Bread & Circus: The Canary in the Coal Mine

Paris once crowned itself the City of Light. A beacon of reason, refinement, and romance. But light can also blind, and what the world watched during the Olympic opening ceremony was a desecration dressed as sophistication. Grooming was sold as love, blasphemy as art, collapse as progress. And the French swallowed it, spoon-fed lies plated like caviar.

This is not new. Every collapsing empire reaches for spectacle when it can no longer offer substance. Rome built its coliseums, paraded its excess, and called it glory — even as the foundations cracked beneath its marble. Bread and circuses bought time, but never salvation. Paris is simply repeating the cycle, staging a ritual of decay while calling it culture.

France is not leading anymore. It is warning. What we saw in Paris is the world we’ll all inherit if we keep mistaking darkness for light, predators for pioneers, decadence for destiny. History whispers the same refrain: when the stage becomes the altar, the empire is already burning.

And America should pay attention. Our circuses are digital, our coliseums are screens, but the script is the same. When the guardians of culture celebrate corruption, when the sacred is mocked for entertainment, when children become the sacrifice to ideology — the fall is not far away. Rome fell, France is falling, and unless we wake up, the United States will be next.