Pawns & Pawn-Brokers of Antiquity

THE BREAD RIOTS ARE COMING! In the first bit of overdue pandemic planning that the federal government has managed to muster, a surge of money and equipment has been given out to various law enforcement agencies. This includes millions of dollars for weaponry for the guards of V.A. clinics around the country, who weren’t armed at all until 2011, when the job was taken over by a private security firm.

In 2017, Ben Richards, the so-called ‘Butcher of Bakersfield,’ opened fire on a crowd of civilians that were only just rioting for bread. He would later go on face justice at the hands of the sadistic game show host that ruled America.

You might think: hey, now! Maybe giving people extended food and health benefits would reduce the possibility of societal breakdown in the next year, instead of handing money over to stateless billionaires and corporations who will freeze said assets off-shore or use it to quell domestic dissent.

haha, sweet summer child! Have you ever noticed how hard it is to get money for schools, but how easy it is to get funding for prisons? Didn’t think that line of reasoning was going to metastasize in the system and then come back to bite you in the ass?

America 2020: Come for the freedom, stay for the LOLZZ (e.g. warrantless arrests, indefinite detention, unchecked pandemic). Our best wishes to the praetorian rear guard for the ultra-wealthy as they make their way to the rocketships.

WERE SOCIETY’S MASTERS ALWAYS SO BRUTAL? Well, yes. Obviously. But every now and then you get a group that uses their power to create extraordinary things that don’t completely exploit the people who do the work. This didn’t mean that they were nice, nor does it mean that society should function only when they deign to allow it. But it does mean there is something as a common good, and that human potential can be found outside of the Goldman-Sachs connections you made at Yale.

LOOK AT RENAISSANCE FLORENCE! LOOK at it. Ostensibly a democratic city-state run by an enlightened, proto-bourgeoisie merchant class, it may surprise you to learn that it was also deadly viper’s next of feuding oligarchs who liked to stab, hang, defenestrate, poison, betray, seduce, and destroy their enemies while also commissioning some of the greatest, most important artists and thinkers in Western history. The most significant of these patrons were the Medicis (1230AD — 1743AD), who at their height of their power controlled the wealthiest and most influential private bank on Earth.

The scope of artists/writers/architects that the Medici sponsored is mind-boggling: Brunelleschi (The Duomo), Machiavelli (The Prince), Galileo (heliocentrism), Rubens (The Marie de’ Medici cycle), Fra Angelico (San Marco Altarpiece), Botticelli (The Birth of Venus), Leonardo (Adoration of the Magi), Michelangelo (David), Donatello (another David), Raphael (Madonna of the Meadow), and Cowabunga (The Annunciation of Anthony the Great, Patron Saint of Pizza Cooks and Pigs).

For the most part, these guys were nobodies. Peasants. Yet they came to shape history. Even more surprising is that all of them were born in Florence (or in the surrounding area) within the same 100 year period; impressive for a time without universal education, when people rarely ventured 10 miles beyond their place of birth.

Although estimated to have been worth $128 billion at the height of its power, the Medici could afford only six balls for its heraldry.

In a very real way, it was the start of the the great promise of The Enlightenment that was to (eventually) follow. Where rationality and meritocracy* would triumph over superstition and aristocracy**. It’s a promise that made significant strides in the last three centuries, and today more potential for human talent and for personal happiness is available than ever before.

And this shit will not stand!

In Late-Stage Capitalism’s bonus round, the promise of the Enlightenment is now being deliberately and brutally undone, with wages on the decline, public institutions unravelling, and the Bill of Rights becoming Constitutional apocrypha. The goal of education is no longer to make a “Renaissance (wo)man” (e.g. a person of diverse talents and abilities) who is able to think critically in a democracy and recognize a common humanity/greater good.

Leave the arts and culture to your social betters, please! The daughter of your department’s Vice-President can read about Ode to a Grecian Urn at Gossip Girl High School. Your own broke, loser 9-year-old can pick up a fucking mop.

At best, education is for job training. Either for some kind of specialization that a wealthy person might need (plumber, tailor, doctor, lawyer, teacher, flippant hitman) or for an MBA-ish role as a mid-level manager. Unless you’re already from the elite or are unusually clever/lucky, your job is most likely going to involve keeping the machinery running until your position is outsourced or automated. Once capitalism is in ashes… you have permission to die.

The Medici heraldry is believed to be the origin for the ‘balls’ of the modern pawn shop logo. Once the patrons of Michelangelo, the champions of the Renaissance are now willing to pay you drug money for the tv you stole from your mom. The symbolism here is rather hackneyed.

BACARDI 151! has been discontinued since 2016. I did not know this! Those who once loved this drink have presumably moved on to grain alcohol. There was a drink that I sometimes consumed in college, called “Liquid Heroin.” Would you like to know the recipe?
1 Shot Glass. Fill With:
1/3 Jagermeister
1/3 Peppermint Schnapps
1/3 Bacardi 151

Awful. The name was a misnomer, as it was neither addictive nor pleasurable. It held no street cred. There is no Liquid Heroin Chic. No cool celebrities died taking it. They did not consume it and play the Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock. No one injected it and wrote a song about how their fans are stupid pigs.

It is a curious thing to have supped an extinct drink, but I bid good riddance to it. It rests now in Cocktail Hell, along with:
— “Bathory in the Bathwater” (1/2 Pint Virgin Blood, 1/2 Pint Hungarian Palinka, Powdered Child Scabs) of the 17th century
— “Fountain of Youth Anal Shots” (3/4 Shot Fountain of Youth Water Rectally Infused, 1/4 Florida Orange Juice, Bitters) perfected by Ponce de Leon and his men.***

THE BRITISH MUSEUM, an institution haunted by ghosts who seek to repatriate millions of stolen artifacts from their looted colonial peoples, has been publishing a series of interesting “city guides” for ancient places on their website. Here is a tourist’s guide to 1st Century AD Rome, admittedly a tourist trap.

The Lewis Chessman rage against their British captors. Lacking points of articulation, they remain immobile and silly-looking.

* In theory.
** Let’s not get crazy.
*** Entering the bloodstream without moderating effect of the human liver, most of the men were transformed into spermatonzoon and an unfertilized egg. Ironic, no?


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