Above the snow, light on a sled

I just read The Ides of March, Thornton Wilder's (Eclecta), spurred on by Carlota Gurt's luminous prologue (if you read this prologue, you'll end up reading the book), and Julius Caesar strikes me as a Renaissance prince and an enlightened despot, compared to the uncultured, pumpkin-painted Caesar of our time. But despite the two thousand years that separate them, one could engage in dialogue with the other. Julius Caesar proclaimed himself perpetual dictator, and Trump aspires to the same. The Roman received letters from the proconsuls of Gaul and acted as host to Cleopatra, while Trump receives the briefings From Greenland, he rides in the King of England's golden carriage and accepts other people's medals as gifts, while in the remote provinces of the empire we wake up every day wondering which one of them has committed.

Both reached the top, one after understanding and manipulating the nature of his soldiers, and the other, the psychology of his voters. In both cases, the law of the strongest was the most convincing argument, that law now disguised as a principle of reality. Try it: these days you'll always find someone who will look at you with a condescending smile when you share your fears about the future. They'll tell you that things aren't very different from how they've always been, and they'll display the superior tone of someone who already lives on a page of reality that you shouldn't forget, as if they've already been sent safe passage to escape when things get tough, while you'll be left on the ground. They're the kind of people who laugh at Greenland's sleds because Trump laughs at them, at the sleds and the dogs, reduced to naive symbols in Christmas carols.