Donald Trump, Caligula, Michael Wolff, Suetonius, Infamia, And The Fake News Wars

Michael Wolff, founder of Newser
& Vanity Fair columnist.

by Ralph Benko, Contributing Author: “Fake News” has been a Thing for a long, long time.

Without debating the reliability (or the motivations of the sources) of the revelations in Michael Wolff’s Fire And Fury, one could look at this book as exemplary of a very old, well-established, practice of “oratory.” As Buzzfeed noted:
Adding to the drama are questions of the author himself, a controversial media gadfly with a dubious reputation that includes allegations as to whether his reporting can be trusted. Errors spotted by journalists and pundits of all political persuasions have already cast doubt on what’s true in Fire and Fury and what has been inferred or even imagined by Wolff cobbling together unconfirmed anecdotes and rumored speculation.

All of which makes Wolff’s book the perfect chronicle for 2018’s fractured and toxic media ecosystem. More than that, Fire and Fury is, in many ways, the first real book of the post-truth hyperpartisan social media era: an incendiary piece of factually debatable content that’s perfectly engineered for virality and, depending on your side, a confirmation of every politically motivated suspicion.Fire and Fury well may be “the first real book of the post-truth hyperpartisan social media era.” Yet it harks back to thousands of years ago. Future historians just might look back on Wolff as a link in a chain going back to the classical era.

M. Icks and E. Shiraev, in Character Assassination thoughout the Ages, put it:
Suetonius makes no attempt to hide the polemical bias of his sources. He does not cite these texts because he believes them to be accurate per se, but rather because their mere existence serves as proof of the existence of infamia. This might seem trivial at first glance, but I consider it central: Suetonius’s use of such sources permits us to assess to a certain extent how effective the Romans considered such invectives. In several passages, Cicero refers to the topical character of sexual allegations that seem scarcely believable on their own merits.  In order to be truly effective, an orator has to seize upon existing rumors of infamia and, building on them, attach all the remaining characteristics of the stereotypical vir mollis [effeminacy].Christopher Buckley recently published a viciously witty op-ed in The New York Times kindly warning Mr. President, Your Toga Is Showing. Therein, he observes, “As the saying goes, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme. Curious, I pulled my Penguin Classics paperback of Suetonius’ 'The Twelve Caesars' off the shelf and turned to the Caligula chapter.” He commences with likening Trump’s vaunted Wall to a (purported) Bridge to Nowhere commissioned by Emperor Caligula.He invented besides a new kind of spectacle, such as had never been heard of before. For he made a bridge, of about three miles and a half in length, from Baiae to the mole of Puteoli.

Historians are uncertain whether this floating bridge to nowhere, for the sole purpose of Caligula joy-riding across it in pointless triumph, was ever actually built. They do however agree that it is evidence the emperor wasn’t playing with a full set of marbles. Some might discern a similarity between it and the $18 billion Mexican border wall we may be building, at a time of declining illegal border crossings.In all fairness, Trump’s Wall, which I myself do not at all fancy, fancying it might be repurposed to keep me in more so than to keep bad actors out, might well be more aptly analogized to Trajan’s Wall. That, fittingly enough in the context of Fake News, was not built by Emperor Trajan.

That Wall, in three parts, in Romania, from the Danube to the Black Sea, was of impressive length and seemed to have been designed in part to keep out the “various nomad groups roaming the North-Pontic steppes,” perhaps the Mexicans of their day, existed also in Moldova and Ukraine. Of course, that wall was built long after Suetonius wrote, neither so gossipy and memorable, may have been not so accessible to Mr. Buckley.

The “Bridge to Nowhere” analogue would seem more aptly attributed to Sarah Palin, who, while campaigning for governor of Alaska supported (although later repudiated) the notorious $225 million appropriation for a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska to Gravina Island inhabited by but a few dozen residents. Candidate McCain (on whose ticket Governor Palin rode shotgun) made this appropriation a cause célèbre against pork barrel spending.

This preposterous earmark was used as the hook by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) to ban the practice of earmarking pork barrel projects. To be fair to Mr. Buckley, President Trump eccentrically did suggest restoring earmarks recently, perhaps letting this genie back out of its bottle.

The House Republicans are eagerly pursuing that proposition with considerably more alacrity than DACA, keeping the TPS recipients here, or a path to citizenship. “The fundamental things apply as time goes by.”

Buckley, noting President Trump’s assertion of his genius “athwart” (a word made famous by his uminous father William F.) aspersions to his intellect, relies on a Roman “historian,” Suetonius. Yet as Vivian Green wrote in The Madness of Kings:
The reliability of many of the Roman historians has been questioned. Tacitu and Suetonius were writing long after the events which they described; they were anti-imperialist in attitude and republican in sympathy. Both Dio Cassius and Herodian have been described as gossipy and anecdotal. Yet the force of their writing, and the stories they tell, if they need to be questioned, must be admitted.Donald Trump really does not have standing to protest the use of infamia against him. It is a tactic he has deployed bluntly and repeatedly, and, arguably, effectively… at least in gaining the White House.

By thus having set the stage he may discover that those who in future write the history of our long-gone, snakebit, era will rely more on “gossipy and anecdotal’ sources on his reign, an “an incendiary piece of factually debatable content that’s perfectly engineered for virality.” Does President Trump much care about history’s verdict? Perhaps not. He seems very much “in the moment,” as our Mindfulness advocates prescribe.

As Winston Churchill once said in a speech in the House of Commons on January 23, 1948, “…I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself,’ often paraphrased as ‘"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."

And as Shmoop teaches us:
Making history is not the same as writing about it. If you're on the losing side, the winners are going to give you bad reviews. Had the victory in WWII been Hitler's, we'd be reading about that cowardly dog, Churchill. Hitler's autobiography might have included the chapter "Wipeout Winnie Creamed by Sauer Kraut."

"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it" was Churchill's way of saying he was going to be the winner, as well as the keeper of his own legacy. It's been said that the winners write the history books—Churchill's acknowledging that here. He's also making it known that, after dusting the floor with the Nazis, he's going put in a good word for himself for the rest of us to read about.Some of our most revered statesmen were the subject of massive infamia during their lifetimes. As I wrote here:Trash talk is the calliope at the political carnival. It's also a distraction.  As Mental Floss usefully reminds us of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two of our most revered Founders:

“Jefferson's camp accused President Adams of having a ‘hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.’ In return, Adams' men called Vice President Jefferson ‘a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.’ As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward.

“Rather puts one in mind of Harry Truman's famous observation that ‘A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.’"Trash talk as the calliope of the political carnival? As America’s bard Bruce Springsteen, perhaps prophesying this very moment, serenaded us, in Blinded By The Light, “With this very unpleasing sneezing and wheezing the calliope crashed to the ground….”

“Fake News” has been with us for so long that the memory of mankind runneth not to the contrary. However President Trump is ultimately remembered -- frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command -- Michael Wolff deserves to be recalled as America’s own Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.

While we are living through it all, however, one could wish that the various purveyors of their respective versions of events -- from journalists to authors to those who distill their views to haiku-like postings on Twitter -- would at least occasionally remember the further counsel of the divine Springsteen:
Hit it in its funny bone, that's where they expect it least….-----------------
Ralph Benko is an advisor to nonprofit and advocacy organizations, is a member of the Conservative Action Project, a contributor to the ARRA News Service. Founder of The Prosperity Caucus, he was a member of the Jack Kemp supply-side team, served in an unrelated area as a deputy general counsel in the Reagan White House. The article which first appeared in Forbes.

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