Roger Kimball

It being the Ides of March, I thought it might be worth reflecting briefly on the most famous event that occurred on this day: the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. One of the great ironies surrounding that bloody event is that, for all of the upheaval it occasioned, it failed utterly in its stated purpose. The conspirators sought — or said they sought — to overthrow a dictator and restore the Republic.  “The Republic,” “the Republic,” “the Republic”: that was the phrase they uttered ad nauseam. But the Roman Republic, devised to govern a city state, was overwhelmed by the cosmopolitan responsibilities of empire. By Caesar’s day, the Republic was a tottering and deeply corrupt edifice.

I had been told that Joe Biden, the president of the United States, would be delivering the 2024 State of the Union Address on Thursday, March 7. As it happened, he didn’t. Instead, he indulged in a surreal, medically enhanced species of primal scream therapy. This was laced with liberal dollops of what Freudians call “projection,” accusing his political opponents of stifling democracy when everyone outside the orbit of the state propaganda machine knows that the surveillance apparatus over which Biden presides — ex officio, at least — is a self-perpetuating machine for extinguishing democracy and its prime nutrient, frank commitment to the truth.

Donald Trump crushed the New Hampshire primary, as every poll in Alpha Centauri predicted he would. Nevertheless, his sole remaining opponent for the GOP nomination, Nikki Haley, “vowed to fight on.” Why? A cynical person might suggest the interaction of two volatile liquids: cash, on the one hand, and consultants, on the other. Haley is swimming in both. The cash is coming from two sources: brittle, establishment faux conservatives like the Kochs and wily Dem operatives like the billionaire Reid Hoffman who, in addition to shoveling gobs of money to Nikki Haley, is also funding such entrepreneurial activities as E. Jean Carroll’s bizarre lawsuit against Donald Trump. In a sane world, the support of a malignant figure like Hoffman would be disqualifying for Haley.

What is decadence? In popular usage, it is synonymous with “excess,” especially of a sensual or appetitive nature. I am not sure what it means that we encounter the word most often these days in connection highly caloric chocolate confections. Perhaps such linguistic degradation, in which serious things are reformulated in an atmosphere of ironic depreciation, is one sign we live in a decadent age. In any case, at its core I believe that decadence has less to do with excessive consumption or sensuality than with ontological attenuation.   What does that pretentious mouthful mean? It means that decadence is essentially about the hollowing out of vital institutions, not their surrender to gluttony, lust and profligacy.

“No reasonable prosecutor”: remember him? He’s back! No, not James “Higher Loyalty” Comey. He’s sitting in a corner somewhere counting his doubloons. But like some inky creatures of the deep, he emitted lots of spawn. They’re maturing now and taking after dear old dad.  Remember the original sitcom. Despite the best efforts of every one from the country’s “intelligence” chiefs to its fawning media, news emerged that Hillary Clinton had essentially run the State Department from an insecure server in her home.  On that server, it transpired, there were thousands of classified documents (along, of course, with yoga routines and plans for her daughter’s wedding).

In the 1830s, the English-born American artist Thomas Cole painted an ambitious sequence of five large rectangular canvases delineating “The Course of Empire.” He began with “The Savage State,” which depicts the rude life of humans before the advent of letters, domestication and permanent architecture. “The Arcadian or Pastoral State” is marked by harmony and some early accoutrements of civilization. “The Consummation of Empire,” at fifty-one inches by seventy-six inches, is a third larger than its fellows. Here we see a sun-drenched landscape transformed by a panoply of classical architecture counterpointed by bustling commerce and a triumphal, if overripe, stateliness. Next comes “Destruction.

Some enterprising entrepreneur ought to find a way of collecting a cover charge for the entertainments that the Get Trump concession is currently offering the public free and for nothing. At the moment, the first of my two favorite forays into the twilight zone are the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against Trump. Carroll claims that sometime, she cannot remember exactly when, but it was about thirty years ago, Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the swank department store Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan. A New York jury found Trump guilty of defamation and sexual abuse (but not rape) and ordered him to pay Carroll $5 million of the crispest. Now she is back asking for more. Who knows whether she will get it. Stand by and pass the popcorn.

The year 2024 marks the centenary of Vladimir Lenin’s death. In April of that year, the consummate communist, having blighted as many lives as he could, finally shuffled off his mortal coil, aged fifty-three.“That was young,” you may say. But I reply, “Not nearly young enough.” As we embark on what is sure to be an eventful year, it is worth pausing to remember the hideous legacy of that ice-cold totalitarian. What I have in mind is not so much Lenin’s butcher’s bill as his more general modus operandi. Estimates of the number of people Lenin had tortured, maimed and murdered vary, but are always well into the millions. But what is somehow even creepier is his model of government.

Many commentators (including yours truly) have pointed out that America is divided more now than it has been since the late 1850s and the run up to the Civil War. But as usual, I may have understated the case.  That, anyway, is what Vivek Ramaswamy would say. In a remarkable, just-published interview with Tom Klingenstein, Ramaswamy several time insists that we are not in a pre-war situation. It’s worse than that. “We are,” he insists, “absolutely in a war with the fate of the country at stake.” Hyperbolic? I don’t think so. The war, he acknowledges, could and likely will get worse. But we can already see the troops deployed and the battle lines drawn.