At some point, history will determine how and why a degenerate became president of America.
The analysis won’t be pretty. At best, it most likely be pretty disgusting.
Historians will attempt to explain how so-called “evangelicals” flocked to a thrice-married man who bragged about his extra-marital affairs, a lecherous “dirty old man” who displayed gleeful lust over his own daughter, who lies without remorse or punishment, who openly looted the American treasury and destroyed any vestige of morality or ethics in the government of the United States.
Students in schools and universities will shake their heads in dismay at how one man and one political party destroyed the land of the free and home of the brave.
Donald John Trump is a loathsome creature who stands alone in the annals of American history — a disgusting fat slob whose greed, lust and ago turned Washington into an even more toxic cesspool that it ever was before.
But he did not go it alone. Aided by an ignorant self-centered populace and a legion of self-proclaimed “God-fearing” evangelical who abandoned any claim of a “high ground” in the political and governmental landscape, he led a legion of depravity towards a destruction of any claim of morality or patriotism.
Ryan Holiday, author of “The Daily Stoic,” remembers the forming Trump administration approaching him to become director of communications for a cabinet member.
“I had not supported Mr. Trump and so the offer was a surprise,” he writes in The New York Times. “And I surprised myself by even considering it.” He adds:
While I didn’t pursue the opportunity very seriously and it did not come to pass, even the possibility of having worked in the Trump administration has colored my read on the news this past turbulent year. While others follow each new scandal and the dizzying parade of White House hirings and firings with glee or horror, I pause to consider a dangerous near miss. It has also given me a different perspective on a side of philosophy that is often ignored — its interaction and interplay with politics.
Holiday turns to history to examine Seneca, “a man whose political life mirrors much of the chaos of the Trump administration. In A.D. 49, the well-known writer and Stoic philosopher was recalled from exile to tutor the successor of the emperor Claudius, a promising teenager named Nero. Like many people today, Seneca entered public service with ideals mitigated by a pragmatic understanding of the reality of the politics of his time.”
Seneca came into the world of Nero “to moderate some of Nero’s worst tendencies.” It made him a rich man in Rome but he concluded “the state if so rotten as to be past helping, if evil has entire dominion over it, the wise man will labor in vain or waste his strengths in profitable efforts.”
He tried to make amends but ended up killing himself.
Those who abandoned principle to serve Donald Trump now face disgrace by their decision to join him and may see such action as political suicide and, in some cases, a prison sentence for outright violation of the law.
Holiday notes that history “serves a purpose to those of us on the sidelines, either as inspiration or as cautionary tale.”
Historians may have the final say as they lump Trump with Nero as just another failure in the history of America and the world.
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Copyright © 2018 Capitol Hill Blue
2 thoughts on “Donald Trump: Another ‘Nero’ in world history?”
Not to mention that the Republican party and its propaganda arm will be rewriting history for decades to come. And in a couple of decades, Trump will be idolized by those on the right like they do Lincoln, and worse, Reagan. But Reagan only had 24 people indicted in his administration. I’m sure Trump can easily beat that and still coming out smelling like a rose.
I believe it says quite a bit more about the “evangelicals”, specifically that they care a lot more about money and power than anything in the Bible – or, indeed, what it means to be “Christian”. Jon
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