the major change. It starts happening in the third century, but eventually you have that person isn't even in charge anymore. I would say that's more similar to how it functions. We missed a few hundred years. And I think that's really where we're at is you have this kind of deep state apparatus that is running the whole thing. You have a figurehead up. there that basically either takes the flaw or the credit depending on what's needed, and they're just going to keep running things the same way that they do. And I think people hear the word deep state, Peter, and they get all freaked out like at this conspiratorial thing. And it's like,

not really. These are just basically people that like any of us, if they get a job and stay at a company forever, well, you're going to have some longevity. It's the same way in government. These are people that aren't elected, so they don't have to leave. Those people who love going out shopping for Black Friday deals, they're mad, aren't they? Like, proper mad. wants a television and she's prepared to fight for it, if you ask me. It's the fastest way to a meltdown. Me, I just prepare the fastest way to get stuff and it doesn't get faster than Appliances Delivered.aE.

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It's funny when you mentioned Claudius, I immediately thought of Biden because I believe Claudius was appointed because they thought he was an idiot, and it turned out he wasn't. But, well, it turns out Biden is an idiot. Just we have no idea. We look at the point, we're at the point now where, you know, it's a better guess of who is controlling Biden and who is running Biden than is Biden actually bungling his way through this. And I just think it's at the point where everything's become so incompetent because you just have, you have a system that, you know, there's 2.1 million employees in the executive branch. Yes. And that's called a watering down.

Really, that should be about 20 people. You have a watering down of talent. You have a watering down of, or as my friend Thomas likes to say, you know, 50 years ago, Elon Musk would be working for the government. Yes. Because they will pull in the most power, the smartest people, and they'll be like, yeah, we need you here. We need you.

But I guess what you're saying is when you look and you see that basically we have this, the military industrial complex. And it seems like the military runs so much of what we do, along with lobbyists, even lobbyists from other countries, that you see that in Rome and late stage Rome? You do. And it's, it's when I say late stage Rome, like there's two parts to the empire. The empire, as I said, it begins in 31, ends in 476, but there's a breakdown between it. From 31 until 284, it's known as the principate. And principate, and principate, and principate, Hey, comes from Augustus, not wanting to be called king, but calling him for self first citizen. And that's where we get the word prince from.

So it's like this kind of, you know, good thing that had good central power. And it was, you know, sure there's political corruption, but it's not like you would see in what's later called the dominate. And that's where you have oligarchic central power. And it's just people are overtaxed, overrun. And that's where we're living at at the moment is we're more in this like late stage dominate period. And that takes about 200 years to actually go anywhere.

If you ask me the way we're spending money like a drunken sailor here, Peter, like I think we're headed there a lot faster than Rome headed there. And we're bringing in, you'd have to check me on the numbers on this. But I think under Trump, it was around like 1.7 million people came over the border in four years. And now we're around almost nine million in less than four years of Biden. So we've accelerated a lot of what Rome's done. So, you know, we could crash and burn faster. I guess when I look at American history, Patrick Neum,

Manitamacist Institute wrote a book called cronyism in America, and it starts around 1630, 1640, and he goes up to the Spanish-American War. And it seems like, for all intents and purposes, if you really look at the founders, they had an oligarchical kind of presence to them. I mean, they were traders. They were also bootleggers. They did. They wanted to be able to do this without having to answer to the home country. So how much of a chance did we really have when you take into consideration that we have a central bank in 20 years after we established a central bank war over central banking in the war of 1812? I think that's tough because I think the founders set up a very good thing.

They had very good ideas. But I think what happens is, and we've seen this start history, like, you know, banking and military get into things, and that's one of the major things that collapses society, right? You look at a lot of late stage empires, and they're always at war, because war is becomes one of the final things you can do to keep the economy going. And I think when you look at that, they had good intentions, they had good ideas, but they also can't predict the future because you look at where we're at now and they couldn't see the technology we have now. They couldn't see the problems we have. now and we've done well for you know 250 plus years at this point but I think we're starting to see a lot of cracks a lot of those we even started during the Civil War as well right like you look at kind of how it's because people talk about this whole idea of like national divorce now right and if you look at it you're like well that's the first Civil War started and then Lincoln just said no you can't do that so I think we've we've had a lot of kind of creeping federalism problems over the years as we've gone more federal more federal more federal more federal

And there doesn't seem to be really, the 10th Amendment really isn't respected anymore. When it comes to ideology and ideology is another reading Burnham, ideologies don't exist in reality. You never get an ology. How bought into the Roman mythos were their leaders from, even from, say, starting with the Caesars and moving forward? You know, I don't know that that's something I'd be able to tell you, you know, because I can't really get in their heads. Like, I think you can see, like, I think the thing you can understand, like the Roman Republic, they didn't have a written constitution. They just always did things exactly the same way. So tradition was very, very important.

And you look at even when that tradition from Republic to Empire happened in 31 after the bottom of Actium, everything still functioned exactly the same, right? Like things functioned exactly the same, but now there was this new person at front. And that's where Augustus calls himself first citizen. And he's Gaius Octavius at that point. It's the Senate that actually then gives him the title Augustus, which is more of a religious title. So it was important to keep those things functioning the same so that people would think, oh, my life is doing well. And I don't have a better answer for it than that than just kind of, you know,

it was tradition was important to them and keeping things. looking like they were functioning well was important to them. I don't know how much they believed in what they were doing, though. How much of an effect did the growth in the first century of Christianity have on the Roman Empire? It didn't really matter that much early on, because if you look at it around 310 or 312 is actually the Battle of Milvium Bridge, And that's where Constantine has this vision that says under this sine you'll conquer and they paint the Cairo on their shields. And then eventually he becomes a Christian after that. At that point in time, Christianity was only about 2% of the empire when he actually becomes a Christian.

And it was also misunderstood throughout the kind of the Roman Empire period. Because you have to understand Roman religion and how vastly different it is than Christianity. Romans were, it's hard to explain. they're like secular polytheists because they all had they had all these different gods but there wasn't like you must worship this god there was you know there would be there was jupiter but they would worship different incarnations of jupiter like there would be jupiter optimus maximus or jupiter the great king so it was a very kind of interesting thing and a lot of times temples would be locked throughout the year there would only be certain days like a feast day somebody would go to it and do

offerings the thing that was required and it becomes much the worst the empire is doing the harder it's pushed is you actually have to sacrifice to the emperor on the emperor's birthday. And that was one of the major things that Christians were like, well, I'm just not going to do that. And when Romans saw this, they saw that as a political action, as like, you know, standing up to the emperor because they didn't see a separation between spiritual and political power. And for Christians, it was more of, well, we're monotheists. We're just not going to do that. We don't, you know, we're not doing this for political power. So what you would see is every time things weren't going, well would be when the emperor would start persecuting Christians again. So this happens under, happens under Nero, this happens under Caligula. This happens under Caracalla. You look at 284, one of the

best reformers in Rome that actually, he's the person that keeps it from dying in 284, which is Diocletian. He does these great reforms, but he also looks at how fractured society is. And he says, well, you know, you know how I'm going to unite society is we're all going to go after the Christians together. So Christians were a very small percentage of the empire, and there really wasn't an understanding of how monotheism functioned. So whenever things weren't going well, the emperor would just kind of go after the Christians. And then you have this 312 when Constantine becomes a Christian, and it isn't until the 370s under 3 Theodosius the Great when it actually becomes the official religion of the empire. So it takes us a very long time to get there.

reading about the early civilization, the founding of Rome, it seems to be fairly monocultural, fairly homogenous. And we look at what's happened. Our country was- That's not necessarily true. Are you saying the patricians and plebians were different? No, not even that, because if you look at it, kind of Rome was this small city-state, and there were all these different cultures beyond them. And even in the, there were the Romans and the Latin.

The Latins were the people that weren't quite Roman. And even during the Roman Revolution, you have this fight over Latin rights and who gets them. So I would say the more homogenization starts happening around that turn of Republic to Empire. And that's kind of where I would see it is. But do continue. I apologize for interrupting. Oh, no, no.

I mean, we were founded on a, most of the guys were Protestants. And it seemed that you even read it in the federalist papers. Adams is very clear about who this country is, who this country and who the government is designed for. And we see now that when you have basically hordes coming over the border from, we don't even know where. I mean, it's, I was hearing this morning, somebody was talking about how they know a Ukrainian who's lived here forever, you know, who was born here, and they know of Ukrainians that are coming over the, Mexican border. And how does, when you look at how we become multicultural and when you have people coming in who are not even registered, but can still get entitlements, things like that,

it just creates a resentment. How do you, the same thing happened to Rome. People started flowing in from all over the empire. Do you see any correlations there? So immigration is a problem, but not in the same way. And I think you're correct. When you look at it like the welfare state has to kind of start handling a lot of these people, you have problems. After the Roman, well, towards the end of the Roman Revolution, there's this thing that starts called the grain dole.

And basically what's that means if you got citizenship and you live in Rome, you get grain. You're like guaranteed a certain amount of grain. And in 212, Emperor Karakala takes, and he names everyone in the Roman provinces a citizen. And like basically overnight, 30 million people become Roman citizens. So now you have to feed those people. And that's a huge problem. Now, the reason he does it is because the imperial coffers didn't have a lot of money in it. And if you were a citizen, well, that also meant you were now subject to Roman inheritance tax.

And that was what he was trying to do was basically, when these people die, I can take a large portion of their money. That's kind of what he was thinking. Now, if you look at kind of how the third century goes, you have these things called the barrack emperors. These are emperors that barracks meaning military barracks. They realize that their power comes from the military. So during that 100-year period, you have 47 different guys claimed to be emperor. And what they did is they would debase the money in order to pay the military because that's where their money comes from. And there had also been a plague before this in the 180s, so 10% of the Roman Empire had actually died.

So it's a large percentage of people. So there's a big need for soldiers and they're overpaying them. So that's where they start bringing in barbarian tribes in order to serve in the Roman military. And that's actually how the first immigration starts coming in, is they need tribes to serve in the military. And eventually the military in the second century or third century actually doubles in size. The standing army is double in size because that's where all the money comes from. So then that's really how immigration starts.

And the problem you run into is as you get into the later, fourth century and early fifth century, they stopped having money to pay these soldiers. And then that's where the soldiers who have been serving in the Roman army start basically attacking and raiding Rome. And in 410 under Oliverick the Visigoth, you have the first sack of Rome. And after that point, they start paying money to the Visigoths like, hey, just stop attacking us. So they get immigration in a very different way, since it's more of a military immigration, but it creates similar problems, right? if you have all these people you got to feed, all these people you got to take care of, and it creates this massive instability.

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and if it's online, it's in stock. With next day delivery in Greater Dublin. Appliances Delivered.e. Part of expert electrical. See it, buy it, get it tomorrow. Or you know, fight Brenda. That's interesting considering some of the arguments that you've been hearing is to these people coming over the border,

the males, the military age males, is to put them in the military and just give that'll give them citizenship automatically. Well, they did that in the early empire too because there was during the Republic, they didn't have a standing army, but towards the end of the late Republic under Gaius Marius, they change it and they actually have a standing army. And there was the regular standing army and there's what's called the Roman auxiliary. To serve in the auxiliary, it meant you weren't a Roman. Like you were a goth, you were a Visigoth, you were a vandal, you were one of these other tribes.

And if you served in the auxiliary and somehow managed not to die for 20 years, and later on it becomes 30 years, you would get citizenship. But what that meant is your wife would be a citizen, your kids would be citizens. So it really changes your stars if you could manage not to die and serve long enough in the Roman auxiliary. Yeah, well, you also have 20 years of becoming, you would think, becoming patriotic and assimilating. and then really a way of earning your citizenship for better for worse. I don't know if anybody thinks that that's a good thing or a bad thing. That's true because they become very, very Romanized, right? Like those things become very desirable.

And if you even look at a lot of the later emperors, a lot of the later emperors don't come from Rome. They come from out in the provinces. Now you get excuses like, well, the birth replacement rate isn't, isn't doing well amongst Americans. So we need to bring all these people in here because, you know, we need, basically it almost seems like we're at that point, that stage where they're so in debt and they're where the interest is outpaid, interest payments or outpacing anything that the principal could be on on the debt.

I think they're saying a trillion every hundred days. Wow. And yeah, a trillion every hundred days. So it almost seems like they're just flooding the country because it's like, oh, well, you know, these people are going to pay taxes. And then I just recorded with a friend of mine who's a lawyer and he used to do labor law in California. He says these, they don't, taxes are taken out. But there is no real like, I guess they are sort of paying taxes because they can't file taxes because many of them are working with fake social security numbers, social security numbers of babies, stolen IDs, stuff like that. But I think that's with a way, one of the excuses they're making now is, well, we just let all these people in and they work on the books and we let them work on the books be part of payroll.

Then we can get those taxes, even the Social Security tax, and we can do something with it. I think even the scarier part about it is, and this is the thing people don't consider because everybody's like, oh, would they get the right to vote and this and that? And I think that actually really doesn't matter, Peter. I think the issue is, like, they've always been able to be counted in the census, but there was a law that was changed under Obama that basically, for telling them you're an illegal, they couldn't come get you, right? Like, that was changed in the way ICE operated. So if you look at the census, the census is what our congressional representation is based off of it.

So the more illegals they push in, the more it changes the census number. whether they get to vote or not, it doesn't really matter because you look at a state like California. And once again, we don't know the true numbers, but there's an estimate of anywhere from five to seven congressional seats that California currently has that they shouldn't have. And if they do that in every single state, there was a congresswoman from Brooklyn that was being interviewed not too long ago talking about the same thing of like, well, this is how we change the electorate. If we change the electorate, we can change representation. And frankly, like, with as much as we've gone towards oligarchy,

like us regular people don't matter anyway. If we can change Congress, then we change the country. When it comes to Congress, how do you see the United States Congress comparing to what they had in Rome? So it's interesting because, like, Rome, though it was a republic,

operated much more like an oligarchy. The Senate didn't actually pass laws. They would just make recommendations and then who was ever, you know, Tribune or Consul at that time would be the one that would actually decide, okay, am I going to pass this decree or not pass this decree? So there was this thing called the the Corsus Enorum, and this was basically like the different levels of office you would go through through your lifetime, and you couldn't hold your first office until you were 35, and you would basically move towards hopefully being a Tribune by the time you died. And so it was a very small group

of people that could hold power. And to hold power in one of those political positions or the Senate This changes in the later, later republic and early empire, but to hold that power, you had to also own a certain amount of property as well. And that was actually one of the problems that Sulla, who was one of the generals that actually in the late empire attacks Rome and tries to name himself like emperor before, you know, emperor really happens. He had a problem not being able to serve in the military right away because he didn't have the money to actually be able to serve in the military. And this is when it changes from kind of a citizen army to a standing army. So it was really important what you owned. And because of that, it also decided, like, who controlled things. So though, you know, the plebeians had a voice through the Tribune of the Plebs,

it was very much an oligarchy and not what we consider to be an ideal republic. So let's go right to the end. The fall. Talk about, you know, distinct things that you can see. see there compared to what we're experiencing. And I would say what we've been experiencing for probably 150 years. I go back to the Civil War. Reconstruction was, reconstruction was just devastating upon the, upon the South. And even when after the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Germany was smart enough to keep paying East German officers their pension. Because it's like,

we're not going to punish you for what you what you did but the country the south was punished to the point where i live in the south i live in the deep south the friend of mine says um refers to the war of northern aggression as uh the recent unpleasantness because that's what that's what it was it was called after the war referred to after the war but what what happened here started a spiraling well i think when you look at it this so this this question is one of the single most debated and argued things of historians throughout history. So this is my opinion from what I've observed and there's going to be thousands of people that disagree with me, some that don't agree with me in all those sorts of things. But like Rome in the West ends in

476. So in the east, so that's Constantinople, it doesn't end until 1453 under the Ottomans. And if you ask the people in the east, they wouldn't have called themselves Byzantines. They would have called themselves Romans. So they continue to believe that they're Romans. Like that's, that's their identity. So you'll have some people that say the Roman Empire ends at 476. You'll have some people that say it ends in 1453. You'll have other people that say it ends in the mid-19th century. So it's a very debated thing. So when I say fall of Rome, I'm looking at the West. That's essentially what I'm looking for and that's essentially where I'm placing us. and when you look at it, it's not a like, oh my gosh, one day you're here, the next day you're not.

It's a hundreds of years process because as I mentioned, Marcus Aurelius names his son Cometus to be emperor after him, which kind of changes this five good emperor stability thing. And he reigns until 192. And he's such a terrible emperor because he wants to be a gladiator and he's abusive and he does all that. He's crazy the way he taxes. They tried several times to kill him unsuccessfully. The first time they try to poison him, but they get him too drunk first, so he vomits up all the poison. The way they eventually get him is a wrestler actually strangles in the death. If Hulk Hogan came in and strangled you, at least it was Hulk.

So after that, you have a lot of instability because you then go to these barrack emperors, the first of which is this guy named Septimius Severus. His son Caracalla is the guy that gives citizenship to everybody who also dies in a really interesting way, gets off his horse to take a piss and his soldiers kill him because they're like, oh, he's peeing right now. This would be a very good time to take him out. So during this time period, you have the military would take their general and name him emperor. And this happens more than 47 times throughout that less than a hundred year period. And then in 284, Diocletian becomes emperor and actually stabilizes the emperor, the empire, because he does, he handles the currency by minting new coins. So we have a new standard currency. He handles a lot of the military was, was situated in the empire so that handles this problem of constantly raising an army and attacking. And he does things with immigration. He handles the tax system. So Rome actually stabilizes for this time period. But the problem we have after that is he died.

dies and they just keep doing the same things. And it splits between East and West because he creates this thing called the Tetrarchy because it was just so big, there would be a senior emperor in the West and a senior emperor in the East and then a junior emperor on each side. So now power is split, the tax base is split and you have to keep paying for this military along with barbarian invasions. It's just eventually they can't do it anymore because all the money is going to the military. The central power doesn't have any have any money anymore to pay the military. So now the military is getting mad. The military is all their barbarian. So the military turns on them. And that's really just how it ends. It eventually ends in

476 by the final emperor, Romulus Augustus, really being an emperor, and he was just a kid, too, he was like 10 years old, being an emperor nominally only. And the final and one of his generals, Oda Walker, says, okay, we're going to cut out the charade. I'm now the king of Italy. There's no more Roman empire. And that's how it goes. So it really ends because the military had just turned on and eventually taken everything over. All right. It's fun, right? Yeah, well, what happens here?

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I don't know if you're that far off. It's you got inflation out of control, right? You have, I don't really know what's happening with the armed forces anymore because they've gotten all the good ones out from COVID mandates. And, you know, you're bringing new people across the border, which what are they going to to do with them. And, you know, the Joint Chiefs kind of listen to the president, kind of don't listen to the president. So it's, there's a control problem at the moment. Well, I mean, especially since you look at

things like Ukraine and Ukraine seems to be, you can make arguments that there is personal resentment. This is personal grudges that are that are fueling this. And then, you know, APEC saying you have to support Israel's war against Hamas. And, I mean, it's coming from everywhere. And but the, I guess the thing is, I guess the difference would be is that, yeah, the military just does not seem, it doesn't seem like there's any great military leadership and any kind of great military leadership at this point that would actually step up would be, I know, he'd probably be heralded and really be pushed.

And I'm not even sure you would normally think that that would come from like the Republicans, but I think at this point, it could come from the Democrats as well. I just, the Republicans are worthless at this point. You know what I mean? It's just it's they're not even a true opposition party anymore. It's gotten kind of sad. You know, it's Thomas Massey's like Thomas Massey's out there on an island. He's out there in an island.

You know, Rand Paul, I like him most of the time. And I'm still not sure how to feel about Matt Gates. And I think there's like one or two percent good guys out there trying to do something. But it's you look at it and they're either, you know, they're getting paid by by a lobbyist. They have a company that's invested in them. They're looking at personal interests. Maybe somebody's got something on them at a certain point too. So it's just it's not really functional.

And it's interesting looking at the military because I have a good friend that he's, he's in his mid-40s now and he's been retired from military for a few years. And he's actually getting calls from commanders. he know that's still in the military saying, we need you to reenlist, man, because there's nobody here that knows how to run this thing. And I think that's the problem what we're running into is, like you said,

there is no real leadership. And you see people like Mark Millie, who are more concerned about, you know, what is our DEI and do we have a trans flag, than like, what does a military look like? It's just kind of strange. Yeah, I don't know if you've noticed this,

but it's something that I've been tracking for a while is somebody who's come back on the scene started his own podcast and he's doing interviews and he's traveling is Eric Prince. Yeah, he's been on, he was on Tim Poul's Culture War. He's been on Band's War. He's been on Band's War Room. He was, he did a long episode on Patrick Bet David. That's a good one. I've been listening to his podcast. And he's clearly expressing solutions for continents. And you have to wonder if we're at that point where somebody who has the kind of confidence, the kind of the willpower, especially, but also has the command kind of presence to step up and will be looked at as maybe this guy is the kind of leader we need right now. Because I mean,

I mean, he looks at what's happening in Ukraine and he can see exactly what's happening. I don't think he's anti-Israel, but I don't think he wants the United States to be involved in what they're, you know, what's going on over there. But I think he, he recognizes his own set of enemies. And I think we're at that point in empire where somebody is, somebody is going to step up and not only will, people like on the right, but people on the left. And now I'm describing the antichrist, that's what everybody's areas that I'm describing the antichrist, will embrace him because they're just so over the incompetence. And, you know, especially with a, you know, look at the way Russia and China and India and South Africa have responded to the United States keeping this NATO

thing going. I mean, you have countries that are full. fleeing. You have Egypt. You have Saudi Arabia. You have all of these countries who are joining Bricks who were, were, you know, are U.S. allies a couple weeks ago. And the writing is on the wall. And it's actually, I, in my opinion, I see it as a perfect time for somebody to step up into that kind of Caesar role and actually take over and people will follow. And it's not Donald Trump. Yeah. I'm talking about somebody with Will. With Will. Well, I kind of, you know, like I said, I think Cesar's already happened. I think we're kind of well past that. I think it's the structures of government are broken. So I don't know what comes after that. And I guess the thing that would like worry me about somebody like Eric Prince is I like a lot of what he says. You know, I think a lot of what he says makes sense. But then I have to remind myself like, hey, he's a, he's a military industrial complex guy. So like that would be my major concern is like, well, do we start going in other countries and. blowing up again, right? Like, is that what somebody like that is going to do? So it's like, he speaks the right game. He says the right things, but, you know, I'm ultimately a Ron Paul guy.

Like, I want to get out of other people's backyards. I think, I think that's kind of the problem. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I'm totally Ron Paul made me political, made me study politics. And, but I also have moved beyond libertarianism to realize there are real devils in the world that we have to worry about. No, I think so, but I think like it's also like if you even look at what happened like under President Trump with the military, like I know we had some things happening in Syria, but for the most part, we didn't have a lot of major conflicts going on globally. And I think it goes back to the to the Teddy Roosevelt idea of like speak softly and carry big stick. Like let's have some big weapons, but let's not use them. You know what I mean? I think that should be a great

deterrent. 100%. You know, I've said there's no way. I don't think Putin, goes into Ukraine if Trump is president. Well, because he's, he's too unpredictable, right? Like, he may actually do what he's saying he's going to do. And I think that's what scares somebody like Putin. Yeah. And I think when you have a presence up there that Trump did do, Trump's presence scared enough people that basically they backed off on some things.

Well, what I see is a lot of the stuff. overseas was backed off on, but then what a lot of people in the managerial state saw was, oh, if all of these people support Trump, all of these people have to be bad people. So maybe we need to focus back into our interior because our enemies are actually inside the gate and they're voting. They're the kind of people who would actually vote for Donald Trump. I think that the difficulty is too is like I like a lot of what Trump did but I also see a lot of the things that he did that that weren't so good right like I think the pandemic is I think the pandemic was handled poorly I think one of the major things that nobody seems to talk about Peter everybody seems to forget when we were having economic troubles during the pandemic he brought in black rock to start managing government money it's like what so I think there like there's a lot of things he's did that it's great there you know I voted for him twice I would vote for him again. but I think at the same time, there's a lot of things that he did that I'm like, I don't like that.

And I think that's the problem with the system we're currently in. Like, number one, the president actually doesn't matter that much, I think is kind of the part of it. But then also, like, you're forced into this lesser of two evils. And either one still forces us down the same road, right? And I think that's the problem is we need more choices, but the way our system is currently set up, which George Washington warned us against, we're in a system where we have to vote for two parties. And I think that is also a problem. you get to the point where if you have an old car and it breaks down, you have to decide,

you realize that it's broke, okay? But if something's broke, you have two choices. You can try and fix it or you can try and replace it. As deep as the managerialism has infected everything, at this point, I think it has to be replaced. And the scary part about that is that normally when you, when something's being replaced, that can turn into a revolution really quick. That can turn violent really quick, kinetic really quick. Well, I think that's the problem about what I was talking about earlier is like, you know,

if you look at it, I don't think we're a republic anymore. But if you look at the things that would have to change for that to happen, like, you know, it's too big, right? Like, so I don't know. We can't go backwards anymore. I think that is over. I don't know where we go from here, and that does kind of worry me a little bit. Yeah.

All right. Well, tell everybody where they can find your work, and we'll wrap up here. Yeah. So if they want to find out anything I'm doing company-wise, it's over at command your brand.com. We put together a really great book because we're just excited about the power of these conversations. If you want to have her to Best Podcast Book.com. And they can find me just about anywhere. I'm Jeremy Ryan Slate on all platforms.

All right, Jeremy. Thank you very much. Hey, thank you so much for having me here.