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The Burning of Rome

 Copyright © February 1, 2022 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.

Introduction

Building In 64 A.D. Nero was the emperor of the Roman empire. Nero publicly stated that he despised the slum areas of Rome and that he wanted to replace those slums with splendid new buildings that would become a monument to his reign as emperor of the Roman empire.

During Nero's reign the "corn dole" (or grain dole) was one of the policies of Rome that he inherited. (Note: In 64 A.D. "corn" was the generic name for any grain product and corn did not refer to what people in the 21st century now call "corn.") The corn dole was originally established in approximately 123 B.C. and it allowed the poor families in Rome to purchase approximately 33 kilograms (73 pounds) of corn (or grain) per month at a significantly reduced price. The number of foods in the corn dole was gradually expanded to include wine, oil, and pork. The reasons for the corn dole were as follows:

1. To provide just barely enough food to the poor people to keep them from starving to death.
2. To prevent the murder of the rich families of Rome by the huge number of peasants in Rome.
3. To protect the homes and lands of the wealthy aristocrats of Rome from being violently confiscated by the lower classes of Rome.

The number of people who received the corn dole fluctuated from between 200,000 to 320,000 of the one-million people who lived in Rome. Therefore the percentage of people who were subsidized by the corn dole varied from 20% to 32% of the population of Rome. This put a significant financial burden on the rulers of Rome and the rulers invested a significant amount of their time trying to figure out ways to reduce the number of people on the corn dole without causing a public uprising and mob violence.

According to historians, the fire in Rome began in the year 64 A.D. on either July 18 or July 19, and the fire burned for somewhere between three to six days. When the fire began emperor Nero was in Antium which was about 35 miles away from Rome. Historians believe that Nero ordered his subordinates to start the fire when he was safely away from Rome so he would not be harmed if the fire got seriously out-of-control. And this also provided him with an alibi for being far away from Rome when the fire actually began.

High winds significantly compromised any efforts to contain the fire. By the time the fire burned itself out approximately 70% of Rome was completely destroyed. Ten of Rome's 14 districts were burned to the ground and this included all of Rome's slum districts. A lot of people lost their lives. But the most devastating effect was that approximately 70% of the citizens of Rome lost their homes and the majority of their possessions. This included almost all of the poor people of Rome.

Since the beginning of his reign, Nero had openly expressed his hatred for Christians because the moral standards of Christians were 100% in conflict with the way Nero lived his life (sexual abuse of young boys and young girls, murder of everyone that opposed him, and drunken orgies). Because Nero hated Christians he insisted that the Christians were somehow responsible for starting the fire. This allowed Nero to arrest, torture, and execute anyone who professed to be a Christian. He would have some Christians coated with tar, tied to a post, and then burned at one of his dinner banquets. Nero also fed some Christians to the lions for the entertainment of the citizens of Rome. Nero started the state sanctioned persecution of Christians and this state sanctioned persecution lasted until approximately 313 A.D.

The fire of Rome therefore helped Nero accomplish the following:
    Building
  1. After clearing away the charred ruins of Rome, Nero achieved his dream of rebuilding Rome with wide streets, and he constructed beautiful buildings made of marble and stone.
  2. Nero was able to legally execute anyone who was a member of the Christian religion.
  3. The poor peasants could no longer revolt, except at the cost of their lives, because there was no longer any place for them to hide because all the slums had been destroyed. Therefore they had to leave Rome and find someplace else to live. Historians completely lost track of this huge number of people because they were not historically important.
  4. The number of people on the corn dole was temporarily reduced because of the huge number of people who had to move away from Rome in order to survive. These people could not prove who they were because all records of their identity had been destroyed in the fire. And it took years for these people to reestablish themselves in their new locations and many of these people starved to death during this time. None of this can be historically proven because no legal or historical records were created or maintained on these migrating homeless people.
  5. The military was strengthened because the stronger and healthier peasants (male and female) were forced to accept menial jobs working for the military in return for the food they ate and a place to sleep at night.
Eventually the Roman empire collapsed for a variety of reasons including, but not limited to, the following:
  1. The corn dole gradually became a serious financial burden that could not be supported based on Rome's tax revenues. (The modern equivalent of the corn dole would be SNAP (food stamps), WIC (Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program), welfare subsidies, free medical and dental care, and free housing.)
  2. The morals of the people, including the peasants, the tradesmen, the aristocrats, and the rulers became seriously debased. This resulted in an increase in bribes, graft, embezzlement, and theft. (A modern moral equivalent now exists in almost every nation in the world because the teachings of the Holy Bible have been replaced by whatever each person wants to personally believe is acceptable behavior. Acceptable behavior is usually defined by an individual as anything that enhances the well-being of that specific individual regardless of the impact it may have on other people.)
  3. The legal system became perverted and the common people could be victimized for any reason. (A modern legal equivalent now exists in almost every communist, socialist, and democratic nation everywhere in the world in the year 2022.)
  4. Rome tried to expand its rule to distant countries and this required a significant amount of their resources and their military. Rome was not able to conquer and control these distant lands and this resulted in a significant loss of money, military personnel, and civilian support personnel. (A modern equivalent would be the recent Afghanistan peacekeeping effort (invasion) by the USA that began in approximately 1999 and the subsequent USA withdrawal (in dishonor) from Afghanistan in the year 2021.)

Discussion

In the year 2022 many major cities in the USA, and in a variety of other countries, have slum areas that are slowly taking over significant parts of their once beautiful cities. The buildings in these slum areas have all or most of the following problems:
  1. Electrical wiring that is currently unsafe due to a variety of reasons.
  2. Water circulation systems that are leaking, corroded, and that provide no water or that provide contaminated water that is not fit to drink.
  3. Sewer systems that don't work and human refuse is being discarded in the streets or in nearby areas.
  4. Old heating and air conditioning systems that don't work and for which repair parts are not available.
  5. Insulation that is worn out and that does almost nothing to maintain acceptable temperatures inside the building.
  6. Roofs that are leaking and the rainwater is gradually destroying the building.
  7. Rat and insect infestations that spread disease among the occupants of these buildings.
  8. Accumulated filth and trash inside and outside these building that contaminate the breathing air in these areas, and that increase the chance of an occupant of the building becoming infected with a serious disease.
  9. Stairs that are unsafe to transverse and that are a constant source of accidents.
The above slum areas are currently being occupied by the poor and the homeless. And these people are being left alone for the following reasons:
  1. The local government does not have the money or the resources to assist these people in any way.
  2. They can't relocate these people somewhere else because no other location would be willing to accept them.
  3. They can't arrest these people because the jails are already over-crowded with criminals who have been convicted of committing serious crimes.
  4. They can't kill these people because most of our leaders still have some type of conscience that tells them that killing these people would be far worse than simply ignoring them.
There are at least five potential solutions to the problems of inner city slums:
  1. Leave Them Alone: If these people are left to fend for themselves them most of them will die a premature death due to starvation, or malnutrition, or disease. And some of the people will also murder one another to steal whatever the other person has. This is the strategy that most communities are using with their slum areas.
  2. Legally Condemn the Area, Level the Area, and Rebuild the Area: This is an expensive solution because clearing an area of its old buildings costs a reasonable amount of money. It also does not resolve the problem of what to do with the people who live in the slum area and those people would have to be relocated somewhere else where they would continue to be a problem for the local government.
  3. Infectious Disease: Allow an infectious disease that propagates rapidly in a slum area to spread throughout the area and eliminate most of the residents of that area. The disease should be one that is easily prevented in an area with good hygiene, and that can be easily and quickly cured with modern medical care. The problem with this solution is that the slum area would still remain after its residents are murdered.
  4. Fire: When the wind is blowing in the proper direction, start a fire in the middle of the night and allow the fire to destroy the slum area and its residents. The advantage of this solution is that it destroys the slum area and its residents. This is the solution that Nero used to purge Rome of its undesirable population.
    Helicopter
  5. War: If a war begins anywhere in the world then specific cities and slum areas could be destroyed and the blame could be placed on a terrorist attack by another country. At the current time Russia may be planning to attack Ukraine, and China may be planning to attack Taiwan and Australia, and several Muslim nations are continuing to threaten Israel. If any of these events lead to a war then almost any nation could claim that a Russian terrorist, or a Chinese terrorist, or a Muslim terrorist planted a bomb, or started a fire, that destroyed a large part of a specific city in their country.
In the USA the federal government may be intentionally transporting large numbers of illegal immigrants from outside the USA into the USA and the government may be releasing these people into areas without the knowledge or approval of the tax-paying citizens of the USA. In your opinion, will this help resolve the above problems or will it make the above problems even worse? Or is it possible that the government may have a plan that isn't obvious to an ethical intelligent law-abiding tax-paying citizen?

Some of our leaders currently use a variety of derogatory names to refer to the undesirable people who are under their control. Some examples would be: peasants, useless eaters, sheep, cattle, rabble, irrelevant, unimportant, expendables, deplorables, trash, cannon fodder, and collateral damage. What do these terms indicate about the opinion that some of our leaders have about us?

For many years the government, the media, and a variety of organizations have been intentionally stirring up hatred between races, between people who speak different languages, and between people with different heritages. This strategy has been successful on a small scale because it has resulted in a variety of destructive riots in a variety of different cities for a variety of different reasons. At the current time in the USA the entire country is just waiting for a national trigger event that will result in a mass uprising nationwide that will result in the death of millions and millions of people, and that will destroy all of the slums, and many of the middle class neighborhoods, and some of the farmlands across the entire continent. If this happens during your lifetime then it will plunge the people of the USA into a new "dark age" because it will take decades for the country to recover. And the government that rises from the ashes will probably not resemble the government that was originally created by our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

Conclusion

In the year 2022 most of the nations around the world have some or all of the following problems:
  1. The virus propaganda is becoming increasingly obvious as being fake propaganda to an increasing number of people worldwide. This is resulting in the reduction or suspension of some of the vaccine mandates, mask mandates, and lockdowns by some governments.
  2. Supply chain problems are increasing around the world. In some areas food is completely absent but in most areas some food is available but the selection is limited. Replacement repair parts are also in short supply or the parts are on indefinite backorder.
  3. Most governments have inadequate tax revenues to pay for the free food and the free services that they are providing to an increasing number of their citizens. In some nations, this includes free food and free services to illegal aliens who have never been tax-paying citizens. The free food problem may take care of itself because a government can give its citizens vouchers for free food but if there is no food available at the store then the vouchers will never be cashed in and the government will be off-the-hook because the broken supply chain is not the government's fault. The government can blame the broken supply chain on businesses. The lack of food may be intentionally planned because it would result in mob violence on a scale that would overwhelm and destroy the remaining law enforcement personnel in the affected areas.
  4. In most areas the moral standards are disintegrating and this is resulting in an increase in crime, and in the destruction and theft of property, and in the over-crowding of the local and federal prisons.
  5. Wealthy citizens are not being prosecuted for their crimes and this is causing a decrease in the moral standards at every level of society.
  6. Convicted criminals are not being punished in proportion to their crimes. Convicted murderers are not being executed and they are sometimes released on parole after they have served a few years in prison. Many convicted criminals are currently being given extremely short prison sentences because the prisons are already bursting at the seams.
  7. Poor people are being victimized by the courts on fictitious charges and this is causing a decrease in the moral standards at every level of society.
  8. Anyone who disagrees with anything that is currently "politically correct" is being censored. In the USA this even included Donald Trump when he was the president of the USA. The USA news media and the USA social media agreed that the people of the USA and the people of the world should only hear what the media wanted them to hear, and they should only believe what the media told them to believe, and that people should not be exposed to what the President of the USA wanted to share with them.
  9. Governments are increasing in size faster than their tax revenues are increasing.
  10. Governments are creating more and more money based on nothing and this will eventually result in hyperinflation. If you think food is expensive now, then you will probably be shocked if the price of food doubles, or triples, or quadruples as a result of hyperinflation.
  11. Some people are being arrested and detained for indefinite periods of time and they are not being allowed the right to defend themselves in a court of law.
  12. Some outspoken people are disappearing without a trace.
In your opinion, if the above trends continue to get worse then what will the future hold for most of the law-abiding tax-paying people all over the world?

Respectfully,
Grandpappy.

Postscript: During World War II many Asian American native-born USA citizens were arrested by the federal government. But they were never officially charged with any crime. And they never appeared before any court of law. And they were never heard from again. Most American citizens have never heard about these Asian American native-born USA citizens who were simply eliminated from society within the USA by the federal government during World War II. In your opinion, could this happen again to any citizen of the USA regardless of their heritage?

Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com

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