• Belazor@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Also I’m pretty certain Caesar wasn’t borderline illiterate.

      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.

    • tintory@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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

    • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Belazor@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Fair, but Trump does have the Proud Boys… LARPing as an elite strike force is the same as battle-hardened legions, right?

      • Case@unilem.org
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        1 year ago

        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.