The Republic is Dead: Long Live the Empire. For Now.
Nero v Trump: When the history books are written, which fiddler will be deemed to have wreaked more damage?
Nero sits alongside the likes of Hitler and Stalin as one of the most infamous rulers the world has witnessed. He is best known for apparently indulging in some ill-timed fiddling as Rome burned in an almighty blaze that some believe Nero himself may have lit so he could be hailed as the man who rebuilt Rome from the ashes.
But there’s more.
He wasn’t even the legal heir to the throne but rather adopted by Emperor Claudius at the behest of his mother and Claudius wife (oh, who was also his niece…Shakespeare, the cheeky devil, no doubt borrowed a semblance of this for the Hamlet story) Agrippina, who with the help of the Praetorian Guard enabled Nero to brush aside the true heir to the throne, Brittanicus, so that the mother-son duo could rule.
A mother Nero then went on to kill so he could rule unimpeded…one of several women he would thrust aside as he later went on to kill his first wife, Octavia, for not bearing him an heir, and Poppaea, who some historians say was killed (along with the child she was pregnant with) when Nero kicked her in the stomach.
Not. A. Nice. Chap.
While Nero, if the historical hand-me-down tales are to be believed, was a truly terrible fellow, out trumping Trump in many many ways when it comes to nastiness, some of the parallels are scary.
Name Change
After his mum married her uncle, she insisted her son’s name be changed from Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus to Nero.
While Trump didn’t see a name change during his lifetime, reports are his family name was Drumpf just a few generations pre-him.
Taking Power
Agrippina was a key player behind the push for Nero to pip Brittanicus as being heir to the Empire when Claudius died, and while Donny’s mum no doubt would have been rooting for him to be Prez if she had lived to see the day him take over the GOP, I’m thinking she was probably a much nicer woman than Nero’s power-hungry mother. What is more striking is the Praetorian Guard aspect.
A Despot’s Protectors
Wiki gives a great description of the Guard:
The Praetorian Guard (Latin: cohortes praetoriae) was an elite unit of the Imperial Roman army whose members served as personal bodyguards and intelligence for the Roman emperors. During the era of the Roman Republic, the Praetorians served as a small escort force for high-ranking officials such as senators or provincial governors like procurators, and also serving as bodyguards for high ranking officers within the Roman legions. With the republic’s transition into the Roman Empire, however, the first emperor, Augustus, founded the Guard as his personal security detail. Although they continued to serve in this capacity for roughly three centuries, the Guard became notable for its intrigue and interference in Roman politics, to the point of overthrowing emperors and proclaiming their successors. In 312, the Guard was disbanded by Constantine the Great.
I challenge anyone to find a better way than the above to describe how the GOP allowed Trump to storm their once vaguely respectable party and also the current behaviour of GOP senators acting as a protection racket around the impeachment process.
It’s pretty scary, right?
And that same guard that helped put Nero in power, were also part of the push to finally oust him. While this seems HIGHLY unlikely at the moment even with a few GOP types like the late John McCain standing up to him, and still-sitting senators — Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — not wanting to be remembered for having been on the wrong side of history in supporting Trump over the Ukraine thing, ultimately the GOP will expunge him.
It might even happen pre-2020 election if revelations in Bolton’s book shifts more support back to the Dems or other information is released about Trump (rumours say the Dems have a little war chest of this…) to see them pull the pin and move on him with Pence to step in. Highly unlikely — not impossible. Stay tuned on that one.
The Woman Killing Stuff
Nero had the evil killer survival instinct in bumping off his mother, and several wives, but Trump wouldn’t ever kill a woman, or anyone for that matter, despite all his bravado.
What he has done though is kill a marriage (to Ivana, no big deal I hear you say, loads of men — and women — do it, sure but still…) and, pardon the slightly off metaphor, allegedly “impaled” quite a few other women along the way who just can’t resist him, openly bragging about it pre-2016 in the infamous “pussy-grabbing” comments.
Nero’s Fiddle: The End of a Republic and Eventually an Empire
So, the great Republic of Rome ended and the Empire commenced in 27BC, a solid 60 or so years before Nero even had a sniff of power. The Empire then went on for about four centuries before it’s power finally waned and other regional powers in Europe and beyond rose.
But I would mark that fiddling while Rome burns (literal or metaphorical) as a watershed moment. While other rulers, such as the wicked Caligula, had done much to harm the reputation of the former Roman Republic in terms of abuse of power, office etc, a possibly pyromaniac Nero pulling out a fiddle and strumming some tunes as the seat of his Empire burned sounds much like what we’re seeing in the USA today.
America’s superpower status, while still mostly intact, is fading even as the influence of others, such as China and India, is rising. And as the very low embers of a great American fire have begun to glow at the edges of the once-great republic, so Trump clearly hopes to burn down the establishment and build an Empire that will, in time, also either burn or fade even if he is too foolish to see this.
Impeached But Not Forgotten
The current impeachment process and mock-trial in the Senate plays like a wonky orchestra accompanying Trump’s fiddling, with Mitch McConnell conducting from the pit. We all know how the song ends — with no chance in a billion of the 20 Republicans needed to remove Trump from office. It even looks highly unlikely that four good GOP Senators will vote against party lines to allow important witnesses to be called to the impeachment trial (no witnesses at a trial? sounds like justice to me…)
Instead, the GOPraetoriates have decided to protect their Emperor…to shield him from the will of the people (75% of whom want witnesses to be called)…to allow his reign to continue in the hope his strange sway over chunks of the population will see their own skins saved at the 2020 Presidential Election.
It’s a dangerous ploy. The Emperor will rant and rave about being exonerated once the trial is over, his rusted-on supporters will stay rusted on and Republicans will try and change the narrative in the way they have about ‘saving’ democracy and defending the constitution.
The reality is, they have merely fanned the flames that Trump lit back in 2016 with his swaggering, boss mentality, and that Republicans must have known would dictate his presidency.
Flames that will slowly eat at the hearts and minds of Americans and that are contributing to an inward crumbling Empire that wants to shut itself off from the world unless it has its way on every issue.
But, even worse, Trump has set off a blaze that will see the entire Empire go completely up in flames while Trump keeps fiddling in the multitudinous ways that are in his DNA.
There will be no phoenix to rise from those Ashes.
(Ps You know I could have made this work using the Star Wars analogy too and was so tempted…maybe next time. #Trump-patine)
