That’s some great read.

Those muppets (alt right talking about antiquity) are a dime a dozen. You see a lot of them in 4chan, too. They look at the past with a “the grass was greener” mindset, cherry picking stuff to justify their political bullshit, without a single iot of critical thinking.

And they usually suck at understanding the past, as their cherry picking doesn’t allow them to get a picture of how and why things happened. They obsess over the Roman Empire and Sparta, but when you talk about the Republic or Athens they go into “lalala I’m not listening lalala” mode - because both contradict their discourse of “we need a strong rule, like people in the past, to fight against degeneracy”.

They’ll also often screech if you mention why Octavius adopted the title of “imperator” (emperor) instead of “rex” (king). Because guess what, once they acknowledge why people in Republican Rome saw kings with disdain (kingdom = primitive system and breeding grounds for tyranny), all their political discourse goes down the drain, so Octavius had to “sell” his stupid idea under a different name.

Don’t tell them about the Aurelian Moors, by the way. Or Caracalla’s familiar background. Or do tell them, if you enjoy seeing them screech.

They probably went over it(I only skimmed ‘cause it’s long and ADHD) but I find it very funny that all these right-wing people love the older architecture while forgetting that the reason things are bland today is because fancy is expensive and expensive means less profits. They’re not going to get office buildings for the peons that are works of art and you can see how the homes of the ultra wealthy are still just as extravagant as they’ve always been. They forget that peasants weren’t allowed in the palaces.

The base of the right, the ones the truly evil people target, are often picked up using simple tricks that make them believe that anything which strips power from the mega wealthy will harm them, their families, and their friends. They really do want to protect the working man but they’re really easily fooled and so showing them pretty buildings and non-minimalist art makes them believe that the relatively more leftist world is taking things away from them.

I mean fuck, how many times do they need to post the “roman roads were better” meme before they realize that a) the roman roads were government/military projects and not the work of private companies, b) roman roads that still exist are in warmer climates without frost heave, and c) roman roads never had to deal with fucking massive and fast cars. Oh and d) roads these days are built cheaply to save a buck and the contractors know they’ll be rehired anyway so what the fuck do they care?