What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Tonitrus]

The US during its mythological glory days has often looked back to the ancient Greeks and Romans for inspiration. Just look at American government architecture and various monuments. It makes sense that a reactionary US political movement looks back to ancient Greece and Rome again as it seeks to recapture its own imagined past.

The Greece/Rome idolization was a fairly common part of the time in the New World and the Old, wasn't it? 

Though agree especially in America...but as a romanticization (of the pre-Caeserian republic) more than a desire to strictly follow the historical example.

[The Minsky Moment]

The US during its mythological glory days has often looked back to the ancient Greeks and Romans for inspiration. Just look at American government architecture and various monuments. It makes sense that a reactionary US political movement looks back to ancient Greece and Rome again as it seeks to recapture its own imagined past.

Enlightenment thinkers and statesmen looked to Greece and Rome because their own education focused on the classics, because they looked to classical thinkers and writers as a model for reasoned discourse as against the perceived superstition of Christian thought, and because Rome provided the best exemplar for republican theory and practice.  A key element of the attraction to ancient Greece and the Roman republic is that it was pre-Christian. 

21st century Americans reactionaries have flipped the script by retconning "Judeo-Christian" values into a pre-Christian classical civilization.  Raz has a point in claiming that the Bible - a text incorporating a variety of ancient Mesopotamian myths plus a pseudo historical account of the Iron Age Levant plus a smattering of literary texts from the Classical Era Near East - sits uncomfortably with a conception of "Western Civilization" rooted in Greco-Roman philosophy and literary culture.

[The Minsky Moment]

That said, MAGA can legitimately claim the mantle of the late Roman Republic: a corrupt, violent, and imperialistic oligarchy, aggressively covering up its crimes with the most blatant propaganda.

[Jacob]

The Greece/Rome idolization was a fairly common part of the time in the New World and the Old, wasn't it? 

Though agree especially in America...but as a romanticization (of the pre-Caeserian republic) more than a desire to strictly follow the historical example.

Oh yes, it was a big part of the various European projects coming out of the Renaissance and into the Age of Empire. I think the various European countries have kind of moved on from it - or at least taken different lessons into the present.

But to me the current US regime's and various reactionaries obsession with the trappings of Roman and Greek civilization seems very much a throwback to the heyday of their imagined golden Victorian age.

[Tonitrus]

I'll blame the "How often do you thinking about the Roman Empire" meme.

[viper37]

Is this some kind of weird abusive gaslighting? They constantly attack Europe over and over again and as soon as Europe starts getting pissed they whip out this little nugget? Anyway I have no idea what this shit means. What noble legacy did Athens and Rome have that we need to embrace to ensure we don't decline? Is he aware both Athens and Rome did, in fact, decline?

My read is that basically they'd like the "US a leaders of the West" relationship to continue, only Western values should be "white nationalism" instead of "freedom and democracy", and Europe should be paying more money to the US (or more to the point, to the US oligarchs who have captured the politics of the US).

Their white supremacy has a foundational myth of "the West" that originates in Europe, and they'd really like to reshape current Europe to conform to that myth.

Yes, and I think it goes deeper than that.  The fascination of the right with all things Greek and Roman and the notion that European nations are the direct cultural descendants of those ancient civilizations is deep rooted.  One need only look as far as DG's post to see it.

Not "direct", but there's certainly an... unbroken chain.

[Norgy]

You are all inferior to us Aryans up north anyway.

[HVC]

You are all inferior to us Aryans up north anyway.

Ya, well you and yours are allergic to the sun, so there 

[grumbler]

Is this some kind of weird abusive gaslighting? They constantly attack Europe over and over again and as soon as Europe starts getting pissed they whip out this little nugget? Anyway I have no idea what this shit means. What noble legacy did Athens and Rome have that we need to embrace to ensure we don't decline? Is he aware both Athens and Rome did, in fact, decline?

The primary US foreign policy objective outlined in the most recent US National Security Strategy is the overthrow of the liberal Western European governments and their replacement with authoritarian regimes that will stop the mongrelization of Europe. The threat from Russia and China is not even addressed in the strategy.

[viper37]

What noble legacy did Athens and Rome have that we need to embrace to ensure we don't decline? 

Slavery.  In case that wasn't obvious. 

[crazy canuck]

Is this some kind of weird abusive gaslighting? They constantly attack Europe over and over again and as soon as Europe starts getting pissed they whip out this little nugget? Anyway I have no idea what this shit means. What noble legacy did Athens and Rome have that we need to embrace to ensure we don't decline? Is he aware both Athens and Rome did, in fact, decline?

My read is that basically they'd like the "US a leaders of the West" relationship to continue, only Western values should be "white nationalism" instead of "freedom and democracy", and Europe should be paying more money to the US (or more to the point, to the US oligarchs who have captured the politics of the US).

Their white supremacy has a foundational myth of "the West" that originates in Europe, and they'd really like to reshape current Europe to conform to that myth.

Yes, and I think it goes deeper than that.  The fascination of the right with all things Greek and Roman and the notion that European nations are the direct cultural descendants of those ancient civilizations is deep rooted.  One need only look as far as DG's post to see it.

Not "direct", but there's certainly an... unbroken chain.

 

[Sophie Scholl]

*waits for the United States Army to be renamed Legion of the United States once again*

[HVC]

*waits for the United States Army to be renamed Legion of the United States once again*

Purge Foreigners Legion?


Couldn't think of a word for remove that starts with an f so urged purge

[Syt]

From Reddit, a book store in Oslo.



Most upvoted comment:

I doubt that the author of The Art of the Deal ever visited pedophile island. Trump on the other hand.

[Maladict]

Is he aware both Athens and Rome did, in fact, decline?

Don't tell him about Gibbon's thesis. His head might explode.

Rome fell because of the enemy within, the Christians. No wait, Christianity is a force for good, the empire didn't fall but merely evolved, taking ideas and influences from illegal immigrants.  No wait, that's not it either. It fell because of economic reasons, yes. The huge gap between rich and poor, the fabulously wealthy people in power enriching themselves no no wait...