Revived Roman Empire

Zemperor, by Hans Birkmeir

In the final days of The Empire, the one we had all lived under, and during that magical yet frightening time just before our inevitable rendezvous with destiny, belief within the media, politics, and right down to the local church hall meetings was such that, the righteousness of The Empire, and it's wars for 'freedom', were beyond reproach. 

These principles had become so skillfully mythologized within imperial society, and had soon transformed itself into a religion. 

The reality was, that the public trust was being squandered to fight resource wars in distant lands whilst bailing out financial institutions, and protecting bankers, who had been responsible for building an economy based completely and solely on debt creation. 

One's right to consume, and one's freedom to act inanely, was being preserved at the expense of global stability, and one's personal freedoms and it's accompanying responsibilities. In those days, the standard response would always be 'the system will take care of it'.

Religious extremists only added fuel to this imperial inferno (just too many names to mention here). 

I can remember one such clown; He was a minister or pastor, with outrageously yet meticulously coiffed hair (it looked like a cresting tsunami) peddling the 'end times' weekly on his christian-infomercial. It was a wildly entertaining program, and the man sure did know his Bible.  However, this minister (whose name escapes me), and by extension his followers, were definitely not without their philosophical 'blind spots'. 

First of all, along with his 'lovely wife' (name escapes me, not too bright, kind of a frankensteinian-botox-hybrid kind of gal), he would warn the faithful weekly about the impending 'mark of the beast', which was to be imposed upon the wicked in 'either their right hand or forehead'. Fine, his argument was a plausible one I suppose, especially considering the quantum leaps being made in silicon computer-chip technology at the time. 

But, after terrifying his viewers weekly with this impending ultimate-evil end-time prophecies, he would then encourage them to purchase an amateurish video about 'The Rapture' or some other asinine event, simply by using a swipe of one's own credit card ("do as I say, not as I do", was the message there).

Note: When one juxtaposes 'The Rapture' against  'our inevitable rendezvous with destiny', it could have been easy to have mistaken the two. Let me make this perfectly clear, they were NOT!

His other blind spot would be exposed when he would explain to his viewers how the book of 'Revelations' warned us about a 'revived roman empire', which by his strict interpretation of the sacred text, was obviously the European Union. 

Now I agree that the European Union was not exactly the work of a rational deity (a poorly thought out economic experiment at worst). It became a diabolical tool to eviscerate the hard fought sovereignty of nations for the benefit of a handful of international bankers and unelected bureaucrats.

But did he (that minister whose name escapes me) ever stop for a minute and honestly look at his own country? Did it ever occur to him that if anything, the one capitol city which even remotely resembled Rome in it's architecture, symbolic design, and global imperial grandeur was the one right in his own backyard?

Oh, a bird has just brought me a note... It seems that a lovely woman with desirable qualities living in Village 2  has just summonsed me. She's inquiring if I care to join her for 'a bit of lunch, and chess'... so I'll have to end it here. Keep the faith good people, and don't take any wooden raspberries.

Future CT   Village 5, Nova Avalon.   Year 17 P.T.E.