Who Is the Mole?

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Re: Who Is the Mole?

Postby ReptilianKittenEater » Sat Aug 13, 2022 2:34 am

Kurt wrote:
Tarkan wrote:I'd argue the swamp DOES need to be drained, but Trump isn't the man to do it. To compare it to Roman times, we need a Julius Caesar, but instead we have a bunch of Honorius type characters running things.



So we need a Military Dictator who is very educated and well-spoken?

Honorius gets a bad rap because of Procopius, a good writer, a good General but a bitter gossip.

Also Theodosius persecuted Arianism by issuing the Edict of Salonika which removed them from the Church and essentially caused Rome to lose parts of Gaul, all of Iberia and most of Africa. That combined with his persecutions of Paganism also strengthened the Hun movement, which was more of a reactionary religious movement than an ethnic movement after 300AD. Then Theodosious croaks and all the Arian and Hun invasions happen under Honorius and Theodosius gets known as "The last good emperor" and Honorius gets screwed.

A united Christian / Arian and Pagan Rome could have at least lasted until the Ottoman era.


Interesting turn of the conversation as Trump is a bit of a Nero. If he is going down he will try to burn the whole country down. That is if Nero was behind the burning of Rome.
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Re: Who Is the Mole?

Postby Kurt » Sat Aug 13, 2022 4:15 am

This reminds me I have to check if there is a better Kindle Formatted version of Gibbon.

In 2008 I got a $50 kindle just to get a $1 version of Decline and Fall and avoid the $300 hard copy set...and it was formatted so it was impossible to search through chapters. Just page by page.

Anyway Gibbon thought Commodus was the worst but now I cannot remember why.

St. Augustine is good when you want to read about persecution. Augustine "persecuted" the Donatists (they were basically Puritans) but his version of persecution was prohibiting Donatist sermons after mass and prohibiting church scribes from writing down their ideas.
Basically it was like Twitter "persecuting" Trump. Their platform their rules. Since church and state were one that prohibition was empire wide. The church could critique theDonatists in the church forums but the Donatists could neither refute or preach contrarian doctrine on church property...so the Donatists became street preachers and lasted until the Muslim invasion.

Anyway Augustine saw any persecution that went further than "deplatforming" as driving away potential converts. If Arians and Pagans went to War with Rome the Rome suffered and Arian and Pagan souls were lost.

Augustine is a pretty easy read too. Worth having on hand just for reference. We forget that it was pretty much his ideas that shaped Europe from 500AD to 1500AD.
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Re: Who Is the Mole?

Postby vagabond » Sat Aug 13, 2022 4:42 pm

Kurt wrote:This reminds me I have to check if there is a better Kindle Formatted version of Gibbon.

In 2008 I got a $50 kindle just to get a $1 version of Decline and Fall and avoid the $300 hard copy set...and it was formatted so it was impossible to search through chapters. Just page by page.

Anyway Gibbon thought Commodus was the worst but now I cannot remember why.

St. Augustine is good when you want to read about persecution. Augustine "persecuted" the Donatists (they were basically Puritans) but his version of persecution was prohibiting Donatist sermons after mass and prohibiting church scribes from writing down their ideas.
Basically it was like Twitter "persecuting" Trump. Their platform their rules. Since church and state were one that prohibition was empire wide. The church could critique theDonatists in the church forums but the Donatists could neither refute or preach contrarian doctrine on church property...so the Donatists became street preachers and lasted until the Muslim invasion.

Anyway Augustine saw any persecution that went further than "deplatforming" as driving away potential converts. If Arians and Pagans went to War with Rome the Rome suffered and Arian and Pagan souls were lost.

Augustine is a pretty easy read too. Worth having on hand just for reference. We forget that it was pretty much his ideas that shaped Europe from 500AD to 1500AD.


I thought Nero's deal wasn't really starting the fire but doing nothing while it burned? If we're doing historical comparisons, similar to Trump during early COVID?

As to a better copy, I'm sure by now you're good to go in terms of choice. There's also libgen or project gutenberg.
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