Carlin Barton cites Caligula’s remark to his grandmother Antonia: “Bear in mind that I can treat anyone exactly as I please” (Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, 166), and concludes that “The will of the king was law, and the will of the king was [. . .] no law at all” (106).
In Guantanamo, we have a space where no laws apply, American or international: the prisoners there are subject solely to the whims of the princeps, and have no human rights whatsoever.
Suetonius writes of Caligula the following: “a gladiator [. . .] against whom he was fencing with a wooden sword fell down deliberately; whereupon Gaius [Caligula] drew a real dagger, stabbed him to death, and ran about waving the palm-branch of victory” (168).
George W. Bush, having entirely avoided combat in a time of war, lands a jet on the flight deck of a carrier, and in front of a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished”, declares the end of “major combat operations”.
Rome died from the inside, entirely corrupt. There were no invaders to destroy the empire: in CE 476, Augustulus simply turned over the keys to Odoacer, the army and empire having grown too much, and having assimilated those who were to have been conquered.
Instead, the assimilated overturned the empire.
Today I sent this One Liner to the letters editor of the San Jose Mercury News: “Since George W. Bush has fallen off a couch, a Segway scooter, and his mountain bike, we now have incontrovertible evidence that this president is unbalanced.”
Good one. I’m thinking progression from the falling-down president of Chevy Chase’s SNL skits to our current falling-down president calls for an inversion of Marx’s dictum about history: Chevy Chase was farcical; this president is tragic. Or maybe just pathetic.
How is it that the White House can so tightly control every bit of information released to the press, but has no problems with a president who can’t stand up?
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