Crumbling US Senate echoes Roman collapse

Don’t be glum, chum. It isn’t as if the United States Senate is the first legislative body to dissolve into an impotent puddle at the feet of a domineering leader. History’s full of ’em. The most glaring example, alas, is the senate in the ancient Roman Republic.

If it’s been a while since you reached for your Edward Gibbon, save yourself the back strain. I’ve spent the weekend thumbing through “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” and, buddy, as bad as the news is today, by consulting history we are reminded that it can get worse.

Much worse.

Gibbon starts off his epic — some 4,000 pages — of decline with the first emperor; Julius Caesar’s nephew Octavian, who renamed himself “Augustus” and, like a certain president we all know, swept aside governmental norms to gather power to himself.

“Every barrier of the Roman constitution had been leveled by the vast ambition of the dictator,” Gibbon writes. He had help, particularly in rural areas.

“The provinces, long oppressed by the ministers of the republic, sighed for the government of a single person, who would be the master, not the accomplice, of those petty tyrants,” Gibbon writes. “The people of Rome, viewing with secret pleasure the humiliation of the aristocracy, demanded only bread and public shows.”

Enjoy the Super Bowl Sunday? Good times...

The thing is, Augustus liked the senate. He himself was a senator, and made a show of consulting his fellow senators, who were always welcome to show their fidelity to him, since “it was dangerous to trust the sincerity of Augustus; to seem to distrust it was still more dangerous.”

Ring a bell?

The results were obvious, then and now.

“The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost when the legislative power is nominated by the executive,” Gibbon notes. “With its power, the senate had lost its dignity. The republicans of spirit and ability had perished.”

Capitalize that R and we’re in 2020, unless by “spirit” you mean “spirit of treason” and “ability” you mean “ability to abandon your beliefs.”

Augustus never called himself “emperor,” though that is what he was. He “gloried in the title ‘Roman Citizen’” the same way Trump loves pretending to be a working Joe as he grasps toward Augustus’ “absolute monarchy disguised in the form of a commonwealth.”

A monarchy? Us? If the shoe fits....

“The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is entrusted with the execution of the laws,” writes Gibbon. “Unless the public is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism.”

Is our government protected by “intrepid and vigilant guardians?” All together now, 51 Republican senators, in chorus: “Noooo!”

So where are we? A more powerful president, emboldened by escaping the consequences of his crimes. Now the fun begins. At least we have a roadmap in the past.

“The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed.”

“Whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed.” We read “Decline” almost 250 years after Gibbon wrote it for a reason.

The Fall of Rome is typically invoked by religious fanatics pretending it had something to do with a failure to vigorously persecute gays. That actually isn’t one of the “four principle causes of the ruin of Rome” that Gibbon offers. Space dwindles, so I’ll pass over the first three, pausing to note that the second, “the hostile attacks of the barbarians,” Gibbon dismisses. The Goths and Vandals were “more inclined to admire than abolish” Roman accomplishments.

The most important reason, No. 4, is saved for the end: “The domestic quarrels of the Romans.”

“I have reserved for the last the most potent and formidable cause of destruction,” Gibbon begins. The Roman people ruined themselves. He quotes Petrarch:

“Behold, the relics of Rome, the image of her pristine greatness! Neither time nor the barbarian can boast the merit of this stupendous destruction: it was perpetrated by her own citizens, by the most illustrious of her sons.”

Remember: the Russians didn’t conquer us. We surrendered. The senate surrendered. The people surrendered. To Donald Trump.