American men typically think about ancient Rome several times a day, but apparently, Democrats do not. They ignore history, probably because it consists largely of the doings and transpirings of dead white males, but they should not. Rome’s decline from greatness from its mythical founding by Romulus in 753 BC – I don’t do “BCE” – to its final death rattle in 476 AD, when a kraut warlord named Odoacer deposed the last Roman emperor Romulus Augustulus, is not a precise template for the USA’s arc of history, but if you are wise enough to listen you will hear echoes and feel familiar rhythms.
The Democrats might not be so giddy over the travesty of Trump’s ritual framing in New York City if they considered how it mirrors the mistakes of Rome and if they understood how their current course of action can lead to ashes and blood. After all, Caesar refused to lay down his legions and crossed the Rubicon because his patrician enemies were preparing to haul him into court the minute he did. We will feel the full impact of what happened in that kangaroo courtroom someday, but not today. Not even soon. When patriots pronounce this a disaster for the rule of law and a body blow to our political system, they are undoubtedly correct, but the real damage will manifest in the future, maybe even decades from now. The rot has set in and will continue to spread unless it is cut out and purged. America is still strong. It will stagger on, like the Roman Empire did, perhaps even for hundreds of years. But, if we do not repair the damage this lawfare and other assaults on our norms have done, it will eventually kill the country we love.
The Democrats don’t care. They and we will likely all be dead when America finally slips into a coma and expires from the poison they have introduced in their quest to protect their own petty power, position, and prestige from the challenge Trump posed to their gross incompetence and sordid, shoddy corruption. It was not irrational for them to launch this campaign (or their other campaigns, like their obscene spending, their war on merit and colorblindness, and their invitation to replace the current population with subservient Third World peasants) to undermine our system to secure their short term advantage. Why not do it? The Democrats doing it now are unlikely to suffer the long-term effects personally. After all, as the man said, in the long term, we’re all dead.
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So, what happens now? The Eternal City’s history provides some clues. Rome was similarly wracked with economic woes and overspending. It also had a declining native population and invited in the barbarians. Its military power declined when the patricians – the rich snobs with money and power who felt entitled to rule over the plebs – decided to forgo the rigors of life in the legions in order to focus on orgies and redecorating their vomitoriums. Our patricians’ don’t serve either. But, most importantly, the Roman patricians abandoned their mos maiorum, the traditional framework of rules and norms that governed politics. It checked and balanced the driving ambition of the Romans and their factions until the Romans and their factions talked themselves into making exceptions to it – always just this once because it was always a unique emergency and afterward everything would go back to normal. But it never did go back to normal. You cannot change the rules and then change them back after you have exploited your exception. It became so common that there has to be a Latin word for “Calvinball.”
America has its own mos maiorum. The formal part is our Constitution, but also there are—or were—informal norms and practices that our politicians and officials honored. And then Trump came along, and he was, they argued, so transcendently dangerous to our Constitution and our norms that we must abandon our Constitution and our norms in order to save our Constitution and our norms. You know, burn the village to save it.
Of course, what America’s patricians are really trying to save is their own position and privilege, which Trump directly threatened and continues to threaten. They just cloak it in weasel words and pious baloney so they can pretend to be serving a higher purpose than their own grubby self-interest. When they say they are “Saving Our Democracy,” that is literally true—they think they are saving what is theirs.
The Roman Republic began to stumble when the rules changed and politics became a blood sport. You dared not lose your position because the best-case scenario was your enemies waged lawfare upon you. The worst case was much worse. The Gracchi, two rich brothers who (to put it simply) challenged the patricians by taking up the cause of the little guy, ended up dead. One was beaten to death by senators, as Roman pols were more butch than ours. The patricians thought that was that, but the next challenger was more dangerous, a great general named Marius. He was also a bad politician. They beat him eventually at great cost. But then came Caesar. He was an even greater general and a great politician, but he still believed that the mos maiorum would protect him. He showed mercy to his enemies, and they returned his grace by knifing him on the Ides of March. His adopted son Augustus learned the lessons of his failed predecessors well. He did not lose his challenge, largely because he killed everyone who got in his way.
So, how does Trump fit into this? Are there parallels beyond the superficial comparisons to Roman history? Yes, in the sense that he has provided a challenge to the masters of the status quo but, to date, not a particularly effective one. The Deep State was still deeply embedded when he left office. Most of the feigned fascist fear mongering we have been enduring lately about Trump 2.0 really being Hitler 2.0 betrays the modern patricians’ fear that Trump has learned something from his experience on the receiving end of their lawfare and that he will not make the same mistake again of trusting in the system he grew up in to work as advertised. It just reaffirms that when you try to kill the emperor, you best not miss.
And Roman history reiterates that Trump is not our last chance. He may be their last chance, a final off-ramp from an ugly road they seem intent on traveling down. The Roman experience is that subsequent challengers of the status quo get smarter, more effective, and more ruthless. Whether Trump wins or loses, someone will follow him and take up his banner of opposition to the Ruling Class. That someone will learn from Trump’s mistakes, and he will not share Trump’s previous naïve belief that the system is unrigged. And if that challenger is defeated, the one who comes next – and one will come next – will be even more ruthless and effective.
There is occasional talk of an American Caesar who will come and make it all better. Through moral force and the sword, if need be, he will fix what ails America. But America under Caesar will not be America as we know it, but something else entirely, as the Empire looked like the Republic yet was very different. But the American Caesar would not be immune to the ultimate in norm-breaking, the dagger.
No, what our patrician Democrats should fear is a challenger to the status quo who has learned from the experience of himself and others that there are no norms or rules, and the mos maiorum is useful only when cynically cited to justify one’s self-serving actions. This final challenger will be even more ruthless than his enemies, having learned that mercy is weakness and weakness means death. No, the Democrats need to worry about an American Augustus, and they need to understand that they are creating one.
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