In the days of its greatness, the Roman Republic had assabiyah
“Horatius,” quoth the Consul,
“As thou sayest, so let it be.”
And straight against that great array
Forth went the dauntless Three.
For Romans in Rome’s quarrel
Spared neither land nor gold,
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life,
In the brave days of old.
Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Now Roman is to Roman
More hateful than a foe,
And the Tribunes beard the high,
And the Fathers grind the low.
As we wax hot in faction,
In battle we wax cold:
Wherefore men fight not as they fought
In the brave days of old.
Baron Macaulay’s poem neglects to explicitly mention, but takes for granted that the reader knows, that all three were aristocratic officers, and that the two that fought on Horatio’s right and left were lieutenant generals. This is reminiscent of Britain in the days of its greatness, when aristocratic officers led from in front, charging into battle in costumes that conspicuously marked them as targets, and engaging the aristocratic officers of the opposing army in personal hand to hand combat, for which glorious privilege they paid extraordinarily large amounts of money.
Our political class hates and despises the white working class, as much as it hates and despises soldiers, cops, and security guards. Democrats are disgusted by the fact that the white working class votes for them. If Hillary could turn her white working class voters away from the voting booth with whips she would, and a major reason the Republican establishment is horrified by Trump is that he is bringing white working class voters from the Democrats to the Republicans. They would rather lose to Clinton than win with the unspeakably vulgar Trump.
Trump regularly pulls stunts that our chattering classes do not understand, and therefore ignorantly ridicule, much as the New York Times ridicules Sarah Palin for using sentence structures that exceed the comprehension and reading level of the New York Times staff. In Trump’s recent victory celebration, he had piles of Trump products on display. “What is this?” asked our chatterers. “An infomercial?”
Trump was making the point that capitalists did not just grab their wealth from the secret stash before the rest of us could find the secret stash, but rather organize the production of stuff – that capitalists are rich because, in substantial part, they create wealth.
In another stunt, he called up two of his black supporters and campaigners, the Stump For Trump women, Diamond and Silk, and introduced them as having made themselves rich.
This is, subliminally, the classic fascist message – forget about class differences, let us work to make America Great Again. It is the reverse of Sanders’ message, yet appeals to the same people. One is a message of envy and covetousness, the other calls on us to be greater than that. And to the extent that the chattering classes understand Trump’s message, they hate him for it and rightly call him fascist.
