Trump as Caligula, Trumpists as Visigoths

[GliderGuider]

In my efforts to make sense of Trump's "black swan" ascension to power, I've gone back into ancient history a couple of ways.

One is to the obvious but eerie parallel between the Donald and the notorious Roman Emperor Caligula. Here is an extract from the Wikipedia entry for Caligula. The translation to modern personalities and institutions is trivial.

There are few surviving sources about the reign (from AD 37-41) of Emperor Caligula, although he is described as a noble and moderate ruler during the first six months of his reign. After this, the sources focus upon his cruelty, sadism, extravagance, and sexual perversity, presenting him as an insane tyrant. While the reliability of these sources is questionable, it is known that during his brief reign, Caligula worked to increase the unconstrained personal power of the emperor, as opposed to countervailing powers within the principate. He directed much of his attention to ambitious construction projects and luxurious dwellings for himself, and initiated the construction of two aqueducts in Rome: the Aqua Claudia and the Anio Novus. During his reign, the empire annexed the Kingdom of Mauretania (GG: Mexicania?) as a province.

In early AD 41, Caligula was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy by officers of the Praetorian Guard, senators, and courtiers. The conspirators' attempt to use the opportunity to restore the Roman Republic was thwarted: on the day of the assassination of Caligula, the Praetorian Guard declared Caligula's uncle, Claudius, the next Roman emperor.

The other parallel is also with Rome, and has to do with Trump's followers. I posted this on FB this morning:

I've been contemplating Dr. James DeMeo's "Saharasia" theory about the aggressive diffusion of warlike patrist "civilization" out of its original desertified Arabian and Central Asian core territories. In the course of that diaspora, its carriers conquered most of the African, European and Asian land mass, and apparently implanted their psychologically armored values in modern global, techno-industrial civilization. I've had some interesting glimmers of ideas as a result.

The main one is that those barbarian carriers of the malignancy of civilization remind me a hell of a lot of Trumpists. They are similarly tribalist, morally rigid, exclusionary, punishment-based, fear-driven, patriarchal, selfish and aggressive. Most importantly, they both discarded all the previously-accepted rules of fair play in a fight.

That thought led me directly to parallels with the fall of Rome at the hands of the resulting barbarian hordes in the early 400s. In this morality play Trump owns the part of the barbarian warlords Alaric and Geiseric, while his followers are the Visigoths and Vandals. Washington, as always, stands in nicely for a decadent Rome. Only this time Geiseric has been elected Emperor, the Vandals have taken over the Imperial Senate, and nuclear weapons are involved.

The psychological similarity I see between Trump's rabble and Geiseric's Vandals is enormously disheartening. It speaks to why the civilized institutions of the United States has been powerless to stop his rise. His followers have a tacit agreement that the rules of the game are for suckers; that might, not law, makes right - especially if you just don't give a shit. The sword is assuming ascendancy over the pen once again.

Based on that historical analogy, I'm pretty sure our side is going to lose - if not now, then at the hands of some later Trumpian warlord. We are hamstrung by our core beliefs in rules, reciprocity and hope. They are not.

Like it or not, we are now the decadent and degenerate tail of the previous round of civilization whose peak was marked by ideas like "Manifest Destiny" and a "Thousand Year Reich". I am increasingly convinced that Trump's followers, along with others like them around the world, are the next wave - and not for better, only for worse.

The only thing I see that will stop them is the same thing that seems to have triggered the experiment of civilization through a great aridification 5,000 years ago - climate change. Unfortunately, such a cure will not only be worse than the disease, it will even amplify the disease before finally killing the host.

As Dickens' Tiny Tim would have said, "God help us, every one!"

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

[pansypoo53219]

1. i think the trumpets can be termed in the visagoth, osthragoth & the vandals.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Interesting. Yesterday I independently came up with comparing Trump to Caligula.

I may try to find the 1980 film on Netflix for Christmas.