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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33241 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Whether the quote is trolling or not, many in the X/Twitter replies were taking it at face value and affirming their support of the underlying sentiment.

Ah, Twitter drama. Still don't care.

I would argue that if Trump is being literal with this tweet, then he is basically positioning himself as a "dictator" in the original Roman sense of the word.

The US doesn't work all that much like Rome; we have no dictator, and no consuls to appoint them.

The US doesn't work all that much like Rome; we have no dictator, and no consuls to appoint them.

I beg to differ. While we don't have the formal office, I would argue that both Abraham Lincoln and FDR both arguably fill the "dictator" role in American politics. Though of course, the American tradition is for the "dictator" to die or be killed in office, rather than to have them voluntarily cede power back to the republic.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I think Trump is definitively a dictator in the Roman style. I'm saying that one reading of his Napoleon tweet is that he's positioning himself as a Roman-style dictator, thus justifying the extra-legal way in which he had been advancing his agenda these past few weeks.

While I have expressed my concerns on the Motte about the health of our republic as a result of Trump's actions, I don't think the republic is quite dead yet. Our republic was already sick from an Imperial Presidency, and a cycle of Crisis and Leviathan, but the way Trump has chosen to carry out his agenda is increasingly worrying, and I'm someone who mostly lurked on the Motte during the Trump I years and agreed with the consensus about Trump Derangement Syndrome.

If Trump had just used his Republican majority in Congress and the Supreme Court to push through a legislative agenda through the usual means, I would have mostly just rolled with the punches and shrugged my shoulders. Republics, what can you do? But he's bypassed congress, and seems to be hell bent on doing as much as he can on his own. Even if the administrative state needed a serious culling, I would have been much happier if it had been done via Congress and the Courts, instead of by another executive embodying the worst aspects of the Imperial Presidency.

I beg to differ. While we don't have the formal office, I would argue that both Abraham Lincoln and FDR both arguably fill the "dictator" role in American politics.

This is not the original Roman sense of the word.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I think Trump is definitively a dictator in the Roman style. I'm saying that one reading of his Napoleon tweet is that he's positioning himself as a Roman-style dictator, thus justifying the extra-legal way in which he had been advancing his agenda these past few weeks.

And another reading is that he is denying that he is engaging in extra-legal activity at all.

If Trump had just used his Republican majority in Congress and the Supreme Court to push through a legislative agenda through the usual means

He would get nowhere. Nothing would happen. He does not even have a majority; Congress is split three ways, between Democrats, MAGA Republicans, and non-MAGA Republicans.

Even if the administrative state needed a serious culling, I would have been much happier if it had been done via Congress and the Courts, instead of by another executive embodying the worst aspects of the Imperial Presidency.

Congress did not create much of what Trump has been going after -- it's either discretionary or entirely the creation of the executive. You will not find a line item in any bill appropriating funding for a transgender opera in Colombia. If Congress did not create it, it should not take Congress to tear it down. The demand that it should is just a ratchet which allows things to grow but not shrink, or allows Democrats to do things but that Republicans not undo them.

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