Carbs and Carnivals

Written by Paolo Poquiz

Illustrated by Ivanna Flores-Cabrera

The year is 2030. Democracy is dead, as is the practice of critical thought. The culprit? Governments give the masses scraps needed to survive and shower them in spectacle—vapid and violent headlines, movies, and internet fads to make us all angry, confused, yet still content. Bread and circuses. Panem et Cirque in Latin, if you have a thing for the Romans who started this whole Western imperial nightmare fetish. There’s just one problem: the powers at the head of the propaganda machine don’t understand Latin, or much of anything, really. When PeePaw Kissinger and Grandpappy Cheney told the burgeoning bourgeois ‘bread and circuses’ and sent them on their way, they didn’t exactly get it. The results have been… interesting.