Sam Roche, writing in American Greatness, notes that today is the day, in 44 BC, that the Roman Senate assassinated Julius Caesar. And then go goes on to note the many similarities between Caesar’s tasks and Donald Trump’s tasks.
While his assassins claimed to have freed the Roman Republic from a tyrannical Dictator for Life, Caesar equally could claim to have freed it from them. Popular reforms he’d successfully put through as dictator had effectively ended the long and brutal rule of strictly self-dealing elites in the Senate.
Two thousand years later we are witnessing a similar struggle for power in the American Republic, as a president pledged to reform battles our own entrenched elites. As the adversaries struggle also to assert opposing political narratives, understanding what is happening depends on whose version of events we believe.
The rest is worth a read, though many will bristle, be wary, nod their heads, or laugh at the comparison of Trump to the Roman dictator. Nonetheless, if I were Trump I’d definitely be watching my back like a hawk. Two years after the assassination, Brutus issued a coin celebrating the event. Sound like the triumphalism you might expect from any American senators you know?
