THE REPUBLIC IS AN IMPERIUM
LONG LIVE THE EMPEROR
HAIL TRUMP
THE NEW CAESAR
AMERICA HAS ALWAYS SUFFERED FROM PRETENSIONS OF RECREATING THE ARISTOCRACY IT ABANDONED WITH ITS REVOLUTION.
promise they have interests of all Americans at heart
THERE IS A TORY TENDENCY IN AMERICA
THAT SEES ITS CELEBRITIES AS ROYALTY,
EVERYONE OF THEM MAKES MORE
AND HAS MORE POWER AND FANS THAN QE2
WHY WOULD A COUNTRY THAT PROCLAIMS ITSELF A DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC,
REDUCE ITSELF TO A REPUBLICAN IMPERIUM WITH AN EMPEROR
Dealing with Emperor Trump: Field Notes from Ancient Rome
HAVE THEY NOT READ THEIR BURKE
ON THE RISE AND FALL OF THAT OTHER IMPERIAL REPUBLIC
Meet the Trump of Ancient Rome, a Populist Demagogue
Who Helped Bring Down the Republic
The man who ultimately brought down the system was a wealthy and ambitious nobleman named Publius Clodius Pulcher, a populist demagogue who refused to play by the rules. Clodius had always been eccentric and unpredictable in ways that both shocked and amused the Roman populace. As a young man, he had incited a mutiny among his brother-in-law’s troops. Then, when pirates captured him, he took deep offense at the small ransom they accepted for his release.
Nothing was sacred to Clodius. The more audacious his behavior, the more the public loved him for it. In Rome, for example, Clodius, a noted ladies’ man, committed sacrilege by dressing up as a woman and infiltrating the female-only religious festival of the goddess Bona Dea, with the aim of seducing Pompeia, Julius Caesar’s wife. The scandal led Caesar to divorce Pompeia and gave rise to the famous quip that Caesar’s wife needed to be beyond suspicion.
What Clodius’s critics failed to realize was that he was smart, determined and very much in touch with the frustrations of the common people.
