2017-06-20

More Bad Analogies: Trump As Caesar

Literally Hitler or Caesar? 

Another day, another example of progressive ignorance is on full display. This time some play in a theatre performing Shakespeare. Long story short, the basic play here is - excuse the pun - Trump is a tyrant like Julius Caesar so, ergo, it makes perfect logical sense to stab him as a metaphor for the tyranny Caesar represented.

I would imagine to a bunch of 'wooos!' and standing ovations I'm sure.

Anyway.

I fear they mistakenly (and insultingly) took a complex figure operating in interesting times and reduced him to a caricature to fit a contemporary narrative. Here, Caesar destroyed the Republic and was a tyrant. On the other end, take Trump, assume his goal is to install a dictatorship to destroy the Republic and you have a natural analogy!

Or is there?

Julius Caesar was one of the finest military generals in world history as well as an effective orator.

Donald Trump is a businessman with no military background of no specific intellectual capabilities that he has written about. Much like his predecessor.

The former took Rome through a series of military campaigns outmaneuvering his opponents, the latter was democratically and legally elected by the people.

Right there this should end any notion of comparing the two as individuals.

If Trump resembles anyone it's Crassus - the wealthiest man in Roman (world?) history who made his money in land speculation. Not only that, both of them had a wealthy father.

But again, the analogy has its limits as Crassus was also a military man and formed the First Triumvirate alongside Caesar and Pompey.

Tyrants or tyranny don't just happen. They evolve over time.

It's been posited that Rome's fall from Republic to Empire began three hundred years before Caesar when the Gracchi brothers were killed by Senators.

But we need only go to Sulla to see a dictatorship operating in Rome. It's worth noting, in a strange twist of historical fate, Sulla had pardoned Caesar. Speaking of analogies, it's worth noting Sulla willingly ceded power once he stabilized things much like George Washington did centuries later.

We need not get into details here. Suffice to illustrate how dictators emerge and how the conditions for one to seize power sometimes are laid decades if not centuries before.

To that end, if Trump was to ever consolidate power into the Executive further, the actions of previous administrations who expanded that power through precedence have to be considered in laying the ground work for such a situation.

If one examines, for example, Obama's track record on issues of liberty, they'd find a barren forest of failures as his administration's record at SCOTUS reveals. Obama already laid down tracks of tyranny; as did other Presidents before him.

Concluding a tyranny suddenly emerged under Trump is preposterous and defies the facts of history.

Ultimately, the play seems to take the position I presume, that assassinating Caesar saved the Republic but it did nothing of the sort. It plunged the country into chaos leading to the eventual rise of a real dictator, albeit an enlightened one, in Augustus was later followed by (mostly) less abled men. Under Augustus, the only real option was to feign democratic - everyone knew it was a lie but it did lead to Pax Romana - the happiest period in human history according to Gibbons.

Chaos would result if Trump were to be killed. This was not a man who took the office though force or illegal means. He won it within the prescribed rules of American politics so people are not likely to take this lightly.

And justifiably so.

Advocating for his removal is to directly violate a legal and legitimate outcome.

Laying the seeds for civil war.

******

While I think it's only fair the left gets a taste of its own medicine as we saw with protestors interrupting the play itself, ultimately they can't win using such tactics. It's the old 'the person who retaliates gets penalized' axiom.

The only way to ensure victory is to keep fighting them in the hall of ideas. The left, egged on by the rhetoric from the DNC leadership, are doing all the provoking and committing the violent acts.

Antifa is too far removed from reality and is wallowing in abject ignorance of history.

Imagine that. A bunch of ignorant, degenerate, rabble-rousing idiots are actually comparing themselves to WWII servicemen without a shred of self-awareness that their behaviour and tactics would have them  wearing Black and Brown shirts.


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