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Caesar himself doesn't get nearly enough shit for being a destroyer of democracy.
I’ve often referred to Trump as Stupid Caesar.
Like Caesar, Trump pushed up against established political norms and found very little pushback. As it turns out, having it be up for debate whether a leader is legally responsible for crimes committed is not a stable foundation for a nation.
The only difference is, Trump did not wait to build up his base not just in the electorate but also among other political figures before pushing as hard as he did. The whole drinking bleach and shining a light to cure Covid probably didn’t help.
Also I’m pretty certain Caesar wasn’t borderline illiterate. If we look up any of Caesar’s speeches recorded by even his most ardent opponents and compare them to Trump’s, there’s a bit of a difference there.
Anyway the point is, both of these men did nothing except expose the flaws in the system, and so long as we do nothing to fix said flaws, is there anything stopping a more competent modern-day Caesar from finishing what Trump started?
In fact, not only did Caesar read books, unlike Trump, he wrote them too. And didn't use a ghost writer and then claim he wrote the best-selling book ever.
Bellum Gallicum was a real page turner, though.
Stupid Sulla is a more accurate comparison
Sulla started a civil war with his militrary leaders being against it and strip any and all power from the plebians
The most important difference between Caesar and Trump is that Trump isn't a war leader, and he doesn't have a personal army backing him. Now, if Trump (or a more competent person) personally lead his own private army on a highly successful decade-long campaign of foreign conquest and plunder, enriching the population and becoming spectacularly popular in the process, and then was willing and able to use that army to successfully fight a civil war, AND if the US was already war-weary from decades of civil war among its warlords, well then we might have similar conditions to the time of Caesar. I just don't see that happening in America. When America eventually falls from global hegemony, it will probably be more like the end of the British Empire than the end of the Roman Republic.
Fair, but Trump does have the Proud Boys… LARPing as an elite strike force is the same as battle-hardened legions, right?
Lol, the Gravy Seals!
The conditions aren't the exact same, and they don't have to be.
The average US citizen is weary. Of war ( or whatever they want to call 20 years in the middle east), of politics, and getting the shit end of the deal since the boomers refuse to retire or die. Now they're barely animate corpses are still tottering around the capital, completely out if touch with what the average citizen goes through, and more to the point, very few care as long as they retain power.
It amazes me how much Americans praise authoritarian rule. And most people don't even notice.
Look at all the children's books, TV shows and movies that feature kings, queens, princess, etc. Even Mr Rogers had a king in make believe.
The entire plot of the Black Panther movie was due to an advanced society having a hereditary authoritarian government FFS. And the solution is a civil war where the "good king" wins.
We grow up with the idea of the *benevolent dictator" being hammered into us.
I think it's just playing into people's fantasies of power. Look at how much of.our entertainment is about ultra wealthy people (the romcom billionaire who falls for a humble working class woman, the rappers who brag about getting bags, etc.) despite most Americans living humbly or struggling. It may also be because most people in the US grew up on fairy tales and Disney movies involving royalty (ETA: Now that i think about it these children's entertainments sound like propaganda).
I think you can also throw a bit of the romantic notions of knighthood, King Arthur, shit I don’t like to throw Tolkien under the bus but he probably bears some blame here too
This is one of the reasons I love the Once and Future King so much. It's still eighty years old at this point, so it's certainly problematic in some ways...but one of the central themes of the book is grappling with the idea that Might Makes Right, and Arthur is desperately trying to figure out how Power should, or if it can, be wielded justly. Definitely an attempt at deconstructing the Arthurian fantasy, written during (and kind of after) WW2.
Every once in a while it comes up in RPG spaces, especially DND. Like, why are we doing the whole "king and rightful heir" trope played straight again? Monarchy is fundamentally unjust.
And then people get mad. "it's just a game". "Don't make things political". (As if a story about a king and heirs isn't already political!)
I did a nice campaign arc that was about a small city state that had overthrown their king and established a collective, and how counter-revolutionaries were trying to bring the king back. It was good. Probably one of the best I've run.
Also one of the larger cities in the setting had an elected mayor, and we had an arc about getting out the vote.
Anyway. We can tell different stories. But you need to go against the grain. And be ready for chuds to get upset.
That's fantastic!
Was it Caesar though and not Octavian? A dictator can be elected and changed democratically.
Caesar started a civil war that ended with him being emperor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Rubicon
You're both right. Caesar was emperor except in name. His title was Dictator. Octavian/Augustus was the first emperor.
Worth nothing that Augustus used the title "princeps", which was also an existing title in the Republic. And his power came from holding existing offices. He was careful to make himself the ruler of Rome using the existing governing framework.
He just negotiated that he would hold these positions for life.
This is the same thing Julius Caesar did, except the existing title he held - dictator - carried too much political baggage.
He was declared dictator-for-life and was in open war with much of the senate. Not hyper-democratic. And then he was killed, so we don't know what his final goal was. Maybe he was going to set things right (in his opinion) and then hand back control to the senate, like Sulla had done a generation earlier, or maybe he would have done what Octavian did later.
I mean… he got stabbed to death by the entire Roman senate. But I get what you’re saying.
That was a good start.