Yesterday I wanted to lighten up a bit and I recommended you watch the excellent TV series starring Keri Russell, “The Diplomat.”
and you can read all my
I’ve also been Substacking about Trump’s ballroom. I’ve written that I consider focusing too much on this as akin to paying attention to a circus sideshow while a group of sadistic psychopaths have taken over the main arena and are throwing their enemies to ravenous lions to entertain themselves and their equally psychopathic and sadistic fans. This train of thought led to the following exposition:
In ancient Rome there was a form of entertainment called “damnatio ad bestias,” which translates to “condemnation to beasts.” (See Wikipedia)
The painting on the top of the page is of Ignatious of Antioch. He was a Christian martyr who died for his beliefs at the hands of the Romans. You can read about him here.
Much has been written, including by me, comparing Trump to Hitler and other recent and living despots. I’ve seen a few pieces comparing him to Caligula. This makes sense since that Roman emperor was self-indulgent, cruel, sadistic, extravagant and sexually perverted. He eventually became an insane, murderous tyrant who demanded and received worship as a living god. He humiliated the Senate, and is said to have planned to make his horse a consul (reference). Here’s an article from The Guardian: “Donald Trump has ‘fascinating parallels’ with Caligula, says historian.”
I hadn’t seen anything comparing him to the even more ruthless and cruel Nero and Tiberius until I started this Substack. I found this:
I found another article in The Guardian which references Tiberius: “To understand Trump, we should look to the tyrants of ancient Rome.”
Okay, let me extricate myself from the historical weeds where I can only pretend to have any depth or breath of knowledge. I have lapsed into improv and I am in danger of sinking into word salad, or what Trump would call the weave, a lot of blather signifying not much of anything.
What I am really trying to get across, probably not all that effectively, is that we can’t let ourselves be distracted from all the cacophony and fireworks even if it is in the form of ICE agents teargassing citizens and shooting non-lethal ammunition at them and Trump’s blowing up boats. These displays are meant to be performances to distract us from what Trump intends to do once he gets the fuck-us-all ducks in a row.
Then we’re all Confit de Canard.
Chose whatever metaphor you want to, our being a duck dinner or lunch for the lions, there won’t be a damn thing we can do.
The only people who can save us once it gets that far were sitting in an auditorium at a Marine base in Quantico on Sept. 30th.
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