Posted on 05/31/2024 1:03:07 PM PDT by Signalman
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.
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.
Schlichter echoes something I think may happen: we may wind up with a dictator, but their last name won't be Trump.
That about sums it up...
“ American men typically think about ancient Rome several times a day”
What?
We have a dictatorship, but it’s a collective, not a person.
Red sates need to boost Republicans in ALL races from dog catcher to House and Senate.
Lots of Democrats compared Trump to Caesar. That was the wrong Roman to draw a Trump analogy with.
A much more fitting one is Tiberius Gracchus.
There certainly are similarities to Rome, but closer to home, I see similarities to the Soviet Union - deep-state, uniparty rule from the capital, central-planning, post-modern/collectivist ideology covering for state-power and individual power grab, massive intel and surveillance apparatus used at home and abroad, controlled media, military engagements and color revolution around the globe - all while bankrupting itself in wars, and trying to maintain the political status quo at home.
Must be about those cool outfits they wore back then;-)
Rats don’t GAF about anything as long as they are in power and skimming money…
I can think of another analogy - the Roman Senators chose to shortcut “Our Democracy” in order to save it by stabbing Julius Caesar (right on the Ides of March, which probably stung like hell) and ended up starting five centuries of bloody political violence in the pursuit of succession. In the meantime the oligarchs were supplanted first by dictators and then by the alien population they’d imported and granted citizenship. Probably all just coincidental, of course...
Going that way? I’d say we passed that bridge. DC is the epitome of what today’s ancient Rome would look like unfettered - complete with vomitorium (the US Congress), and the result of its fall.
AFAIC this country has been invaded and settled by leftists and third world slags choking our cities, our airways and tiered governments. It is truly sad. We can’t be united as states’ citizens with common mores, goals dreams and ideals because we’re infested with barbarians here to rape and pillage.
Kurt would probably say Demoncrats AND Republicans...but it’s Townhall so....
Personally I see similarities between now and the 18th century (1700's) English speaking world (including America) just before the 1st Great Awakening. This included a sexual revolution just before the Awakening, political persecution, squelching opposing speech, and a large push for deism then atheism.
In other words, we've been here before. And we came out of it without getting into a dictatorship. Instead, we became spiritually and politically freer. The question is, are enough Americans today led by the Spirit to take us into the next Great Awakening?
Caligula scenes?
This is first rate Schlichter. Serious, not the usual humor. But the situation demands it.
the fall of Rome, yes
but It looks a whole lot more like the fall of Germany to the Nazis in the 1930’s
Democrats of today are not the democrats of the past.
Democrats today are progressives and communists.
They want to destroy the U.S., along with its constitution and general makeup.
They want to write a new constitution and start a new country. To do that, they have to destroy what the U.S. has meant for the last 250 years.
What democrats have been doing is exactly what Kruschev said about burying us,and that we would be buried from within. We are well on the way to destroying the U.S., and it’s by design, with Soros and Pelosi and Schumer and especially Obama and his cabal doing the damage stealthily. But, it’s not really stealthily, since we can see what they’re doing and we are believing that there are safeguards that can pull the country back. No such safeguards exist, since what the ‘democrats’ are doing is being done through our own laws and rules and regulations. The safeguards that supposedly exist, are not working, with the justice systems being complicit and the republicans just observing and not doing anything to stop the destruction.
So, Rome was a very long time ago, and what is happening now is being done by inside and outside actors, all of which know that the U.S. is easy to destroy. Destruction is not by military force, and we are, like the fabled ‘frog being boiled slowly’, on the way to being another Rome-like casualty. Nobody remembers Rome, and people have had their minds entertained with what the destroyers consider more ‘immediate dangers’, like climate change and EVs and open borders and out-of-control crime. So, the citizens are entertained with ‘other problems’ while the country is being destroyed. The U.S. will replace the Rome of history as the most ‘egregious death of a nation’.
Once the U.S. has been destroyed, the world will be turned into a chaotic state. The enemy will have won, and the enemy will have done their destruction from the outside and mostly from the inside. China just needs to wait for us to self-destruct, but they will offer as much help as necessary to expedite the demise.
Great column. Marking.
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