There is still bread in the stores and circuses on television. The Imperial Legions keep right on occupying distant hinterlands, though the ominous thunder of barbarian war drums grows louder every day. Superficial normalcy pervades in the heart of the American Empire, where billionaire citizens and working-class slaves alike continue to go about their daily business.

The But don’t let that fool you. The USA is beginning to resemble Rome during its final, decadent stages right before the collapse.

Roman decadence defines the gradual and moral decline in the ancient Roman republican values of family, farming, virtus, and Dignitas. It is personified by the ‘mad emperors‘…

Even setting aside the allegations of Katie, Donald “Pussygrabber-in-Chief” Trump cuts a figure of narcissistic decadence reminiscent of Caligula or Nero. Is somebody slipping lead into the 12 Diet Cokes he drinks each and every day? Then again, when you’re guzzling that much Diet Coke do you even need a lead? Whatever the cause, there’s definitely some imperial brain damage occurring in that orange head of his.

Nero and Caligula were never terribly popular in the Roman Christian community. For them, Christians were lion food.



Yet today, our mad emperor Donald Trump, one of the least Christlike individuals who ever lived, is adored by multitudes of Christian Zionist cretins. It’ll be a horrible, cruel spectacle when Trump starts feeding them to the lions. But it sure won’t hurt the gene pool.

Still, not every conservative evangelical Christian is a complete idiot. One of America’s sharpest political commentators, believe it or not, is SPLC-certified “guns n’ God right-wing patriot movement extremist” Chuck Baldwin, a pastor based in Kalispell, Montana. Below is his latest epistle—a refreshing contrast to the usual Trump-kool-aid-drinking evangelical BS. If you have any friends or family members of the Evangelical persuasion, be sure to turn them on to Pastor Chuck.

-Kevin Barrett, VT Editor

Back To Rome

By Chuck Baldwin 

February 13, 2020

Even the most casual student of history knows that the mighty Roman Empire fell from within. More serious students of history have read tomes of scholarly research on the subject. Most of them also share the conclusion that the collapse of the greatest economic and military power in the world came primarily from within. And many of these same researchers are saying that America is on a course to repeat Rome’s collapse. I believe they are right.

Excessive taxation with unbridled spending, a hedonistic culture preoccupied with pleasure and sport, fascination with military conquest that bred overextended military adventurism and perpetual war and extreme corruption in government seem to be the consistent themes describing the fall of the mighty Roman Empire.

In truth, the Roman Empire was doomed . . . when it became an empire. The power lust of Julius Caesar drove him to lead the Roman army in many unsanctioned, unlawful and barbaric wars of aggression. But it also made him extremely powerful and popular with the Roman people. 

The Roman senate wanted Caesar to face criminal charges for his unlawful wars and summoned him home from the battlefield to face those charges. Instead, Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with his 13th Roman Legion in 49 B.C. and seized Rome by force. He then summarily dismantled the power of the senate, gave great wealth and lands to the military troops that were loyal to him and implemented monarchical law. He soon forced the senate to declare him to be a “dictator for life.”

Julius Caesar was assassinated by senators loyal to the Roman Republic on March 15, 44 B.C., but they lacked the power to overcome Caesar’s adopted heir, Octavian and were soon defeated. Their defeat eliminated all opposition to the new monarchy. Octavian, named Caesar Augustus (the title as ascribed in Luke 2:1; called Augustus Caesar in secular history), became the first official Emperor of Rome.

The Roman Republic fell when the Roman Empire began.

Historian Timothy Joseph writes:

Trump’s lawyers argued that the president’s personal position is inseparable from that of the nation itself. This is similar to the notion that took hold during the ascendancy of the man known as Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, who was in power from 31 B.C. to A.D. 14.

Trump defense attorney Alan Dershowitz asserted that “abuse of power” by the president is not an impeachable offense. A central part of Dershowitz’s argument was that “every public official that I know believes that his election is in the public interest” and that “if a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”

This inability to separate the personal interests of a leader from the interests of the country he or she leads has powerful echoes in ancient Rome.

Much of Rome’s decline into one-man rule can be observed in a series of developments during the time of Augustus, who held no formal monarchical title but only the vague designation “princeps,” or “first among equals.”

But in fact, the senate had ceded him both power (“imperium” in Latin) over Rome’s military and the traditional tribune’s power to veto legislation. Each of these powers also granted him immunity from prosecution. He was above the law.

Augustus’ position thus gave him exactly the freedom from oversight – or what Trump calls “presidential harassment” – that the president demands. Such immunity is also the sort that Richard Nixon seemed to long for, most famously in his post-presidency declaration that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

In Augustus’ time, the idea also emerged that the “princeps” and the Roman state were to a great extent one and the same. The identity of the one was growing to become inseparable from the identity of the other.

So, for example, under Augustus and then his successor Tiberius, insults against the emperor could be considered acts of treason against the state, or, more officially, against “the majesty of the Roman people.”

A critic of the “princeps” – be it in unflattering words or in the improper treatment of his image – was subject to prosecution as an “enemy of the people.”

Many higher-ups in the Trump administration, from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to former Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, have spoken publicly of Trump as a divinely chosen figure. And Trump himself declared earlier this year, “I do really believe we have God on our side.”

To this point, however, a Temple of Lady Liberty and Trump along the lines of the Temple of Roma and Augustus has not yet been constructed.

But the Senate impeachment trial has shown us how far along the identification of leader and state has moved in the Trump era. A central part of the president’s impeachment defense is, as we have seen, that the personal will of the president is indistinguishable from the will of the state and the good of the people.

Will the GOP-led Senate’s endorsement of this defense clear a path for more of the manifestations – and consequences – of authoritarianism? The case of the Roman Republic’s rapid slippage into an autocratic regime masquerading as a republic shows how easily that transformation can occur.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham is even more direct. He said that the U.S. Senate’s vote against allowing evidence and witnesses at Trump’s impeachment trial had made Trump “functionally a monarch.”

Meachan said, “He’s [Trump’s] functionally the most politically powerful president in American history,” meaning Trump has accrued more unconstitutional power to himself than any other president in U.S. history. With the exception of Abraham Lincoln, this is doubtless true.

Donald Trump is doing what no liberal Democrat could ever do: He is turning America from a constitutional republic into a monarchical dictatorship. Anyone who doesn’t see that is either completely ignorant of history or willfully blind.

Donald Trump ignores congressional oversight of the president’s financial spending; he ignores congressional oversight of the president’s ability to wage war, and he ignores congressional power to subpoena witnesses. In short, Trump has all but completely neutralized the legislative branch of government.

Donald Trump is not attacking the Deep State; he is attacking the constitutional government. He is attacking the United States.

CNN analyst Stephen Collinson was absolutely right when he wrote:

[Donald Trump] is completing his project of fashioning the office around his own personality. It’s unrestrained, unaccountable, often profane, impervious to outside influence and factual constraints of normal governance. The President has established dominance over his party, his Cabinet and his own media complex. He loosened Congress’s constraints by refusing to cooperate with the impeachment probe.

The result is that there are very few political constraints on his behavior left.

And here is the scary part: The stronger (and more reckless and ruthless) Trump’s rogue presidency becomes, the more popular he becomes. Trump’s poll numbers have risen exponentially since his impeachment. With Republicans and conservative Christians, Trump’s popularity tops 90%.

As with tyrannical strongmen such as the Caesars, Donald Trump has made the country all about HIM. Patriotism is all about HIM. Even Christian faith is all about HIM. Any legal restraint, any constitutional prohibition, any moral impediment and any voice of opposition must be swept away. Trump is der Führer.

And just as with der Führer Adolph Hitler, Donald Trump receives his most rabid, enthusiastic, even fanatical support from professing Christians.

Writing for the Washington Monthly, Martin Longman quotes David French:

[Conservative Christians] rationalize that any criticism of Trump will weaken him and empower his opponents, so they refrain from criticizing him. Then they begin to attack his critics even when they agree with them: “They’ll echo Trump’s lies. They’ll defend Trump’s lies. They’ll adopt many of his same rhetorical tactics, including engaging in mocking and insulting behavior as a matter of course.”

Somewhere along the way, the idea of loving your enemies gets lost. Along with it, the standard against lying is abandoned. And, since Trump cannot be criticized and must be defended, every foul act in Trump’s history is either denied or ignored. Traditional norms of the American government, like the separation of powers and Congress’s right to subpoena witnesses and documents, are thrown to the wayside because the president doesn’t abide by them.

Trump takes kind old ladies who worry about the unborn and transforms them into hate-tweeters. He turns upright and model citizens into apologists for sexual assault, white nationalism, business fraud, self-dealing and foreign interference in our elections.

For French, his primary concern is what this does to faithful conservative Christians. For the rest of us, the concern is what it does to the nation as a whole. As [sic] the core of Trumpism is the corruption of the national character.

Add to all of the above the fact that the establishment has successfully orchestrated almost the entire Democrat Party in Washington, D.C., becoming nothing but a cartoonish compilation of radicalized left-wing extremists, making it increasingly repugnant to most Americans, thereby making Trump look better by comparison and greasing the skids for his re-election.

The establishment Deep State has ALWAYS been about expunging America’s Bill of Rights and constitutional form of government and returning America to monarchism. It’s a lot easier for the power elite to control one man than it is 435 congressmen, 100 senators, 9 Supreme Court justices and a president and vice-president—not to mention 50 sovereign states.

Donald Trump is the strongman who will give the establishment Deep State everything it has ever wanted.

We are going back to Rome. 

Christians who are cheering on this wanna-be Caesar should remember what Caesars do to Christians. 

© Chuck Baldwin

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17 COMMENTS

  1. All this roman stuff about abuse of power. Don’t forget the centuries of European kings who believe that their kingship was the direct will of god (yeah small g). What is that latin phrase they used as an excuse to rape the bride on the night of the wedding to another? All “christian” kings by the way. At least the picture is more accurate than the evangelical types that actually picture him playing a fiddle centuries before they were invented. The readers too stupid to see the ironical absurdity. Was not Nero one of the first to organize volunteer fire brigades in Rome? Doesn’t really fit the narrative though does it?

  2. Stupefying ignorance on so many levels. Deep State still in control & has been since @ least JFK. “Power will
    Wear the mask of tragedy in the 20th century”. The smupidity by the ponerological psychopathy is intentional. A non-organic synthesized Malthusian reset is the plan. What it looks like at the end of the day is anybody’s guess after the orchestrated Chaos settles.

    • “Stupefying ignorance on so many levels.”

      Please point out some specific examples.

      “Deep State still in control & has been since @ least JFK.”

      Did someone say differently?

      “‘Power will Wear (sic) the mask of tragedy in the 20th century”.

      Whatever that means.

      “The smupidity by the ponerological psychopathy is intentional.”

      Your word salads don’t make any sense. Apparently you’re just throwing “big words” around.

      “A non-organic synthesized Malthusian reset is the plan.”

      In your opinion, that is.

      “What it looks like at the end of the day is anybody’s guess after the orchestrated Chaos settles.”

      Yet somehow you seem to have all the answers.

  3. As I see it, the scam impeachment proceedings against Trump, i.e. his being charged with abuse of power (of which he is obviously guilty) and then being “acquitted,” is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. I think we’ve just witnessed the events of Daniel 7:8 and the parallel prophecy of Rev 13:11.

    • Or, Revelation 13: 11 could refer to Joseph Ratzinger, the second beast, exercising the power of the first beast, Karol Wojtyla, and causing the world to worship the first beast (canonization), whose wound was miraculously healed (assassination shooting by Mehmet Ali Agca in 1981) ?

    • The first beast is obviously not a “man”; it’s a Satanic cult that made the deal with Satan that Jesus rejected (Luke 4:5-8). The second beast of Rev 13 is apparently the post-9/11 office of president of the U.S., and by extension, whichever man holds the office. The first beast controls the second beast.

      Check out my short youtube video on the subject. It’s called “Brother James Key is Wrong About the Two Beasts of Rev 13.” I will try to post a link here but it will be moderated.

  4. Anyone with intelligence can see there’s no possibility of rational negotiations with these demonicrats as they are criminally insane and live in a delusional world of their own manifestation where there’s no compromising with their inverted reality. Down to earth forensic facts challenging their dramatizations are meaningless arguments as their’s is the only truth even though they are all pathological liars. We see their psychopathological political arts in gaslighted projections of their own dark souls and evil deeds onto their imagined opponents thereby misdirecting public attention away from their own morbid crimes. What they do is all a scripted act – a storyline to fit their evil agenda – where real world ‘inconvenient facts’ or common laws don’t matter. Their lying demonstrates their utter contempt for the American People and they won’t stop until they are arrested in their tracks!

  5. This is worse than decadence. You forgive yourself for lying about Russia. And you don’t forgive Trump for lying about yourself. This hypocrisy. On the outside, the selfishness of the United States of America is worse than war. I welcome you from Crimea. Russia.

  6. I should also have said, that international opposition to the US, and whoever is president, is light years away from opposition to Rome, both in the relative strength of opposing powers, and in the absolute number of powers. To achieve the relative power of Rome today, would now mean total annihilation through the use of nuclear weapons to achieve that end. Indeed, we live in interesting times.

  7. Comparisons with Rome are interesting, but dangerous to assume that we are just like Rome and or Romans. Yes, there are similarities, but the world today is a very different place – far more volatile, violent, and dangerous on a global scale then Romans, no matter who they were, could imagine. World populations and the dislocations of millions of people are beginning to put stresses on most governments that no one is yet prepared for. Resource wars, driven by the needs of industry and technology are a completely new driver behind international relations. Communications today are light years faster than horses and chariots, making impromptu decisions, and knee jerk implementations play out faster than anyone can control, and whose consequences can be devastating. History can teach, but beware.

  8. I find no inspiration at all from Chuck Baldwin. He refers to the Democratic Party candidates for president as “a cartoonish compilation of radicalized left-wing extremists.” Obviously he is talking about Bernie Sanders. Obviously Baldwin favors the corporate state of the “centrist” oligarchs who traditionally have run both parties to the benefit of the increasingly wealthy 1%. This is who he has in mind when he speaks in defense of the “Republic” vs. Trump.

    • Chuck Baldwin is a conservative Christian Constitutionalist libertarian so his opposition to the Democrats is not surprising. The point he is making here—that the USA is now a lawless tyranny because the president has become an emperor—was largely true even before Trump came onstage to parody the “emperor” role.

    • “I find no inspiration at all from Chuck Baldwin. He refers to the Democratic Party candidates for president as “a cartoonish compilation of radicalized left-wing extremists.'”

      AFAIK Chuck is of the opinion (as am I) that the democrats will make sure to run somebody against Trump who cannot beat Trump, just like they did the last time.

    • In current polls Bernie Sanders leads all Democratic Party candidates in defeating Trump. Yet backers of fakes like Buttigieg and Bloomberg cynically use disgust with Trump for their own ploys to seize power. They are both total cut-outs of the same Wall Street money power that propelled the Clinton machine to prominence. It’s the Wall Street money power that is the real enemy of the kind of real democracy Bernie Sanders represents. The “anyone but Trump” mantra invites worse devils to take over.

    • The “‘anyone but Trump’ mantra” is meaningless and irrelevant. The “democrats” and the “republicans” are nothing but actors on a stage, all working for the same end. Clearly, the “democrats” want Trump for president as much as the “republicans” do. All this talk about Sanders or anyone else running against Trump is hot air.

      Our national political process has been completely subverted and our elections are a painfully transparent fraud, accordingly. Look at what happened last time (2016). The democrats ran the most unelectable candidate they could find against Trump; they ran Clinton. And when it looked like the election was getting too close for omfort, they actively undermined/sabotaged Clinton’s campaign to make sure Trump won.

      Trump is the scumbag the “deep state” needs in the white house to start WW3 in the Mideast, so Trump it will be and both the “democrats” and the “republicans” will make sure Trump stays in power until it happens. (And I predict that after Trump lights the whole Mideast of fire, jewish agents in the U.S. pretending to be Iranian agents will do a false-flag terrorist attack or a series of attacks in “retaliation,” whereupon Trump will invoke martial law and that’ll be the end of the increasingly burdensome elections. All of this provided Trump’s Mideast war doesn’t quickly become a nuclear war with Russia and/or China of course, which is a real possibility).

  9. Tony Bennett Lyrics
    Play “September Song”
    on Amazon Music Unlimited (ad)
    “September Song”

    “When I was a young man
    Courting the girls
    I played me a waiting game
    If a maid refused me with tossing curls
    I let the old Earth take a couple of whirls
    While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls

    And as time came around
    She came my way
    As time came around
    She came

    But, it’s a long, long while from May to December
    But the days grow short when you reach September
    When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
    One hasn’t got time for the waiting game

    Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
    September, November
    And these few precious days I’ll spend with you
    These precious days I’ll spend with you

    And the wine dwindles down to a precious brew
    September, November
    And these few vintage years I’ll spend with you
    These precious years I’ll spend with you”

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