Gaius Caligula lived twenty-nine years and ruled Rome three years, ten months and eight days. When he died, his reign of depravity and terror died with him.
Today, millions of Americans fear a similar fate will sweep their country if Donald Trump becomes President.
Caligula’s life spanned August 31, 12 A.D. to January 24, 41 A.D.
Gaius Caligula
Trump was born on June 14, 1946.
Caligula became Emperor in 37 A.D. after succeeding the Emperor Tiberius, his uncle who had adopted him as a son after his father died.
Trump began his real estate career at his father’s real estate and construction company. His rose to wealth and fame after his father, Fred, gave him control of the business in 1971.
Caligula’s reign began well–and popularly. He gave Tiberius a magnificent funeral–then recalled to Rome all those whom Tiberius had banished.
He gave bonuses to the military and destroyed lists of those Tiberius had declared traitors. He allowed the magistrates unrestricted jurisdiction, without appeal to himself.
Similarly, soon after acquiring the family business, Trump set out to build his own empire–hotels, golf courses, casinos, skyscrapers across North and South America, Europe and Asia. He named many of them after himself.
Donald Trump
He appeared at the Miss USA pageants, which he owned from 1996 to 2015. He hosted and co-produced The Apprentice, an NBC reality television series from 2004 to 2015.
The ancient historians describe Caligula as a noble and enlightened ruler during the first six months of his reign. But in October 37 A.D. he fell seriously ill or perhaps was poisoned.
Caligula soon recovered but emerged a changed man. He began killing or exiling those who were close to him and anyone he saw as a threat.
Trump has never been charged with murder. But during his second Presidential debate with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he previewed the dangers of a Trump Justice Department: “If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.”
Caligula’s egomania soon reached psychotic heights.
- He gave himself several surnames: “Pious,” “Child of the Camp,” “Father of the Armies,” and “Greatest and Best of Caesars.”
- Flattered that he had risen higher than princes and kings, he began to believe himself a god.
- He appeared at the temple of Castor and Pollux to be worshiped as Jupiter Latiaris.
- He also set up a special temple to his own godhead.
Trump’s egomania is literally stamped on his properties. Of the 515 entities he owns, 268 of them–52%–bear his last name. He often refers to his properties as “the swankiest,” “the most beautiful.”
Among the references he’s made to himself:
- “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.”
- “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.”
- “My Twitter has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.”
- “My IQ is one of the highest–and you all know it.”
When Caligula wasn’t ordering wholesale Stalin-like purges–ranging from Roman aristocrats to slaves–he was setting new records for debauchery.
According to the Roman historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus: “He lived in habitual incest with all his [three] sisters, and at a large banquet he placed each of them in turn below him, while his wife reclined above. Of these he is believed to have violated Drusilla when he was still a minor.”
Trump has never been charged with incest, but he’s repeatedly made sexually inappropriate comments about his daughter, Ivanka:
- “Yeah, she’s really something, and what a beauty, that one. If I weren’t happily married and, ya know, her father …”
- When Trump appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, he was joined on stage by Ivanka. After they kissed, Dr. Oz said: “It’s nice to see a dad kiss his daughter.” Trump: “I kiss her every chance I get.” The remark was edited before the show aired.
- When asked how he would react if Ivanka, a former teen model, posed for Playboy, Trump replied: “I don’t think Ivanka would do that, although she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.”
- “You know who’s one of the great beauties of the world, according to everybody? And I helped create her. Ivanka. My daughter, Ivanka. She’s 6 feet tall, she’s got the best body.”
Ivanka Trump
One final trait that Caligula shared with Trump: Both relished humiliating others.
Caligula’s fatal mistake was to taunt Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate because of a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death before other guards could save him.
The number of people, places and things Trump has insulted is so extensive The New York Times compiled a list of all 273 of them.
On October 7, Trump’s speaking insultingly about women (“I just start kissing them. I don’t even wait. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy”) threatened to derail his Presidential candidacy.
It remains to be seen if Trump suffers the final fate of Caligula.
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MARCHING THROUGH TREASON–AGAIN: PART ONE (OF TWO)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on October 26, 2016 at 12:19 amThey cannot be made to love us, but they may be made to fear us.
–William Tecumseh Sherman speaking of the Southern Confederacy
If Hillary Clinton is elected President, she may soon face the same crisis that confronted Abraham Lincoln more than a century ago: Mass treason.
Americans haven’t even voted yet. But, already, hard-core supporters of Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump believe a sinister international cabal has “rigged” the 2016 election for Clinton.
There is absolutely no evidence for this–other than what Trump himself has loudly and repeatedly told them: That there is a massive conspiracy to take him down.
At one town hall meeting where his Vice Presidential running mate, Mike Pence, appeared, a woman named Rhonda stood up and announced: “One of the things that I can tell you that a lot of us are scared of is this voter fraud.
“There’s a lot of out here saying that when we vote, we’re going to wear red. Our lives depend on this election. Our kids’ futures depend on this election.
“For me personally, if Hillary Clinton gets in, I myself am ready for a revolution.”
In Cincinnati, a Trump supporter threatened to forcibly remove Clinton from the White House if she won the Presidential race: “I feel like Hillary needs to be taken out if she gets in the government. I’ll do everything in my power to take her out of power–which, if I have to be a patriot, I will.”
When asked if he was physically threatening Clinton, Dan Bowman, 50, told CNN: “I don’t know, is it?”
Officially, the Trump campaign claimed: “We reject violence in any form and will not allow it to be a part of our campaign.”
But on August 9, Trump told a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina that Clinton intended to abolish the Second Amendment: “If she gets to pick her judges, there’s nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people–maybe there is, I don’t know.”
The Clinton camp instantly saw it as a “dog-whistle” solicitation for political assassination. The Trump campaign issued a statement denying that he had meant any such thing.
On July 19, Trump clinched the Republican Presidential nomination. By early August, Roger Stone, a longtime Right-wing political consultant and now Trump strategist, was already predicting “widespread voter fraud” in the coming election.
This despite the fact that a 2014 Washington Post analysis of 14 years of voter fraud found 31 possible incidents of in-person voter fraud, comprised of approximately 241 fraudulent ballots.
In an interview with the Right-wing Breitbart News website, Stone said:
“The first thing that Trump needs to do is begin talking about [voter fraud] constantly. If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
Roger Stone
Stone added that Trump should keep drumming up his supporters against the “rigged” system, and promise that the government would be shut down if Clinton was pronounced the victor in November.
“I think he’s gotta put them on notice that their inauguration will be a rhetorical, and when I mean civil disobedience, not violence, but it will be a bloodbath… We will not stand for it.”
Yet no official in Washington, D.C.–from President Barack Obama on down–has so far dared to openly acknowledge–let alone confront–this menace.
If Hillary Clinton is elected President, she would do well to review how Andrew Jackson, America’s seventh President from 1829 to 1837, reacted to threats of secession.
Andrew Jackson
In 1830, South Carolina was threatening to secede from the Union. A South Carolina Congressman who was returning home visited Jackson and asked: “Do you have a message you want me to give to your friends in the state?”
Jackson questioned him about the recent mass meetings in Charleston.
The friend warned him that South Carolina’s fire-eaters believed “the Army and Navy aren’t big enough to collect a penny” of Federal taxes.
“Do they realize what their words mean?” asked Jackson.
“I’m afraid they do, General.”
“Then tell them from me that they can talk and write resolutions and print threats to their hearts’ content.
“But if one drop of blood is shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hands on engaged in such treasonable conduct, from the first tree I can reach.”
News of Jackson’s threat quickly spread throughout Washington, D.C.
Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina told his fellow Senator, Thomas Hart Benton, of Missouri, that he couldn’t believe that Jackson would send an army to invade a sovereign state.
Benton replied: “I tell you, Hayne, when Jackson starts talking about hanging, they can begin to look for the ropes.”
Jackson later issued a proclamation to the people of South Carolina and threatened to hang Hayne’s successor, Senator John C. Calhoun. He also warned that he would himself lead an army into the state to enforce Federal law.
The treasonous rumblings stopped–for the moment.
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