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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   11709 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 7, 2026

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Can we just agree Trump is now Caesar?

I think it’s clear the American Republic has fallen. The question is will we get an Augustus?

Democracy just doesn’t work in non Anglo and definitely non European societies. It’s time for an emperor.

Edit: I’m probably being too dramatic. It likely felt like the Republic had fallen during the last migration wave in the thirties and fourties. But we likely only have a window to fix it.

If we're insisting on historical analogies, Trump is a less dignified Peron, but if we're actually exercising our faculties we should realize that these analogies obscure more then they reveal.

Democracy just doesn’t work in non Anglo and definitely non European societies.

Japan and Taiwan seem to manage alright (admittedly, Japanese democracy is kind of weird by western standards, but they have real elections and democratic accountability); the South Koreans got off to a rough start but pulled themselves together in the past few decades; non-Anglo western Europe has unambiguously functional democracies, including some of the most desirable countries to live on the planet; much of post-Soviet Eastern Europe has done quite well for itself under democracy despite a lack of democratic traditions to fall back on.

I don't know on what basis you declare "democracy doesn't work" versus the US have a current problem with an anti-democratic right-wing populist president and his cult of personality. If anything, the evidence points the opposite direction - nearly all of the most functional countries in the world are democracies and virtually none are autocracies.

I expect we'll skip directly to Romulus Augustus. But no, Trump is not Caesar. Sure, he'd like to be, but he's still got way too much talk and way too little action to come close.

Trump is Marius. He’s pissing off the elite, he’s violating all sorts of unwritten rules, he’s engaging in poliorketic egotistical excess, but he’s not actually breaking the organs of the republic.

He's engaging in siege-warfare egotistical excesses? Or are you referring to Demetrius Poliorketes?

Odds of an Augustus are not good. Unless Kushner or his children are unusually capable.

Trump is a Gracchi Brother, we are in the late republic era. He's the first wave of populist politician in the modern American republic elected due to rising dissatisfaction with the establishment. Dissatisfaction is probably a bit euphemistic, people are pissed that the government isn't and hasn't for awhile been perceived as working in the interests of the people.

If this DSA surge is anything to go by, the democrats are having their own populist civil war. We really are in the optimiates vs populares section of the republican history.

Technically, I think the non-consecutive terms make him both brothers.

lol possibly, though the establishment lawfare and potential deep state assassination attempt feels like its still a single brother at this point. The 2nd brother inherited the effect of the first. Nobody has inherited Trump's effect and attempted to develop it further. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Lincoln was Caesar, and FDR was Augustus. We are already 150 years into Empire, and you're seeing the results of late empire, not late republic.

Washington was Cincinnatus

Lincoln was Caesar

FDR was Augustus

Trump is Julian the Apostate

Now, we wait for our Justinian. After that comes Muslim domination, a long afterlife as a shadow of our former selves, and finally conquest at the hands of nomadic horsemen. Fits.

It kind of fits. I guess nothing is a perfect parallel. Lincoln personality wise isn’t Caesar and the issues he faced seemed less like Caesar’s time while modern America seems much more like Caesar. FDR does seem to be the start of true Empire America.

He inherited a republic, of which a large portion did not want him as President/Consul, and first initiated then won a civil war against the faction which rejected him, that swept away the republic that came before and got him assassinated for his trouble.

Personality has very little to do with it.

Can we just agree Trump is now Caesar?

I don't like this comparison because Caesar had a successful military career and was overall competent in many respects. Trump is much closer to a jumped-up Hugo Chavez or Napoleon III.

Democracy just doesn’t work in non Anglo and definitely non European societies. It’s time for an emperor.

Democracy is fine, it's the electorate that's the problem. And an actual dictatorship would almost certainly be worse in the long run.

Napoleon III seems fine to me, the worst you can say about him is that he's not his uncle, and he's not Otto von Bismark.

Napoleon III (born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte;[2] 20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the first President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first elected president, second emperor, and the last monarch of France. He established the Second French Empire in 1852, which began a period of rapid industrialization and expansion of infrastructure in France and saw the rise of French influence in geopolitics after several decades of instability. As head of state of France for 22 years, he was the longest-reigning French head of state since the end of the ancien régime.

Twenty two years, rapid industrialization, rise of French influence after decades of instability. Longest reigning head of state since the Revolution. Where's the downside? I wish Trump were as good as Napoleon III.

I am a notable fan of Napoleon III on balance for his impressive domestic accomplishments, but his foreign policy pretty uniformly blew up in his face - even the unification of Italy just bogged him down in the Papal question.

Napoleon III flitted from whim to whim, and France's population growth slowed substantially which essentially ensured it would no longer be the pre-eminent land power in Europe. Then he utterly failed to contain the rise of Prussia, which would go on to wreck France in multiple wars over the next century. A lot of this wasn't his direct fault, but Napoleon III certainly played a mediocre hand badly.

And yeah, I also think Trump is a step below Napoleon III.

France's population growth slowed substantially

Are we really judging historical rulers for not raising the birthrate? I mean, its 2026, and still nobody has figured this out. And France was the first country to undergo the demographic tradition. What exactly was Napoleon III supposed to do?

But yeah, there's an alternate history where France had the birthrate of England and we're all speaking French right now.

No I don't really blame Napoleon III for being unable to address France's demographic issues for the reason you laid out: nobody's really demonstrated a consistent way to fix it. That's why I said he had a mediocre hand.

I think you're correct. My main gripe actually is that Trump is too old to serve effectively in that role, and there's no clear successor.

But I'd like to see you make the case rather than just stipulate it.

  1. K-shaped economy and a struggling native class. Widespread slavery made the rich very rich in Rome but the average Roman Citizen saw lower wages.

  2. Bread and Circus. Basically the policy proposed today. And he’s definitely done circus.

  3. Legal attacks and threats of imprisonment followed by a crossing of the Rubicon and winning.

  4. Assassination. Trump did survive.

  5. Potential - An adopted son taking over after death. Vance obviously. Though Kushner could fulfill this role

  6. I think Rome also had a fall in morality and falling tfr in the native population

Agree with all of this except K-shaped doesn't match 2026. Working class wages are rising faster than others. The perception of the K-shape comes from the upper middle class who are most affected by elite overproduction. Not coincidentally, they are the same ones who do most of the narrative production.

It's an up-down-up shaped economy.

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