We're Fighting The Wrong Battles

When the ancient Romans put you in the Coliseum to fight for your life, you never got to pick your battles.

Those Romans were some world-class weirdos. They’d pit you against animals they found in their conquered provinces, so you might be trying to stab a rhino in the ass before it impaled you with its horn or looking for something tall to stand on so you could smite a giraffe.

Sometimes they’d fill the arena with water, build small boats to scale and suddenly you’re the admiral of a tiny fleet trying to figure out how to sail in a stadium. Or they’d plant trees to make a forest and give you a bow and arrow.

“Swell,” you’d think, right before a bear charged you.

Most likely were plain old gladiator fights, where you’d slug it out with some equally bewildered dude who a week ago was harvesting wheat in upper Dacia (or was it lower Dacia?) before he got picked up by the legions and sold to the ancient entertainment industry.

You never got to pick, Chinese menu style:

“I’ll take the giraffe. You know what, make it two.”

“Pack of dwarves, you bet. (Maybe in a couple thousand years we could call them something less hurtful. But for now, I’ll slaughter me some half-heights! Hmm. Still hurtful. Those poor, doomed little people).”

“Got any rampaging koala bears? No? Haven’t conquered Australia yet? What’s wrong with you, Nero? Too busy fiddling to build a long-range navy?”

You fought the battles they picked. Lions, tigers, bears, Christians (once they had Christians), oh my!

Some days you got the leopard, some days you got the giraffe. All so that toga-draped psychopaths could cheer while they munched braised pigeon eyeballs from the concession stand and watched you try not to die.

Fun times. Not a lot has changed.

***

There’s an immigration crisis at the southern border. Also, while we’re at it, the northern border.

There’s China, stealing our industrial secrets, flooding our stores with cheap junk, and re-colonizing sub–Saharan Africa for pennies on the dollar.

Russia trying to rebuild its empire, poisoning people they don’t like, and flooding our social media with divisive posts born of lies.

Student loans are crushing the dreams of an entire generation. People are being persecuted in the workplace over their preferred pronouns.

Quite a lot of the country is literally on fire while the seas rise and the earth heaves.

The world’s oil supply is controlled by a bunch of countries who hate us but the materials we need to make cars that run on batteries are under the thumb of—you guessed it—more countries that hate us.

Kids can’t say the Pledge of Allegiance any more. They can’t pray before their football games. They can’t be atheists or Satanists.

Colleges are indoctrinating our kids with socialism. Or they’re being funded by conservative think tanks.

You get the idea. It’s as exhausting, pointless, and as fake as an arena filled with water, tiny boats, giraffes, and rhinos.

The powerful still watch from their elevated seats while we battle to the death below.

Over nothing.

***

If you’re mad about what the President is doing, too bad. He’s been given all the power he needs to do whatever he feels like doing. The rhino won that one.

If you’re mad about the cost of things or or the amount of taxes you’re paying to your city, county, state, and country, too bad. You handed power to the people who decide what things cost and how much comes out of your paycheck.

If you don’t like personal choices becoming public policy or you shake your head at the truly idiotic statements getting entered into the public record, too bad. They have your blank check to say and do everything they’re doing.

If you’re not mad about the fact that the US Congress has surrendered its Constitutional role as an independent and equal branch of government (and has been abrogating that responsibility for about 40 years) then you’re fighting the wrong battle.

If you’re not mad that state governments and the judiciary are marching to the tune of unelected political party leaders and big donors, then you’re fighting the wrong battle.

If you’re not mad that most governments you live under, from your hometown to the bright Capitol dome in what used to be George Washington’s backyard are broke despite taking so much of your money, then you’re fighting the wrong battle.

You’re looking for a chair to stand on so you can slice up giraffe jugular veins while the rich and powerful laugh at your efforts.

But unlike ancient gladiators, we have a choice.

We can keep suiting up in our fake admiral’s uniforms and piloting our tiny boats against the other tiny boats and fake sailors and elect the same partisan hacks who have sold our national soul to the political party they belong to.

We can keep spouting outrage about pronouns and student debt and who’s gay and who’s Christian and whether twelve-year-olds should have shotguns and how much carbon is in the atmosphere and how much fluoride is in the drinking water and what vaccines cause what chronic ailments.

It’s just the same old arena bloodsport for the same old audience.

But here’s another thing that happened in Ancient Rome a couple of times:

The gladiators rebelled.

Most notably, a fellow named Spartacus broke out of gladiator jail, formed an army, and defeated Rome’s best legions long enough to have everyone in a white toga hiding under their beds.

We don’t have to arm ourselves and take to the hills and fight.  The Romans weren’t afraid of guys with swords.

They were afraid of unity.

Spartacus’s followers weren’t all surly gladiators in search of escape. As word of his uprising spread, he was joined by slaves and Rome’s poor and downtrodden. Basically all of Rome’s powerless. There were a lot of them.

All of a sudden Rome’s toga-draped douchebags had a problem that threatened their comfort and power.

Spartacus’s revolt, though doomed to failure, set in motion a series of events that marked the end of Rome as everyone knew it, giving rise to Julius Caesar and a thousand years of emperors.

We don’t have to go that far, because we don’t have to take power away from anyone. We already have it.

***

We get to decide local, state, and national priorities. We can say the national debt is a bigger problem than immigration. We can choose to focus on the fact that American healthcare is unaffordable and unattainable for most of us. We can decide that national priorities eclipse partisan ones.

How? By letting the giraffes go free. By not boarding a tiny boat in a fake sea.

We need to decide on a small set of priorities and then vote accordingly. We need to get sane and reasonable people to run for Congress.

We need to make it clear that if our representatives are passing bills they haven’t read because their party leaders told them to, they will lose their jobs on Election Day.

We need to vote in primaries, because that’s how hacks gain power in the first place. Most of us ignore primaries, but that’s where the candidates get picked. Since only hyperpartisans vote in primaries, we only get hyperpartisan candidates.

It will only take a couple of elections that go against the trend of decades to get the message across.

Because like the ancient Roman elites snacking on boiled snake bladders in their box seats, all politicians are cowards. They know they only hold power because we’re too distracted and busy and exhausted to join together and vote them out.

It will not be easy, and it will take all of us, but each generation of Americans is given a choice—keep slugging it out in the arena for the benefit of those in the stands or take back our power.

Time to pick our battles.