For the Rupublic (Tiberius Gracchus) [Track 07] | Deconstructing American Propaganda: Tiberius Gracchus and the Minority of the Opulent
May 2026 | The Poem I Wrote Before I Had the Words for What Was Happening
There's a difference between writing something because it sounds good and writing something because you had no choice. "For the Republic" was the second kind. When I put that poem together, I was processing something I couldn't fully articulate yet — the feeling that the American republic wasn't just struggling; it was being actively dismantled by people with enough power to make that look normal. I needed a character with the spine to say it out loud. I found one in Tiberius Gracchus.
I want to be clear about something before we go further. In my music and poetry, Tiberius is more of a mentality than a historical biography. He represents something specific to me — the person inside a corrupt system who decides to fight the system anyway, knowing full well what that costs. That's the energy I was channeling. Not a textbook, a torch.
What "For the Republic" Is Actually Saying
If you've ever heard the track and felt the intensity but weren't sure what you were walking into, this breakdown is for you. The poem is unapologetically aggressive — "vindictive tone and condescending rhetoric" is exactly right, and I meant every word of it. "Amputate antecedence, leave regents in grievance" isn't abstract wordplay. I'm saying: I will cut down those in power who have forfeited their right to govern through their greed and disregard for human life. I am a "heathen of reason" — someone who uses intellect as a weapon against those who use power as a weapon against the rest of us.
The second verse leans hard into alliteration as a lyrical technique, and it's doing real work. "Industrial inundation, waste intoxication, make haste to save the nation, face inculcation, race to restoration" — that's not filler, that's a diagnosis. Industry is flooding this country with poison. Corporate ideology has been drilled into us from every direction. And we are running out of time to restore what's been taken. The fourth verse gets the most questions, so let me be direct: "make infrastructure a commodity, instead of financial sodomy" means exactly what it sounds like. Build real things that serve real people instead of bundling subprime mortgages into derivative bets and calling it an economy.
Chomsky, Bernays, and the Regimented Mind
In the video, I flash the cover of Noam Chomsky's spoken-word lecture series Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind — and I flash it like a subliminal ad on purpose. That's the joke and the point at the same time. Chomsky spends a significant portion of that recording talking about Edward Bernays, the man who essentially invented modern public relations by treating the public as a psychological target. Bernays "made a toy of the public stage" — and the leaders who came after him, in both government and business, ran with that playbook.
What Chomsky connects this to — and what hit me hardest — is James Madison's concept of "the minority of the opulent against the majority." There is a wealthy business class in this country that does not see you as a citizen. They see you as a variable to be managed. The important decisions — economic policy, land use, media narratives, labor law — those decisions happen in rooms you're not invited into. That's not conspiracy. That's documented political philosophy and it's been operating in plain sight for two hundred years.
Plebs, Tribunes, and Why the Language Still Fits
Here's a quick history note that matters for understanding the poem. Plebs were Rome's common people — the workers, the soldiers, the farmers, the ones whose labor built the empire that the elite owned. A tribune was their representative. Tiberius Gracchus was a plebeian tribune who used his position to push agrarian reforms that redistributed land and broke up the concentration of wealth at the top. He succeeded — until the people who had the most to lose had him killed.
I use that framework because it's honest. The battle between the minority of the opulent and the majority of the people is not new. It has a name, a history, and a body count. "For the Republic" is my way of standing in that lineage — not as a historian, but as someone who sees the same play running in a different century and refuses to pretend it's something else.
This Is the Work
If you want to go deeper on the business, philosophy, and music behind everything I'm building, head over to LyceumRecordz.com to read about the albums, the independent artist perspective, and how all of this connects. And if you're ready to be part of the community where we have these conversations for real — get your membership at fiense.com/memberships.
The Original 2011 Breakdown — Straight From the Source
Disclaimer:
One of the more important details of Chomsky's recording is that he talks about what James Madison would call the minority of the opulent against the majority. To make a long story short, there is a wealthy business class in the United States that consciously and actively sees the American public as a group to be marginalized and manipulated so that the important decisions in society are handled by those in power.
The rest of the poem is fairly straightforward, with the exception of the fourth verse. To be explicit, “make infrastructure a commodity, instead of financial sodomy“ means to make the production of infrastructure a good/article of trade instead of bundling sub-prime mortgages, betting them in derivative schemes, and just ‘shuffling money around.’
Comments
Post a Comment