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> The parallels between what happened in Rome 2000 years ago and what is happening in the U.S. today such as please? trump as tiberius i can kind of see. biden

> The parallels between what happened in Rome 2000 years ago and what is happening in the U.S. today such as please? trump as tiberius i can kind of see. biden is claudius?

usrusr 4y ago
I read it with a slightly wider scope for "today": when you have reached the point where you need to include the middle initial to tell presidents apart you aren't that far from just incrementing a counter...
- mongol 4y ago
  Indeed. Even from the outside I can see similarities with family dynasties in the political elites. We have the Kennedys, Bush, Clintons, and who knows what will become of the Trump family going forward.
  - simonh 4y ago
    Clunck-click with every trip hopefully. Edit: British humour. Started as car seat belt promotion videos, but now used to refer to someone being in prison.
- dustincoates 4y ago
  If that were true, Jeb! or Hillary would be president right now. As it stands, the Clinton and Bush names are not winning anyone office right now, and the most prominent Kennedy politician right now is arguably an anti-vax conspiracy theorist.
- chrononaut 4y ago
  This was basically the case from the start, ala John Adams and John Quincy Adams.
prewett 4y ago
Not OP, but I see the situation more as 100 years before Caesar. You had competing interests but inability (unwillingness?) to compromise. Various people tried increasingly heavy-handed solutions, including the populist Gracchi brothers, and then Sulla entering Rome with his legions (forbidden) three years of military dictatorship--after which he resigned and went home. We seem to be at the potential start of that process. The morals/ethics of the coastal elites from the rural population have diverged to the point where, with Social Justice (differing from social justice) they may not be compatible, but both sides are trying to enforce their morality on the other. (Although I think the push for change is essentially from the coasts and the rural morality is on an offensive-defense.) So you get the rise of populist Trump and the far right to oppose the push from the far left. Trump isn't equivalent to anyone in Rome, but the situation has a similar flavor. (Also, the situation described by Plato in the Republic, where he says democracy results in chaos, causing people to want a dictator to restore order, although we have not got there yet.)
- DubiousPusher 4y ago
  > inability (unwillingness?) to compromise. I think the basic story of the late Republic is one of a political-economy which needed to change but which could not. Romes successes had rewritten the fundamental realities of its means and relations of production but the political system gave an effective veto power to people who refused to see this and instead wished to blame cultural changes and a decline in traditional virtue for the troubles. This delusion was a borderline mental illness. These people loved Rome's martial history and wanted to keep armies in the field as much as anyone, yet opposed opening the cavalry to non-yeomen despite the deleterious impacts it had on the rural upper class and the decreasing ability of the Romans to field these kind of patriotic cavalry. These people benefited in multitude ways from the influx of slave labor. But they resisted any effort to enfranchise now underemployed Romans, settling instead to doll them grain. Even as this destroyed the These people leveraged their neighbor Italians to win profitable war after profitable war and resisted giving them the privileges of citizenship until forced at the point of a spear. And all the while, any type of reform which had the aesthetic of appearing against traditional Roman virtue was resisted entirely by the traditional aristocrats. Until of course Marius, many of whose reforms were so practical that not even a nostalgia trip like Sulla could bring himself to turn them all back. I think the moral of the fall of Rome is not about a lack of compromise but about what happens when your political system ceases to be able to address the fundamental issues that are undermining it. The end of the Poland-Lithuania is another such example.
lisper 4y ago
Well, it's obviously not an exact replay with a one-to-one mapping of today's characters onto those of 2000 years ago. I guess I'd map Trump onto Caesar (though he seems more like a Mussolini than a Caesar -- funny how Italy seems to breed dictators), his defeat in 2020 onto Caesar's assassination, with the concomitant premature sigh of relief breathed by the proponents of democracy, and DeSantis, if he wins in '24, as Augustus. From TFA: "The third impact was the realisation of a new reality. Caesar’s teenage adopted son took over where his father had left off. The power of a popular name to motivate soldiers and the poor left his killers amazed." I would not be surprised to see an analogous sentence being written ten years from now, something like, "DeSantis took over where Trump had left off. The power of MAGA ideology to motivate a large portion of the public left the Democrats amazed (and permanently out of power)."
- IAmGraydon 4y ago
  This is all quite a stretch. Trump's defeat is akin to Caesar's assassination? He lost the election. Trump's supporters are the opposite of proponents of democracy, despite their delusions convincing them otherwise.
  - latency-guy2 4y ago
    Democracy isn't when only Democrats win either, and yet we have people like Stacy Abrams. Either way, I find this comparison of ancient Rome to modern politics ridiculous. Just thought I'd slam in here with a jab.
twelve40 4y ago
> such as please? trump as tiberius i can kind of see. biden is claudius? my money is on hunter biden as the future augustus ))) has military experience? check. likes to party? check! feels like 44BC all over again.

> The parallels between what happened in Rome 2000 years ago and what is happening in the U.S. today such as please? trump as tiberius i can kind of see. biden is claudius?

usrusr 4y ago

I read it with a slightly wider scope for "today": when you have reached the point where you need to include the middle initial to tell presidents apart you aren't that far from just incrementing a counter...

mongol 4y ago
Indeed. Even from the outside I can see similarities with family dynasties in the political elites. We have the Kennedys, Bush, Clintons, and who knows what will become of the Trump family going forward.
- simonh 4y ago
  Clunck-click with every trip hopefully. Edit: British humour. Started as car seat belt promotion videos, but now used to refer to someone being in prison.
dustincoates 4y ago
If that were true, Jeb! or Hillary would be president right now. As it stands, the Clinton and Bush names are not winning anyone office right now, and the most prominent Kennedy politician right now is arguably an anti-vax conspiracy theorist.
chrononaut 4y ago
This was basically the case from the start, ala John Adams and John Quincy Adams.

prewett 4y ago

Not OP, but I see the situation more as 100 years before Caesar. You had competing interests but inability (unwillingness?) to compromise. Various people tried increasingly heavy-handed solutions, including the populist Gracchi brothers, and then Sulla entering Rome with his legions (forbidden) three years of military dictatorship--after which he resigned and went home. We seem to be at the potential start of that process. The morals/ethics of the coastal elites from the rural population have diverged to the point where, with Social Justice (differing from social justice) they may not be compatible, but both sides are trying to enforce their morality on the other. (Although I think the push for change is essentially from the coasts and the rural morality is on an offensive-defense.) So you get the rise of populist Trump and the far right to oppose the push from the far left. Trump isn't equivalent to anyone in Rome, but the situation has a similar flavor. (Also, the situation described by Plato in the Republic, where he says democracy results in chaos, causing people to want a dictator to restore order, although we have not got there yet.)

DubiousPusher 4y ago
> inability (unwillingness?) to compromise. I think the basic story of the late Republic is one of a political-economy which needed to change but which could not. Romes successes had rewritten the fundamental realities of its means and relations of production but the political system gave an effective veto power to people who refused to see this and instead wished to blame cultural changes and a decline in traditional virtue for the troubles. This delusion was a borderline mental illness. These people loved Rome's martial history and wanted to keep armies in the field as much as anyone, yet opposed opening the cavalry to non-yeomen despite the deleterious impacts it had on the rural upper class and the decreasing ability of the Romans to field these kind of patriotic cavalry. These people benefited in multitude ways from the influx of slave labor. But they resisted any effort to enfranchise now underemployed Romans, settling instead to doll them grain. Even as this destroyed the These people leveraged their neighbor Italians to win profitable war after profitable war and resisted giving them the privileges of citizenship until forced at the point of a spear. And all the while, any type of reform which had the aesthetic of appearing against traditional Roman virtue was resisted entirely by the traditional aristocrats. Until of course Marius, many of whose reforms were so practical that not even a nostalgia trip like Sulla could bring himself to turn them all back. I think the moral of the fall of Rome is not about a lack of compromise but about what happens when your political system ceases to be able to address the fundamental issues that are undermining it. The end of the Poland-Lithuania is another such example.

lisper 4y ago

Well, it's obviously not an exact replay with a one-to-one mapping of today's characters onto those of 2000 years ago. I guess I'd map Trump onto Caesar (though he seems more like a Mussolini than a Caesar -- funny how Italy seems to breed dictators), his defeat in 2020 onto Caesar's assassination, with the concomitant premature sigh of relief breathed by the proponents of democracy, and DeSantis, if he wins in '24, as Augustus. From TFA: "The third impact was the realisation of a new reality. Caesar’s teenage adopted son took over where his father had left off. The power of a popular name to motivate soldiers and the poor left his killers amazed." I would not be surprised to see an analogous sentence being written ten years from now, something like, "DeSantis took over where Trump had left off. The power of MAGA ideology to motivate a large portion of the public left the Democrats amazed (and permanently out of power)."

IAmGraydon 4y ago
This is all quite a stretch. Trump's defeat is akin to Caesar's assassination? He lost the election. Trump's supporters are the opposite of proponents of democracy, despite their delusions convincing them otherwise.
- latency-guy2 4y ago
  Democracy isn't when only Democrats win either, and yet we have people like Stacy Abrams. Either way, I find this comparison of ancient Rome to modern politics ridiculous. Just thought I'd slam in here with a jab.

twelve40 4y ago

> such as please? trump as tiberius i can kind of see. biden is claudius? my money is on hunter biden as the future augustus ))) has military experience? check. likes to party? check! feels like 44BC all over again.