What do you make of this?
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RFKjr associate rejecting science, facts and research for “just so” stories and “I have a feeling”? I’d say it’s exactly on par. Bullshit atteacts more bullshit.
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Caesar was a massive self-promoter. He wrote his Gallic Wars himself and that is a primary source of our understanding of his “success”. There were no “entrepreneurs” in Rome. The pop heroes and self made men would be generals like Caesar.
Caesar was a populist demagogue pandering to the mob against the “elites” and the institutions like the Senate and the senatorial class. Meanwhile he himself was a equites born to privilege himself. Caesar was trying to rewrite their constitution by making himself king when the entire Roman system was built to prevent one man from consolidating power. All the guardrails began to fail and fall one by one. His assassination was a last ditch effort to stop his destruction of the republic but it resulted in chaos. After the chaos, Augustus finished what Caesar started and became king and dictator for life, consolidating all the power in a single person, finishing what Caesar started.
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Nah… still bullshit. Trump is much more like a Hitler figure… I don’t think it really makes sense to compare people from the modern era to people from the distant past, given just how far away it was and how very different the historical context was…
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Julius was dictator for life. Augustus never was, his only special title was princeps, first citizen. The whole point was that on paper he continued to lead a Republic, making him a lot easier to accept.
Besides that though I’m not really sure your point. Rome may not have had entrepreneurs the way we think of them but it had men like Crassus, who got his influence through making lots of money in various unsavory ways. When he thought he could use a quick military victory too, his incompetence got himself killed in short order.
Caesar’s dictatorship was founded on his military successes, as I think someone must have said, and those didn’t happen for complete idiots. As Mindy says the whole context is very different.
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What, he DIDN’T have bone spurs! 
And I would also say that our understanding of eras in the distant past are often warped by how the early modern historians sought to make a direct connection between themselves, their context with the Roman empire… they wanted to make direct links to the Romans and Greeks, as if they were anticipating the arrival of what we today call “western civilization”… This era of historians really treated the Romans and Greeks as “european” civilizations, when they most certainly were not that… they were Mediterranean one. Hence, they distorted the Romans understanding of themselves and the actual context of the past. Modern historians are doing a bang-up job in recent years of undoing that, but it’s still a key aspect of popular understandings of this era, that it was a white, European empire.
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It is definitely not a one for one comparison. From a thousand foot view the situations are very different. Julius Caesar has gotten a patina of a great man and as a hero for many people through the ages. This makes the comparison with Trump ludicrous.
However, if you go into the details and legalities what Caesar did was the template for every strong man dictator throughout history.
Rome was, in the mists of time, ruled by tyrant kings and like the USA, they overthrew their kings and set up a republic with representation for all the various groups. There was separation of powers ( not legislative/judicial/executive but military, religious, legislative and executive. The executive was also the judge or the senate could judge as a whole). There were term limits and limits on consolidating offices. There were “guard rails” and “institutions” that protected the republic from an individual consolidating power.
Caesar used his popularity to slowly convince the mob to ignore the institutions and consolidate power. The “ conspirators” ( the good guys trying to prevent Caesar from grabbing power) were concerned he was trying to get people to coronate him as king of Rome. People were getting crowns ready for him and he would deny that he wanted to be king and refuse the crown but be encouraging people to keep offering.
Augustus was never dictator. He was never crowned king. The Senate lasted longer than the empire, existing until after the last emperor in the west. But Augustus had the anti Caesar faction executed and anyone who opposed him under threat of death. He had seal team six waiting for any opposition, just like Trump would have if he had the Supreme Court vote his way.
Just like we could have impeachment ready in theory, but if the Senate was constantly under a threat of death, it would never happen. We would probably continue to have elections and representatives and senators and people would say we were still democracy and not a dictatorship. The constitution would still be in effect but in reality democracy would end.
There are parallels. It was a long time ago, but people are people. It is not one for one, but the lessons are there.
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Nicely put. I happen to believe there are some more direct (and terrifying) parallels between our current situation and 1930’s Weimar Germany, but obviously it’s not an either/or since no historical comparison is going to be 1:1. It’s not a competition.
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And yet, here we are…
From an actual close up historical point of view, they are very different…
Context matters. The Roman empire is not the modern US, and we do well to understand our own history from the context in which it exists. There was no capitalism in the Roman empire, the division of labor was completely different, gender relations, they didn’t have the same concept of race as we do today, how communities operated are nothing like how they do today. It’s just different. That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from the Roman empire, but one-to-one comparisions are completely useless if you ask me. It’s crystal clear that trump is pulling directly from previous fascists for how he thinks of himself and society, and while those previous fascists might have seen themselves are rebuilding “great ancient empires” they REALLY were not, as they had a deeply distorted understanding of those ancient empires. They were NOT white, for one major one.
No, but it does not make sense to compare to something where the context is so totally different that there is no real comparision. While comparing to the 30s makes much more since, since there is a lot more similarities there to pull on. History does not repeat, but we’re shaped by history, and we’re more directly shaped by the history of the 20th century, and, by our distorted understanding of ancient empires. 
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I don’t know why you think I need all this explained when you’re the one confusing the details. Yes, obviously all attempts to seize power will have certain aspects of attempting to seize power in common. That doesn’t mean they are similar enough to be illustrative or even really informative. You can find much better comparisons for Trump than the general who took over Gaul, where you have to ignore half of everything to make the correspondence work.
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I’m afraid I don’t see it as an either/or, but a continuum. Some comparisons may be more or less direct than others, and in my opinion exploring why something is more or less apt can explain a lot.
As I said, I happen to think the far more direct comparison is to 1930’s Germany, but even there some of the important distinctions between that period in Germany and the current US (and there are a bunch) can be just as informative as the similarities.
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So here the reason is Julius Caesar was a very different person, a capable and literate military general, in a very different society. 
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You got me.
Legally, Augustus was a great guy that restored order and got rid of some bad dudes who illegally murdered a hero of the people.
Effectively, he ended the republic and was the first of many emperors.
At any point in time you could find people saying that everything was all good and the republic and its institutions were safe. This is what the original discussion was about.
We are here thousands of years later arguing whether Augustus was dictator, emperor, princeps etc. 50 years from now we could be suffering under god-king trump the third grandson of Cheetolini and there will be people saying that the Constitution is safe and we are still in a democracy.
Yes, to say Trump is like Caesar sounds like a compliment, it is not. Caesar was ultimately a failure. Augustus actually pulled off becoming emperor. Caesar did not.
Most people would think saying Trump is like Hitler would be a better comparison because most people understand Hitler was a horrible creature undeserving of any respect, also an ultimate failure in everything he did. Unfortunately, many Trump supporters love the comparisons to Hitler and think that is some kind of compliment.
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T**** doesn’t even like France. He boogied out of there as soon as it started raining…
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I think the nones of April would be fine too, but I’m not an ides and nones specialist.
Tnx to chenille for the brain fart correction.
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Sure sounds like you agree that
Those “good guys” were also very, very concerned about losing most of their own power and influence, should Ceasar be successful in his plans.
But “preventing a dictatorship” is a much better spin on things than “preserving our privileges, the plebs be damned”.
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Doesn’t sound like this to me, sorry.
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