Making Us Great Again?

You will have heard about a famous politician who is notorious for his lavish lifestyle and licentious behaviour. He had multiple affairs outside his marriages, sometimes with the wives of other leaders. He is very vain and goes to great lengths to hide his increasing baldness. He is adept at using religion as a tool to improve his image, manipulate public opinion, and enhance his power. He will happily proclaim that God is on his side and, therefore, his actions are blessed.

He has been heavily in debt for much of his life, spending heavily to fund his political campaigns, to bribe voters, and gain popular support. He has to continue to strive for power and wealth to repay his debts and keep himself out of prison. But in the end, he is successful, he avoids jail.

I am of course talking about Julius Caesar from the Roman Republic of over 2000 years ago, but you might have spotted some clear parallels with today’s Donald Trump, who might secretly enjoy the comparison.

Caesar manipulated the political system and persuaded Senate to declare him dictator for life and thus destroying the Roman Republic. Even 2000 years later many would celebrate him as a great statesman or even a genius and argue that he played a major role in making Rome ‘Great’.

However, the definition of what makes a man or country ‘Great’ is undefined. We think back on Rome as being ‘Great’ but forget that having the Romans invade your country would have been like being invaded by Germany during WW2. They might have improved the roads but they were completely intolerant of any resistance. They responded to rebellion by conquered tribes with cold brutality. Many of Caesar’s actions in Gaul were genocidal, with hundreds of thousands being slaughtered. The lives of ordinary people were relevant to him only when they could help him achieve power and status.

What does ‘Great’ mean?

Those who tell us they want the USA or even Britain to be ‘Great’ enjoy the ambiguity of that word, they shy away from describing it, less its magic disappears in the same way the magic of Brexit seems to have evaporated once faced with reality.

I worry about a Trump presidency because of the chaos, uncertainty and weakness he brings to America and possibly to the world. I have no time for the fools who claim that you know exactly where you are with Trump, that Trump ‘tells it like it is’. None of us really knows what Trump will do in office – Make America Great Again is an empty slogan into which every American can pour his dreams but which has no clear goals.

I believe a ‘Great’ country is one where all prosper, not just the rich oligarchs who then distract the rest of us with entertainment and outrages.

To me, a country is ‘Great’ when its people are fed and housed, when its streets are safe, when its schools deliver an excellent education and when a good health service is provided to all, not just the rich. I want to live in a country where the people are at peace with themselves and with others.

Amplify the Anger – The Path to Power

Too many are viewing Trump as just a temporary aberration that can only last a few years, but the rich populists he is gathering around himself are intent on controlling our future. Populism isn’t about fixing problems. Rather than solve the problems that make people angry, populists deliberately amplify the anger and use it to increase their personal power.

When Caesar achieved total power and public acclaim, he brought an end to a 400-year-old Republic and started his country on the path to a civil war that lasted 13 years followed by a series of dictatorships that lasted several hundred years. Caesar’s death did not restore the Roman Republic.

America isn’t heading for a civil war, but unless people start planning for his replacement, Trump’s inevitable decline will leave America in the hands of those who value power without purpose, where America becomes the plaything of a few very rich men, fixated on personal prestige, who have grown bored with running companies and want to play at being King.