Two thousand years ago, Rome's ruling class had a remarkably familiar way of talking about poor people. The indebted were irresponsible. People demanding relief were dangerous. Politicians who appealed to ordinary citizens were demagogues. Redistributing land threatened property. Providing grain encouraged dependence. And when the lower classes became angry enough to organize or protest, their anger wasn't treated as evidence that something might be structurally wrong. Nope. They were a mob. I've been reading Michael Parenti's The Assassination of Julius Caesar, and one of the most fascinating parts isn't Caesar. It's how the Roman ruling class understood the people beneath them. Cicero is particularly revealing. He didn't invent contempt for the poor, and I'm not claiming modern attitudes descended directly from him. What's fascinating is how little the argument has changed. Rome had enormous wealth alongside enormous poverty, concentrated land ownership, chronic debt, and displaced farmers. Yet somehow the problem kept becoming the people demanding something. Not concentrated wealth. Not exploitation. Not debt. Apparently the real emergency was that poor people had become unpleasant about being poor. And remember who wrote much of the history that survived. Cicero left volumes. The poor bastard hauling stones across Rome didn't. Ruling classes don't merely possess disproportionate wealth. They possess a disproportionate ability to explain society to everyone else. That language still sounds familiar. Food assistance becomes "dependency." Debt relief becomes "rewarding irresponsibility." Workers are greedy. Tenants are entitled. Homeless people made bad choices. But when wealth moves upward, everybody suddenly finds the thesaurus. Corporate subsidies become "economic development." Tax breaks become "incentives." Bailouts become "stability." The poor pursue their material interests and it's greed. The wealthy pursue theirs and it's economics. America isn't Rome. Two thousand years have changed a hell of a lot. But societies with concentrated wealth keep producing remarkably similar explanations for why those with the least deserve their position and why interfering with those who have the most threatens "freedom." Freedom for whom? Empires disappear. Religions change. Humans split the atom and walk on the moon. And somehow the guy with twelve houses is still explaining that the guy with none needs to learn personal responsibility.