Trump - a modern day Nero: fiddling as America burns
By Ranting Panda, 2 January 2021
Soon-to-be ex-President Donald Trump will go down in history as America's worst ever president. That should gel well with his fragile infantile ego.
Way back in the day ... in ancient Rome to be precise, there was another incompetent and corrupt leader; the Emperor Nero. This particular emperor is best remembered in an axiom, 'Nero fiddled while Rome burned'. In 64AD, Rome was ravaged by a fire that burned for six days, destroying 70% of the city, rendering half its population homeless. Nero allegedly spent his time playing the fiddle (or similar instrument) while Rome burned, and did nothing afterwards to help the citizens of Rome as they suffered and starved. Nero was not trusted and many believed he started the fire. Nero scapegoated Christians, then an obscure minority sect, claiming they started it. While there maybe dubious elements of the story, Nero was renowned for debauchery and corruption, hence they way he is remembered thousands of years later.
Just like the House of Caesar, Trump speaks the 'language of the republic, but the reality of the dictator' (Ashbrook 2016). Interestingly, historian Tom Holland identified that the Roman empire destroyed every republic throughout the Mediterranean, until all they had left was to destroy their own republic (Cohen 2015). The US is at the point, where it is destroying itself ... and that self-destruction is being led by Trump, who speaks of democracy but is subverting the democratic process. Like Nero, Trump rules through fear, excess and corruption.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/03/09/nero-trump-rome-burned-coronavrius-twitter/
Similar to Nero, Trump's presidency has been rife with nepotism, corruption and self-serving greed ... along with the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people because of his incompetence and lies. Imagine how Trump will be remembered!Trump fiddled while America burned. In Trump's case, his fiddle was golf. America burned from the racial division and the domestic terrorism that Trump inspired in his radical, racist followers. When California was ravaged by bushfires, Trump went golfing and said they should 'clean the floors' of the forest. But the most tragic of all, was that Trump played golf while America was ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic. During 2020, more than 347,000 Americans died while Trump alternated between calling it a Democratic Party hoax and downplaying the severity of the virus. He blamed it on China and lied about vaccinations for it. On 3 January 2021, Trump tried another tactic: deny the numbers. This from a pathological liar who now claims the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent (CDC) can't count.
During the presidential election campaign of 2016, Trump stated, 'I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf'. Since becoming president, he has played golf around 300 times, costing American tax-payers around $144 million, according to the website, www.trumpgolfcount.com. On average, he visits a golf club ever 4.9 days of his presidency.
There are other things that distract Trump from actually doing presidential business. He is a prolific tweeter and according to many of this tweets, he also spends a lot of time watching TV. Between January 2017, when he became president, and November 2020, Trump sent 23,858 tweets (Madaminov 2020).
In the weeks following the 2020 election, around three-quarters of Trump's tweets made debunked claims of election fraud (Yourish & Buchanan 2020). While Trump was throwing a temper tantrum on a apocalyptic scale, record numbers of people were dying from Covid-19.
In his New Year's Eve address to the nation, Trump raved on about his efforts to defeat the 'China virus'. It should be clear, Trump hampered all efforts to address the virus, from downplaying it to calling it a hoax, to challenging the science and criticising the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, to the withholding of vital equipment for states that were not 'loyal' to the Trump throne. While health professionals worked hard with their limited resources and scientists worked around the clock to find a vaccine, Trump golfed and tweeted, while indulging in racist scapegoating, propagating false conspiracy theories, ignoring experts, and boasting of his non-existent achievements in hyperbole reminiscent of childhood playground arguments about who has the biggest and best toys. In his NYE speech, Trump took credit for the vaccine, which was not developed because of him, but in spite of him. He even claimed that he brought peace to the Middle East which he claims is easy 'if you know what you're doing'.
Since the presidential election on 3 November 2020, Trump has incessantly tweeted false claims about the election results. Meanwhile, Trump has failed to do anything to save lives or to control the virus even though reported cases and deaths from Covid-19 have skyrocketed during that period, as the following graphs show (Washington Post 2021).
Nero was an amateur compared to how much time Trump spent fiddling while the country was going to hell in a handbasket.
Since he became president, Trump averaged more than 50 false or misleading claims every day of his presidency, for a total that exceeds 22,000 claims - his lying has gotten so out of hand, that fact checkers can't keep up (Kessler, Rizzo & Kelly 2020).
Trump claims that he brought the greatest job creation program in United States history. So yeah, about that. It was Obama who created the longest streak of job growth, while Trump merely stepped into his shoes and was unable to fill them. Yet one more lie of the Trump presidency.
Trump continues maintaining the lies about the 2020 election being stolen from him (Robertson, Kiely, McDonald & Gore 2020a). He lodged dozens of court challenges and demanded recounts. The court challenges were thrown out and the recounts legitimised the election results. But Trump, like a petulant spoilt brat, has been unable to accept losing. He would rather destroy the country, than admit he lost.
Now he keeps pointing to 6 January 2021, when Congress formally counts the Electoral Colleges votes. Trump continues saying that Congress will overturn the election results. More than 80 million people voted for Joe Biden, while around 74 million voted for Donald Trump. The Electoral College ratified the election results with a resounding vote in Biden's favour of 306 - 232. Trump's fragile ego doesn't like the maths. The vote on 6 January could be hampered if there are objections by Republicans, which is likely.
With more than 347,000 people dead from Covid-19, Trump recklessly announces a protest rally on 6 January 2021, for the gullible fools who still believe his debunked claims of election fraud. This will breach social distancing rules and likely add to the Covid-19 infection tally and possibly more deaths from Covid.
Meanwhile, Trump continues fleecing his supporters for cash to support his fraudulent attempts to steal the election. Once Trump is finally removed from office, he should be charged with fraud as he is obtaining money by dishonest claims about the election. With around 60 court cases that have declared the election valid (Tillman 2020), as well as multiple recounts, Trump is deliberately lying to his victims about supporting his fraudulent attempt to hijack the democratic process. It's hard to feel sorry for his victims because there is ample evidence that Trump is lying (Robertson, Kiely, McDonald & Gore 2020b). As the old saying goes, 'A fool and their money are soon parted'.
Trump's undemocratic attempts to overturn the clear will of the majority of voters, is a disturbing development which demonstrates that Trump does not care for the people, for democracy, or for the United States. He is not a patriot. He is only in politics for himself and all that he can milk from the economy for his own benefit.
Trump is essentially attempting a coup. He threatened martial law (Inman 2020, Goodwin 2020), some Republicans talked of using the military to prevent Trump's removal from the Oval Office (Nguyen 2020), and Trump's idiot child, Don Jr called for all out war (da Silva 2020). Republican Louie Gohmert dog-whistled to deluded Trumpists that there needs to be a violent uprising if the election result isn't overturned in favour of Trump (Colarossi 2021).
Had Trump put as much effort into working as President, there may still be 347,000 people alive, there may have been greater racial unity. Instead, Trump demonstrated how completely and utterly incompetent he is as the President of the United States. He failed as a businessman, with many of his businesses going bankrupt. He clearly failed as President.
Trump's legacy includes the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, the empowerment of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and racists, and the normalisation of laziness, incompetency, blatant dishonesty, corruption, nepotism and cronyism in the highest office in the United States.
Some people are immortalised in words and phrases because of their actions. Benedict Arnold is synonymous with treason. Nero is synonymous with incompetence, corruption and apathy. Trump is a combination of Benedict Arnold and Nero, he is an incompetent, corrupt, apathetic, self-serving, lazy traitor. History will not be kind to Trump and his family.
Trump is a modern-day Nero, fiddling while the US burns and dies ... and he should be held criminally responsible.
References
Ashbrook, T 2016, 'Five Dictators Of Rome', WBUR, 20 January, https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2016/01/20/rome-dictators-nero-history, viewed 3 January 2021
Cohen, N 2015, 'Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar review – deft and skilful', The Guardian, 6 September, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/06/dynasty-house-of-caesar-tom-holland-book-review-nick-cohen, viewed 3 January 2021
Colarossi, S 2021, 'Louie Gohmert Flat Out Calls For A Violent Uprising If The Election Isn’t Overturned For Trump', PoliticusUsa, 2 January, https://www.politicususa.com/2021/01/02/louie-gohmert-flat-out-calls-for-a-violent-uprising-if-the-election-isnt-overturned-for-trump.html, viewed 3 January 2021
da Silva, C 2020, '‘Reckless’ and ‘stupid’: Trump Jr calls for ‘total war’ over election results', The Independent, 6 November, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/trump-jr-election-results-war-b1634841.html, viewed 26 December 2020.
Goodwin, J 2020, 'Trump's talk of martial law sends White House staffers rushing to the press', CNN Business Insider, 21 December, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/20/media/stelter-trump-martial-law/index.html, viewed 26 December 2020.
Inman, D 2020, 'Military on alert over Trump’s martial law threat: ‘The craziness is unprecedented’', Yahoo! News, 25 December, https://news.yahoo.com/military-alert-over-trump-martial-230200241.html, viewed 26 December 2020.
Kessler, G, Rizzo, S, & Kelly, M 2020, 'Trump is averaging more than 50 false or misleading claims a day', The Washington Post, 22 October, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/22/president-trump-is-averaging-more-than-50-false-or-misleading-claims-day/, viewed 2 January 2021
Yourish, K & Buchanan, L 2020, 'Since election day, a lot of tweeting and not much else for Trump', The New York Times, 24 November, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/24/us/politics/trump-twitter-tweets-election-results.html, viewed 1 January 2021
Updated: 4 January 2021
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