In Ridley Scott’s film Gladiator, Zucchabar was the backward Roman province where Rome’s greatest general, Maximus, found himself in a row of dusty slaves belonging to ex-gladiator Proximo, the wealthy trader in doomed men.
Maximus was forced to Zucchabar after the most shocking turn of events. Commodus, a one-man deep state, privately learned from his father, Marcus Aurelius, that it was not he but Maximus who would be the next emperor after his death.
Tormented, power-hungry, and shivering with envy, Commodus killed his father, stole the throne, and sentenced Maximus not just to death, but to be erased from life as if he never existed. The general, for decades, had defeated some of Earth’s most terrifying brutes, yet he was no match for this petulant little “emperor” wielding the stolen power of the state.
But with a warrior’s instinct for survival, Maximus escaped “a soldier’s death” and fled to his home miles away, only to find the hung and burned bodies of his murdered wife and son. Stripped of high office, stripped of Roman pomp, stripped of family, and betrayed by comrades burrowed inside a deeply corrupt government, this is where slave traders found Maximus before carting him off to Zucchabar.
By the end of the movie, Maximus survived long enough to bring a reckoning to Commodus. But not before he was forced to clean the slate of everything he thought he knew about the reality of things. To survive, let alone find justice, Maximus had no choice but to surrender to primitive lessons forced on him while stuck in the harsh environs of Zucchabar.
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Trump can learn a lot from Maximus.
Since the day Trump descended the golden escalators, some of the most amoral, overcivilized political psychopaths this nation has ever produced have sloppily conspired to doom him to the dungeons of political life – to “kill” him off. In all of American history, we’ve never seen anything like it.
Prominent Republicans refused to endorse him in 2016. Democrats like John Lewis loudly boycotted his inauguration. Democrats linked with socialists to “impeach the motherf#@ker,” with Congressman Al Green filing articles as early as 2017. With every passing day of his presidency, cantankerous opposition degenerated into political psychosis, made worse by his successes.
God only knows what it does to a man to enter an arena – in and out of office – where the intelligence apparatus, the Justice Department, both political parties, courts at every level, the media and the left-leaning celebrity class press their full weight against you, while people we’ve empowered to do something about it, do nothing of substance, for years.
Career politicians – tormented, power-hungry, and shivering with envy – surrendered to the most cancerous strain of Neanderthal hatred and decided to “get Trump,” by any means necessary. This to a man who embodied the will of 74 million Americans – votes that, for them, became the root of the Trump problem.
It was no surprise that once Biden took power, it wasn’t just Trump, but the entire “MAGA crowd” who found themselves threatened, silenced, and sentenced to political death. This sudden turn of events, with all its predictable outcomes, turned on one event: a masterfully rigged election.
So today, as Victor Davis Hanson has written, America’s voting system has been corrupted by the “utter mess of early balloting, absentee balloting, mail-in balloting, ranked voting, run-off voting, and endless counting,” primarily against a Republican party that has been “out-funded, outspent, and outsmarted” by a neo-socialist Democrat party with more billionaires than free-market Republicans.
But as “the last dingdong of doom” clangs on the old voting system, there is one “puny, inexhaustible voice, still talking” about it, as William Faulkner might put it: Donald Trump. And he is 1,000 percent correct. Without a clean vote, America degenerates to Zucchabar.
Yet the American people – many of them Trump’s most loyal supporters – are exhausted of the endless journey back to “normal.” As a chorus of Republicans of all stripes are now signaling that they’re looking for fresh leadership in 2024, haters in both parties gloat that “Finally, here’s our chance to ‘kill’ off Trump!”
This is Trump’s “Zucchabar” moment.
To merely survive, let alone find justice for what rotten-to-the-core elites have put the country through, like Maximus, Trump must wipe the slate clean of everything he thought he knew about the reality of things, and heed the primitive lessons of Zucchabar.
Three of the biggest stand out:
Lesson #1: “If we stay together, we survive.” In Maximus’s first fight as a gladiator in Zucchabar, he was forced to fight in the arena alongside men he never would’ve chosen. But to survive, he had to fight with the soldiers he had. In fact, they were paired in twos, chained at the wrist, with one free hand to fight. Even as one “fighter” wept and shivered with such fear that he pissed on himself, this group of motley gladiators won against formidable opponents by fighting together with the people they had.
“Whatever comes through these gates, we’ve got a better chance of survival if we work together,” Maximus later told his battle-tested men at their biggest fight in Rome’s Colosseum. “Do you understand? If we stay together, we survive.” They won.
Republicans are a motley bunch, with some who pee on themselves in a fight. But once all elections are decided, Trump must enter the arena with the soldiers we have. Find common ground and stick with them where there’s agreement without going scorched earth over disagreements. Leave the scorched-earth stuff to voters and pundits.
Lesson #2: “Win the crowd” … again. After winning a fight by “killing quickly” in Zucchabar, Maximus angrily threw his sword into the stands and yelled “Are you not entertained?!” The crowd cheered. This alien noise seemed a bit confusing to Maximus. Proximo later schooled him: “Win the crowd, and you’ll win your freedom.” Once he saw the link between winning the crowd and freedom, Maximus never looked back. “I will win the crowd,” he said. “I will give them something they’ve never seen before.”
No one needs to school Trump about winning crowds, but he underestimated how much of his crowd shifted to DeSantis after Florida’s “red wave” never materialized nationally. The political landscape has changed. Trump’s approach didn’t. To win back the crowd and capture new ones, Trump must “give them something they’ve never seen before.”
Lesson #3: Never complain about fixed fights. Expect them and find a way to win anyway. In one of the most dramatic scenes in Gladiator, Commodus was shocked to learn that the man his father handpicked to be the next emperor was still alive. With massive crowds cheering him, Maximus was a greater threat than ever. Commodus became obsessed with secretly fixing every fight in ways to make sure Maximus was killed. It never happened. With deep hatred and corruption baked into the highest levels of government, Maximus never expected a clean fight. He didn’t complain. He concentrated every ounce of his time, energy, and skill on winning.
Trump has no choice but to do the same.
And I’ll be rooting for him, for no other reason than the grave injustices done to him and the institution he so inextricably represents. Without justice and accountability for the years of damage done to the country out of hate for Trump, the same rotten machinery will be turned on DeSantis or whoever wins the nomination in 2024. Internal and global forces are so determined to destroy this country as we know it, that it’s going to take a lot more than the status quo to beat them into oblivion.
And folks, this is not a movie.
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