The Juntoo

There hangs, upon the wall of the study in which I pass my days, that sacred place to which, in search of solitude and peace, I eagerly repair, a sequence of paintings beneath which I sit. It is, to use what might seem a rare and unnecessarily ornamental term, a word at whose mere utterance, the pulse of the art scholar will experience a faint but palpable flutter, a pentaptych, or a five-paneled work.

Though not quite physically paneled, a point of correction of which said scholar is sure quickly to make me aware, it may as well be, for it does what only the best paneled works can do. For proof of the effect, one need only call to mind such masterful works as those produced by the hands of Hieronymus Bosch or Peter Paul Rubens, by whose unmatched brilliance and supreme technique, even those most insensitive to art can’t help but be moved. The paneled work, such as theirs, creates in its entirety, not only delectable parts by which the whole is made full, but a veritable story from its start till its end. It creates a movement of the imagination along whose evocative, near half-dozen images, a pair of rapt eyes can seamlessly wander.

And can those eyes be blamed for their delight in moving about? Upon looking up, the wondrous images by which they’re greeted, the alluring pictures by which their attention is detained, are enlivened by the sometimes steady, though reliably large and sweeping hand of Thomas Cole—master and originator of the Hudson River School.

Cole’s school, of which he was both professor and student, alumnus and auditor, was the first, though doubtless not the last of any real and lasting prominence to which the American race can lay claim. A Briton by birth, Cole was a Romantic of a distinctly American type, an Atlantic-spanning, Western spirit who bestrode two very distinct lands. One, that from whose fertile soil he initially sprang, was elegant and archaic and bound by the fetters of sophistication and class. The other, to which he arrived and with which he grew, was unabashed and novel, young and heedless, and open to all.

And what else could he be, if not the infusion of all these things? An arrival to this land at the age of seventeen, he was the natural product of both England and America, empire and liberty, Wordsworth and Whitman, Milton and Emerson. He absorbed in his person those great influences through whom nature found her liveliest expression, and verse her finest words.

He took that expression, absorbed it, and re-created it in medium of paint. Never had a canvas looked so poetic, and never had a brush mocked such dulcet lines. While America may have been to him an awesome terra incognito, an overwhelmingly new and uncharted land, Romanticism was an old and familiar comfort in which he could always confide. It was the sole aesthetic quality by which his boundless soul was shaped, around which his peculiar character was formed.

All the better, for America is, at its essence, a quite Romantic place, thus making him, a recent immigrant, a natural fit. America is, despite the noblest efforts of its Roman-enthused founders and its Athenian-inspired architects, a land unconducive to the formality of classicism. The tough rigidity of elegant proportion and unbending line are constraints against which this bursting and untamed land naturally bristles. Its energy invites neither stiffness nor stoicism, perpendicularity nor Platonism. Its character simply won’t sit still for the application of those standards for which other, quieter countries are much better suited. We in America need grandeur, vigor, and the exertion toward a destiny manifestly ordained. We need a canvas to which there’s no limit, a sky atop which no meddlesome ceiling rests, and a people willing to traverse them both.  

Cole felt this, and depicted it as no other artist yet could.

His astonishing vision and, as I currently see it, the state of America today, is best represented by his most famous work, The Course of Empire—that same sequence upon which, as I write, I can’t help but gaze. In five rather large panels, it depicts precisely the scenario that its title proclaims. No lengthy prologue is required to view it. The title of the work, and the language of the strokes, speak directly to the heart with which it converses.

At the farthest position on the left, as if beginning to read a line in any language but that of the Hebrew sect, the first sentence of this work is mumbled discretely and softly. Spoken aloud, you’ll hear it echo in your room, and the words by which you’re met will vibrate, Savage State.

It’s the work’s primitive display of the barbarous state of man, a youthful time of life for a being who, having but recently suffered the expulsion from Eden, was understandably concerned with little more than the propagation of his hairless species and the gathering of his next meal. That radiant gift of Prometheus, fire, has only recently come into his grasp. The men by whom this divine flame is maintained recognize the fragility of its composition, and they preserve it with the same ardor as they would their own lives. Near them, a man hunts for a hind, and we, hungry viewers, nearly taste the impending venison on our lips.

The panel into which this savagery transitions is called, less intimidatingly, the Arcadian State. It is tranquil, unblemished, and very nearly divine. In the background, a crude but symmetrical temple is erected to the gods, and a woman encourages the play of her children in the fore. Like Faustulus before his reception of Rome’s eponymous son, a shepherd tends his flock in the middle of the painting. He does so, as every good pastoralist should, with unfailing attention and insouciant grace. Elsewhere, the tillage of the soil has begun, as our inventive man has discovered a method to yoke his ox, and, in so doing, conserve his limited strength. His crop, yet unseen, is sure to be bountiful, as the number of mouths to which it’ll be disseminated grows.

With a movement of the eye to the right, the scene by which it’s met suddenly explodes. It introduces itself with loud magnificence and a vibrant grandeur, a welcome by which the helpless jaw can do nothing but drop.

Succumbing to the gravity of Cole’s heavy genius, one sees before him the empire entering that mature state for which it always unknowingly yearned—the Consummation of its life. This, the largest of the five panels and their centerpiece, is the aesthetic apogee; it’s the summit to which Cole’s formidable talent climbs, and the height toward which every viewer’s pleasure is lifted.

The setting is lavishly adorned and classically structured. Corinthian columns support chryselephantine gods, elaborate friezes introduce capacious buildings, crude and jagged stones succumb to curved and elegant arches, and lofty domes bifurcate heaven and earth. Purple and red, the colors of royalty, are draped in so promiscuous a way, that you’d think this a convocation of kings to which, unwittingly, you too had been invited. In this realm, through which there seems to permeate a ceaseless jubilee, all is sybaritic, joyous, and fun.

The scene is sumptuous; from its ornamentation, no expense is withheld. Everywhere, so far as the eye can see, it’s the lavish enjoyment of earlier labors, those, specifically, of the intrepid forebears from whom these happy people descend. It is, in a word, the very pinnacle of civilization, the consummation of culture, prosperity, politics, religion, and wealth.

None would expect so many gilded and attractive institutions to vanish, to descend into the tumult and horror of a violent and inglorious death. Sadly, the beautiful artifacts of Consummation proved themselves ephemeral; they made not the leap to the terror of Cole’s penultimate state. They dissolved, there and in that moment, in the impermanent canvas atop which they were splashed.  

The fourth panel, entitled, Destruction, is what one pictures as having happened to Rome, the famed “eternal city”, that inviolable home of such men as Horace, Brutus, Cicero, and Caesar (and, in our day, the two-hundred-and-sixtieth Pope). In the beginning of the fifth century, for reasons too intricate, contentious, and difficult for a simple writer like me to try to explain, Rome was sacked by the Vandals. They were, as we know, an indefatigable and burly race, a frightening Germanic tribe by whom, for many centuries, the Romans were ruthlessly harried, and, likely to their undying regret, from whom they unwisely recruited much of their mercenary force.

Cole paints a scene by which even the most stoic and hard-hearted is, regardless of the unwavering control he purports to exercise over his emotions, deeply dismayed. The temples in which, but only yesterday, the gods were supplicated and the assemblies gathered, are today set ablaze. The masses of people by whom they were filled are now amassed outside and dying. Confronted by a faceless enemy—perhaps domestic, though more likely foreign—they engage one another with sanguinary intent. Mutilated and lifeless bodies pile on the bridge across which, only recently, their scepter-wielding king was so enthusiastically conveyed. Thick miasmas of smoke interrupt the sweet inhalations of that same Arcadian air by which, so long ago, their innocent lungs were filled.

A desperate woman, perhaps a maiden, not yet acquainted with a young lover’s smile, chooses death as an end preferable to a hostile barbarian’s lust. Clad in white in contrast to the blue and smoky backdrop against which she’s set, as if to symbolize the purity and godliness of her uncorrupted state, she leaps from a precipice in an effort to escape. The horror on her face is unconcealed, while the prurience with which that of her attacker’s is painted speaks much louder than his inarticulate shouts. It expresses the unravelling of a civilized race, with the maiden being the first victim claimed.  

I like to think of her as that most scrupulous of women with which history provides us an example—the beautiful Lucretia. A Roman living during the last days of the ancient monarchy, a despotic regime over which, painfully, the dread Tarquin so cruelly presided, she emerges as that age’s heroine. She was a valiant daughter and a faithful wife to whom, having been treacherously defiled, suicide—as opposed to an unchaste life—was thought the better option. Cole’s woman, without saying a word, seems wholeheartedly to agree. She plunges to her death in the water, as Lucretia penetrated her breast with a knife.

This, Destruction, is the climactic moment of Cole’s vigorous work. It offers, however, as it yields to the panel by which it’s neighbored to the right, little opportunity for one to regain her wits. There’s no chance for the recovery of her breath. As she ventures to move her tear-soaked eyes and bounding heart to the fifth panel, Desolation, the last picture of which this tragic sequence is composed, she enjoys no decrescendo, no gradual reprieve from what’s been an exhausting trip. All of a sudden, she’s met with utter silence. It’s a harsh and halting dénouement to what’s been, heretofore, a loud, exciting, and devastating voyage.

The remnants of those same Corinthian columns, those smoothly tapered monuments atop which, in stances of pious repose and Olympian courage, so many confident gods once proudly stood, are now the uncelebrated hosts to grass. They may as well be the forgotten trellises around which so many eager vines tangle, or the trees about which every leaping herb hastens to grow. There is no species of moss, no variety of weed, by which they’re not encircled, and they all join in creeping in advance to the top. Rubble, doubtless not people, will be the sole inheritance of whatever state is to come. The structures have collapsed under the combined weight of time and humanity. The former is insuperable, the latter, incorrigible, and both exert a pressure in excess of their mass.

Thus, with Desolation, Cole’s sequence is complete. That which he doesn’t say, however, and that which he renders not, is the mystery and jewel of the piece. We confront, in his silence, a troubling ellipsis, an end to which, should we seek it, an epilogue might be appended. It’s for us to decide whether or not the Savage State will overcome the quietude of this desolate one and, like a second Adam adjoined by his beloved Eve, appear once again. And, if it should, and if they come to fill the role of naming the animals and cultivating the herbs as once God enjoined, do we think it desirable to restart the cycle yet again?  Or would it be preferable for the desolation to persist and for nature, unencumbered by the avarice of man, to sprout in the purity of her unblemished age?

To this, I haven’t an answer. I leave the imagined “sixth” panel to the fertility of your own mind and, more importantly, the optimism of your spirit. The misanthrope might like to see the desolation of the land persist. Why on earth, he wonders, would we invite such savagery and bloodlust into so tranquil a world once again? Knowing what we do, with our fate preordained, how could we justify endorsing so ruinous a cycle to re-spin its wheels? Let us preserve Eden! he says, as she might’ve been in an earlier life. Let us keep her happy and verdant, joyous and clean, neither bedewed with our blood nor hardened by our hatreds. Let us assure her, more than anything else, of no forthcoming violation by man.

The humanist, on the other hand, would reject so bleak and gloomy a thought. He’d favor the restoration of his misunderstood species, a race of imperfect, but fundamentally good beings of which he’s still proud to be a part. He sees the price of Consummation worthy of the toil by which it was obtained, and the risk of Desolation daunting, but needed if greatness is to be captured. The chance that we might end in so loathsome place, with all the conflagration, murder, pillage, iconoclasm, and rape, is one with which he resigns himself to live, to which, despite his acknowledgement of the possibility of its occurrence, he hopes never to bear witness.

I find myself, on most days, aligned with the humanist, a tenderer soul with whom I like to think I’ve much in common. I think Cole would delight in joining me in this gentle and amiable group, a fellowship of brothers and sisters from which few are ever excluded. But I also think about the placement of America, today as we know her, along the five options of this pentaptych. To ponder this question was Cole’s subtler design. Where, exactly, does America belong? This, surely, was a question by which Cole was consumed and, at his quiet insistence, posterity is still bothered.

Undoubtedly, we can exclude from our consideration the first two primitive states, those in which fire was a novelty, and the ox-driven plow an advance. What about that of Consummation—is that, in all its regal splendor and glory, where we currently exist? None but the Pollyanna would say so, from whose roseate optimism, sadly, we must turn ourselves away. That leaves us with two final options: Destruction and Desolation. We’ve not yet returned our land to the sweet embrace of the goddess Gaia, to that ancient mother from whose fecund bosom, all vegetation once sprang.

That, through the unfailing process of elimination, leaves us with but one state: Destruction. I think, unfortunately, this is squarely the place that America inhabits today, a place beyond which, even if guided by a less divisive administration and a sturdier captain, she sees no future of moving.

In America, 2020 was a destructive year (worse, 2021 feels as though it’ll be much the same). Our faith in the institutions by which we ought to have been served crumbled, and, at this time, seem unlikely to be rebuilt. The legacy media outlets, in whose commitment to candor we sincerely used to believe, have abandoned every vestige of their borrowed legitimacy. They did so in the crazed pursuit of partisan gains, an effort by which their own activist viewers were clearly delighted, but the rest of us daily annoyed.

For an entire summer, our cities burned—an urban blaze of which Cole’s Destruction is eerily reminiscent. With but a single inhalation, by which, with forgotten air, the tired memory is once again filled, the fetid stench of those nights in Kenosha, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Seattle, Portland, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis returns. We blink and see, as if before us right now, the statues being desecrated, the police officers being bludgeoned, the citizens being intimidated, and the pusillanimous mayors accepting every affront. At a time when small businesses were forced to close, and remuneration for their pain was both inadequate and unforthcoming, looters stole from showrooms what vendors couldn’t sell. The damage to property was incalculable, but that mattered to the riotous thieves not. After all, they reasoned, what good is insurance, if not for so unexpected a situation as this?

We were told, repeatedly, that the constant protests by which those flames were preceded and, in many cases, directly kindled, were “mostly peaceful”—a phrase that must now be retired. It no longer holds any currency in speech. Those who continue to use it do so only facetiously, or, heaven forbid, with a willful desire to misrepresent the truth. Either way, those who still make a habit of employing it in political talk must be rejected or ignored. One is either peaceful, or one is not. Mostly not only implies, but tacitly acknowledges the latter, and it’s quite as simple as that. Such verbal legerdemain by which a pundit hopes to convince his gullible listener will be tolerated no more. We recognize the motivations and the trickery of those by whom such euphemisms are used. 

And now, perhaps the most disheartening scene by which our crumbling fortitude has been shaken, we’ve borne witness to the Capitol Building besieged. A crowd of hooligans and malcontents, inflamed by the rhetoric of a president soon to be replaced, infiltrated the “People’s House”, that glorious edifice of column and dome in which the Electoral College votes were being counted. Confronted by a police force inadequate to repulse their mass, the insurrectionists—like the barbarian’s in Cole’s work—stormed that very building in which our congressmen were gathered. With surprisingly little effort, over a duration of time that was disquietingly brief, they gained access to the interior, and bedlam ensued.

Once there, in as uncivil a manner as any I’ve seen, they began pilfering congressional stationary, gallivanting like fools around the atria, placing their dirty feet on office desks, and occupying the chair in which, as a distinguished honor, the Speaker alone has the privilege to sit. Now reinforced, they again fought with those same officers over whom, just an hour earlier, they held the numerical advantage, but by whom, with the passage of time, they were quelled and finally ejected. Before that could happen, though, a woman was shot through the neck and killed, an outcome about which, given the nature of her unlawful actions, we might feel a moment of sadness, while not being really surprised. More tragic was the loss of a police officer’s life, upon whom the rioters unleashed their misguided rage and blind fury. Three others died of undisclosed medical emergencies, by which the total of fatalities was elevated to five.

As I reflect on these events through which, in this annus horribilis, we’ve all had the misfortune to live, these days by which our nation’s been so utterly battered and bruised, I think of no image other than of Cole’s penultimate piece: Destruction. In the Course of Empire as it truly exists, an actual, as opposed to an artistic path of imperium along which America treads, I fear we’re at the height of a destructive state and, unmercifully, not yet at its end. I fix my gaze on Cole’s work as it rests on my wall and, turning toward my window, see no discernable difference.

Consummation, I realize, is but a memory—a hard truth to which I’m having difficulty adjusting myself. Harder still is the recognition that Destruction rules the day. And this, lamentably, is a day like no other; it’s unaccompanied by the sun’s hopeful rise the cloudless heaven in which it’s usually so buoyantly suspended. In the course of the months to come, it’ll be in darkness and enmity that we endure this life, until, finally, Desolation puts us to rest. This is the universal fate of empires, a reality from which, despite its uniqueness, America won’t be exempt. The pentaptych, after all, is read left to right, and we can’t deviate from the line that’s been drawn.  

Senators, being less numerous than their counterparts in the House of Representatives—a group with whom they’ll not hesitate to deign to converse, but over whom, knowingly, they’ll always enjoy the greater esteem—are more important when taken as individuals. This disproportionality, this gap between their larger power when viewed against their smaller number, is not a mistake: viewed as the aristocratic element of our mixed polity, our beautiful, enviable arrangement through which the vibrant colors of monarchy (in the Executive Branch) and democracy (in that of the Legislative) join harmoniously to streak, greater virtue was expected of fewer men. By nature, an aristocracy selects for those who are best, and the best, perforce, are few.

Originally indirectly elected by a state’s population, a mass of diverse characters from whom, perhaps for lack of confidence in their learning or faith in their wit, the immediate ability to choose a Congressman for placement in the country’s upper house was withheld, senators should be, at least so far as the Constitution is concerned, less accountable to the people. They should worry less about those by whom—at least so far as things now stand—they’re elevated to so lofty a place. Each state, irrespective of the size of its population, the girth of its boundaries, or the value of its wealth, sends to the Federal City two people. The wisdom of an Amendment (the Seventeenth) to reduce the distance between our suffrage and choice of these two people is not one upon which I’ll here opine. That, I concede, is the sort of topic with which subtle lawyers can grapple, and weary scholars pass their time.

It’s impossible, however, for a senator truly to reflect the multitudinous desires, and the endless whims, of the people upon whom his electoral success is dependent. If that be impossible, and all agree that it is, it’s utterly unthinkable that, if not one, two senators could achieve so formidable a task. That’s the job, whether it be acknowledged or not, of the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, from which such solicitous and minute attention might be demanded and received. It’s their explicit role, given their larger numbers and humbler genius, to be more responsive to the people to whom they’re more closely bound. The senator, with his gravitas and immeasurable wisdom, is allowed, neigh, expected to be somewhat aloof.

In this way, we’ve retained the less representative aspect of the Senate, the higher body rather distant from us, to which we look up in our ceaseless quest for guidance in the absence of God. Laden with the august memories of Athens and Rome, around whose ancient forums, their hoary progenitors once strode, the hundred people by which our Senate is composed enjoy the rare privilege of affixing before their names, Senator, as if it were the honorific of a virtuous saint or some other revered celestial thing. What else, these men and women, quite intermediate between mortal and deity, are less encumbered by the shouts of the rabble among whom we, members of a less-elevated species, busy ourselves and pass our days.

It’s clear, then, that each individual senator possesses extraordinary clout, a large potency of which we hope, should he truly be deserving of the epithet, best, he’ll make reliably judicious, temperate, and noble use. It’s rare, though, to see before us one particular senator—in this case, Joe Manchin of West Virginia—emerge as the person among one hundred upon whom so much of our future hinges. It’s unusual to witness just one man become the repository of an entire nation’s hope, the vessel of our collective progress or deceleration, into whom an astonishingly large amount of influence has, as of yesterday, torrentially funneled.

With the unexpected results of the “run-off” senate election to which the state of Georgia was host, a contest upon which the incumbent president unwisely pressed his burdensome weight, the Senate is now perfectly split: fifty seats belong to the Republicans, and fifty to the Democrats. The possibility of stagnation and gridlock in so rare a case, where we see the two parties equally endorsed by a country riven with strife, was considered and, through their prescience, obviated by our Founding Fathers. With the abstract brilliance of philosophers, and the minute subtlety of watchmakers, they implanted into our Constitution a mechanism by which, despite the friction, our governmental gears might continue to turn.

In the case of a “fifty-fifty” split on any issue on which the Senate might be torn, the Vice President would insert herself (or himself, as is the case) into the body as its arbitrator of last resort. She shall then exchange her Executive influence for a larger, grander Legislative power and become, in the words of that divine document, “President of the Senate”. As such, she “shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided”, and incapable of coming, on their own initiative, to an agreeable conclusion. Precisely this kind of division is to be expected in the years ahead, given the tension of the political moment in which we now live, and heights to which, over the course of the next few years, it’s very likely to soar.

It’s in this scenario that a single man like Joe Manchin, a Democrat incongruously representing a deeply-red state, is lifted to a place of prominence to which he might’ve aspired, but never anticipated. The new power with which he’s been freshly endued or, better yet, by which he’ll be incessantly encumbered, can’t be understated.

The Democrat side of the Senate (of which, at least nominally, he remains a loyal member) buoyed by what it perceives to be its unequivocal electoral mandate, will attempt to enact some of its more startling promises: ending the filibuster, by which the minority party’s leverage is preserved; introducing new seats to the Supreme Court, by which its current conservative majority will be, with all promptitude, diluted; establishing unprecedented leniency in our immigration law, of which uncountable numbers in swelling caravans will take eager advantage; and formalizing as proper states Puerto Rico and Washington D.C., cherished parts of our country from which, when seeking office, only Democrats ever seem to emerge.

It can achieve these aims only with a “fifty-fifty” split, and the encouragement and intervention of an active Vice President, such as Kamala Harris, who’s not at all shy about exerting her will. She’ll be the ultimate linchpin by whom, if and when raised, every last one of these proposals will pass. She’ll stand astride two branches, second-in-line to an infirm Executive and first in power over Congress, acting, perhaps, as no Vice President ever will again.  

Should Joe Manchin, an institutionalist at heart, and someone very little susceptible to Harris’ and his side’s progressive zeal, defect from his party’s “fifty” and stand a bulwark against the tide, all of the Vice President’s energy will be wasted in the West Wing. He needn’t, in so doing, disclose himself outright as a red-blooded Republican, a ghastly political label with which he’s often been draped, and beneath which, as though nettled by the itchiness of a too-tight Christmas sweater, he’s always uncomfortably squirmed. He need only resist the radicalism of which Harris is so vehement a supporter, and with which his own beloved party, so different today than it was in his youth, is now completely besotted.

In the small, but lofty chamber in which this country’s most distinguished legislators sit, from which so much collective wisdom flows and lambent eloquence streams, Manchin might be considered primus inter pares. He, at this point moving forward, is first among his aristocratic equals. His voice, from but one mouth out of a hundred, will be the one to which we all most attentively listen. His moderation, so frequently expressed in an effort to quiet his fellow West Virginians’ fears, will be the sole quality by which our own anxieties will be soothed, and our institutions preserved. I’m thankful that he is, so far as I can tell, not only a fearless thinker, but a virtuous actor, and a man unpliable to the whims of his Party, the energy of his Vice President, and the clamors of the mob.

The great dictum of David Hume, star of the Enlightenment and genius of an age, is one of which I’m forever mindful: one’s reason is, and shall always be, the slave of his passions.

Of course, by pledging my allegiance to the immortal insight of the brilliant Scot, upon which, so far as I can see, centuries of psychology haven’t yet improved, I intend not to relinquish the former to the latter—my head to my heart. Insofar as he’s human, and, as such, endowed with an intelligence of which neither the grunting beast nor the unlettered fool can’t yet dream, a thinking man mustn’t accept passion as his life’s guiding force. That, we know, is the path of a lower form, of an atavistic type up from which he’s lately climbed. It is, if I might put it bluntly, an earlier, youthful, barbaric breed to which he, a civilized man, won’t voluntarily return.

No, I’m not in the habit of foregoing my reason simply because, for better or worse, it’ll never quite ascend to that superior role of which passion is the dread occupant, and emotion the decided leader. I call to mind Hume’s wisdom, rather, to remind myself that, while reason may never succeed in its bid to be the master, and might always be relegated to a diminished and secondary role, it can try, with every ounce of its effort, and every turn of its thought, to resist that end for which it’s so clearly destined. Even though it’s determined, by the joint force of our psychology and our genes—the one peculiar, the other immutable—to live out its life in a servile state, a condition of being over which passion is king, it must exert its influence, whenever given the chance.

It was to the words of David Hume, then, that I naturally repaired when confronted, but a week ago, with that daunting choice to be made between two candidates vying for the presidency of the United States. It was a choice by which thousands of Americans like me—those sensitive to the deficits of personality, yes, but not so much as to lose their focus on the importance of policy—were burdened. I imagine there were many similarly placed. Frankly, it was a decision with which I, helplessly susceptible to the imposition of my conscience and liable to my passions, painfully struggled, as did many of my neighbors by whom I’m surrounded. We were given the unenviable task to choose between two men for whom, in either case, one was made to feel little confidence, and even less zeal.

On the one hand, constrained by the misfortune of a binary choice, an option between two alternatives beyond whom, for fear of shaking up the status quo, we’re always discouraged to look, we were offered the incumbent—a man as undisciplined as he is daring, bumptious as mendacious, successful as mean. His celebrity mystique, orange-tinted skin, Queens colloquialism, and disregard for rigid norms were all traits by which we, an electorate unaccustomed to so confusing a presence and startling a man, were frankly overwhelmed. Yet for all of his large and disruptive character flaws, upon which neither confidante nor family member succeeded in having a moderating effect, his achievements were numerous, his approach unprecedented, his outcomes brilliant.

Under his direction, three conservative supreme court justices were confirmed in as many years; Israel and its enemies were brought to a state of unprecedented comity and ease; China was exposed as the genocidal, incorrigible menace that it’s been since the twentieth century’s turn; regarding our economic relation with that nefarious state, a trade deal was negotiated from which, uncharacteristically, America finally stood to gain; Venezuela’s Marxist dictator was sanctioned, as was Iran’s Holocaust-denying Ayatollah; North Korea’s diminutive despot was courted, flattered, threatened, and dared, with the result being no nuclear explosion on his peninsula or abroad; no foreign wars were incited, and the only heads upon which American drones descended were those previously attached to radical Islamic terrorist necks; those who professed a more legitimate and peaceful belief in some religion, whose holy book and priestly mediators go to the trouble to muffle every encouragement to kill, found themselves in an unusually tranquil and supported state; they found in the Chief Executive an unexpected ally to their faith, as well as a honest defender of their inalienable right to worship as they might; those who defended an unborn child’s opportunity to life, which is currently dictated by the whim of the woman in whom so vivacious a seed hastens to grow, relished the idea of a president explicitly being on their side.

On the other hand, we were encouraged—though not without the tacit threat of continued urban unrest, weekly desecration of statues, clogging of highways and avenues, and blood-spurting violence—to vote for the challenger, the former Vice President and Senator, Joe Biden. We were advised, if only because of our distaste for the annoying habits and deeply-engrained vices of an incumbent for whom our patience had grown thin, to opt for the venal, insipid, senescent, inarticulate, paper cut-out of a man. Sorry—that’s but one man’s opinion; surely not to be entertained by the glaring eye of the bien pensant by whom, like Big Brother, we’re watched. He was, in their thinking, the supremely virtuous, inarguably honorable, feel-good candidate behind whom, if only under the direction of our passion, we should place our fullest support.

We were told that the restoration of our integrity as a nation, as well as the return of our dignity as a people, were contingent on the victory of this doddering, old Washingtonian fixture, this lifetime-politician, in the truest sense of the phrase, who’s spent nearly five of his eight decades in the halls of power in the Federal City. We were assured of his scruples, guaranteed of his infallibility, and encouraged, on this basis, to commit our suffrage to his cause. His goodness, probity, and, dare I say, empathy (a word by which, for well-neigh two years, we were beat over the head) were attributes to which our Liberal media pundits breathlessly attested. Biden, we were told, was the antidote to the indecency of Trump, the refined and polished statesman with whom the debased vulgarian president ought not dare to compete.

Meanwhile, Biden’s own moral, political, and personal shortcomings were studiously concealed. When, perchance, they cracked through their shell and filtered into the light of day, darkness was expeditiously discharged to smother their escape. The valiant, tenebrous members of our media ensured they’d shine no further, and from our line of vision, they were hastened away from view.  

The foreign escapades of Biden’s loutish, profligate, constantly-inebriated second son were revealed, and then promptly buried. Like the mole that emerges from the earth to expose its tiny head and bask, if only briefly, in the distant radiance of the sun, they were swiftly whacked, and sent away from public view. The New York Post, reporting on Hunter Biden’s economic entanglements and indecorous behavior overseas (in which, as many believe, and as further evidence has suggested, his stately father played a role), received not only the hostility of the media platforms around which, with dizzying velocity, its story first spread, but its punishment and censorship, as well.

With a rationale for its suppression by which none was convinced, and most were enflamed, the social media companies (namely Facebook and Twitter) claimed the New York Post’s stories to have been inadequately sourced and incompletely vetted. Thus, they proclaimed, from the height of the Palo Alto summits from which their regal fiats are issued, the New York Post’s story was the inedible fruit of a poisonous tree. It mustn’t, for that reason, be consumed. Therefore, its circulation would be discountenanced on Facebook and Twitter and sites such as these, sites to which the upholding of the First Amendment and neutral standards is, as we’ve been informed, ever-so important.

Of course, had such standards pre-existed this remarkable event (that by which the Biden family’s financial corruption and chronic venality were exposed), Trump’s tax information, channeled through what must’ve been a former “fiduciary” of the president to whom the writers of the New York Times enjoyed quite profitable access, surely wouldn’t have been published. As we know, it was.

Assuming one was successful in pilfering the opportunity to read the story, he was urged, thereafter, simply to ignore it. It was called, repeatedly by Biden and the defensive surrogates by whom he was flanked, a “smear campaign” and a “baseless allegation”, the type by which only the most desperate and unethical of Republicans would try to reduce him. We were also told to ignore Biden’s rather bilious nature (aggressively calling citizens by whom tough questions were posed, fat or mentally inferior), his disconcerting history of sexual predation or, short of that, unseemly prurience (have we forgotten the name Tara Reade, and the many unfortunate women within whose personal spaces still harbor the scar of Joe Biden’s specter); his animus or indifference toward Black people (suggesting they use crack-cocaine and are intellectually undiverse); and his utter lack of acquaintance with the history of this land (call forth to mind, if you dare, his cringe-inducing, unintelligible effort to quote the Declaration of Independence).

After all this, though, we were still encouraged to believe that Biden was the candidate of passion, by which I mean to say, emotion. He, by the industrious and clever work of his campaign, and the connivance of a media by which, from the very start, he was so vigorously propped up, was molded into the empathic candidate par excellence. He was made into the candidate by whom, in some odd way, every uncertain voter and polite citizen would be made to feel, for a change, good. In contrast to him was President Trump, the candidate of reason, as I think of him to be. Doubtless, he’s not the person by whom, naturally, one’s made to feel so cheerily warm and cozy, but he’s the one by whom reason, often colder and soberer and, therefore—at least when it comes to politics—correct, is appeased.

And so, the policy achievements of the latter enticed my reason, while my passion, with every step of my approach closer toward the ballot box, that sacred space in which an American’s suffrage is finally expressed, was quieted—the heart having been made the mind’s temporary slave.

Of course, the triumph of reason over passion, if ever it occurs, is never as enduring as we might like; its priority of position is, at best, ephemeral, and the relationship to which it’s been accustomed, no sooner restored. Yet, in making our political decisions, reason must be elevated as high as it can. I’m reminded, in thinking so, of a quote not by David Hume—to whom, unwaveringly, I remain devoted—but by Nikolai Gogol. In his great work, Dead Souls, to which the contradictory label of “epic poem in prose” is usually applied, he says:

“Numberless as grains of sand are the passions of man, and no one of them is like another. Initially, they all—whether base or noble—submit to man’s will and only later do they exercise such fearful tyranny over him. Blessed is he who, from all their multitude, has selected the noblest passions”.

With all due reverence to the genius of Gogol, and the Russian society of which he was so artful and scrutinizing a critic, my objective is not to select passion—be it noble or base—but to opt for reason. It was for this reason that I opted for the incumbent, why I voted for that troubling, polarizing figure—President Trump. Passion is a tyrant to which one unknowingly submits; not even the most constant vigilance can deter it. But, from time to time, reason plays the part of liberator, by which the fetters of emotion are cut clean. The president, in this instance, was the one wielding the heavy sword to which those chains must yield. Let us, then, choose liberty over tyranny, and reason over passion. In this way, I justify my choice in favor of an unsavory incumbent, to an empathic challenger.

In our tangled world of healthcare, a circuitous, hierarchical realm through which, whether as provider or patient, nearly all of us have at one time passed, there’s to be found a peculiar sensitivity to titles. So far as I can tell, it’s a relatively new development within this salutary industry, this business of well-being about which, much to my own frustration (having spent the early years of my inauspicious adult life working in it), nearly everyone must now be exceedingly conscious.

Indeed, so far as I’m concerned, it’s nothing more than a supreme annoyance by which, from a shift’s beginning till its distant end, a poor wretch like me is endlessly vexed. It’s a phenomenon of which, despite the blunted perception of their idle state, not even the comatose en route to the morgue can fail to take note. One might even hope, if only briefly, to switch places with our moribund friend, a refractory body from whom, despite the best efforts of stimulating pills and energizing injections, all perception has been carried away. I would hope for this fate if only to escape the onslaught of so many burdensome titles, but, alas, none is awarded so strong an immunity to the words of our age. Even as one approaches hell or heaven, the depths or the sky, the encroachment of titles will, at last, prevail.  

There isn’t a single conversation, regardless of its triviality or the heaviness of its weight, upon which titles fail to intrude. Nor, for that matter, is there an introduction from which they’ll tolerate themselves to be absent. They must, at all times and in every situation, make themselves known and demand that they’ll be acknowledged, remembered, revered. Titles are, in this way, imperious, demanding, haughty, and, to be quite honest, rude; they seek to commander respect with the despotic use of their credentials, and hope, with every fiber of their vanity, to drown the poor listener in an ocean of their inflated pomp.

There is, of course, one title to which all workers in the healthcare industry yet aspire, a lofty honorific carried only by a deserving few. It’s a title before which everyone still bows, a name toward which all approach with modesty and respect. This title, if you’ve failed to guess it, is that of doctor, a designation to which, in reality, only the smallest number of healthcare professionals ought to have a genuine claim.

Nowadays, however, this is far from the case. It seems that just about every occupation by which a typical hospital is staffed feels itself worthy of the title, doctor. To what heights have the egos of the workers filling these jobs ascended? Is the air so thin at that exalted altitude that they can’t breathe the humility of the actual station in which they work and live?

In a word, the significance of the word, doctor, has been quite carelessly diluted. So many have added themselves to its once exclusive pool, a brilliant well of academic achievement and technical acumen, that its boundaries have begun to overflow. Its essence, in the process, is lost in the deluge by which it’s overcome. As a result, it’s meaning is well on its way to being completely dissolved and worth little more than the prescription pad on which it’s written.  

Not only is the proud pharmacist a doctor, long removed from the delightfully antique title of apothecary—the name by which his elixir-laden profession once was known—but the physical therapist as well. One is a doctor of medications, the other, apparently, of pandiculations. Is a doctorate really requisite in teaching another to stretch? Is so precious a title required to monitor the rapidity or slowness of one’s gait. I think not, but I digress. The point is, both are doctors and, as such, the real doctor is, in name, debased.  

Joining this upper echelon of the anointed, among whom, we’re told, only legitimate doctors have the privilege to mingle, is the clever chiropractor. He’s the man from whom so many vigorous spinal “adjustments” and manipulations are to be had. Close by his side is the inscrutable psychologist, with whom the medically-trained, pill-prescribing psychiatrist, is all too frequently confused. We’re expected, if only in their eyes, to commit ourselves to calling them both doctor, and to believing them to be such, but we’re hardly encouraged to ponder the propriety of the name. If we were, we’d sooner realize how inapplicable a title it is, and it’d quickly fall into disuse.

Let us not forget, in our review of our pretentious hospital’s staff, a group into whose self-importance we’ve busied ourselves in peaking, the dear speech pathologist. She’s the woman by whom the readiness of one’s alimentary canal is carefully gauged, and the delicacy or heartiness of one’s dinner plate suggested. What about the valiant, omnipresent nurse, upon whose wide experience and nimble versatility, so many ailing people rely? Both, all of a sudden, are to be considered doctors, which seems to me an over-compensation for the modesty of their craft. Perhaps it’s all just a means to deepen a patient’s confusion, or to confound a colleague’s address: is nothing more oxymoronic than a doctor of nursing, or a nurse who’s a doctor, who, while draped in a coat of white, isn’t quite the same thing?

The point is, the name doctor, to which all the aforementioned feel themselves somehow entitled, is used in far too promiscuous a way. Neither the pharmacist nor the physical therapist, widely-learned though they may be, should flatter themselves with the application of the name. Though their studies may amount to many years, and their practice to every situation, they’ll never quite amount to being called “doctor”. Nor should the title doctor be affixed before the quotidian, but much more accurate given first and last names of such fine people as the chiropractor, the psychologist, the speech pathologist, or the devoted nurse. All perform commendable work, but none is a doctor in a recognizable sense. They must, at last, agree to humble themselves with the epithets, Mr., Mrs., or Ms., and the names with which either marriage or birth supplied them. Their demands that we do more ought to be refused.  

In truth, there are only three groups of people upon whom, appropriately, the title doctor should be conferred. The first hardly requires my mention, but, given our current confusion on the subject, perhaps it does. The medical doctor, deeply trained in the ability to diagnosis an illness and treat the ailing body upon which it intrudes, is inarguably deserving of the name, doctor. What else would we call so essential a figure upon whose learning and expertise, we’ve come entirely to rely? Could we think of another title for so highly-trained and laudably-selfless a man or woman by whom, too frequently, our over-indulgent, under-exercised society is healed? This person is a doctor, first and foremost. I don’t think this is a position against which anyone in control of his mental faculties would push back. Should he endeavor to do so, we might all agree that he’s in need of the type of doctoral, medical attention by which he’s so little impressed.

The second group of people to whom the title, doctor, is sensibly applied, is that of the doctors, or teachers, of the early Church. The list on which they appear is short, but—irrespective of one’s religious view or lack of faith—widely esteemed. On it, we scan the names of four extraordinary men: Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great. Of the four, the first three lived as contemporaries in a century in which talent was shockingly rife, while Gregory the Great graced a later date. He, the only pope of the bunch, was a spark of brilliance during the Dark Ages, a time upon which genius rested with only the lightest of touch.

Ambrose, above all, is celebrated for his view on the relationship between the Church and the state—one heavenly and spiritual, the other secular and crude. The independence between the two, of which he was a uniquely early advocate, was as revolutionary an idea then, as their entanglement would be for us today. As the bishop of Milan, a position to which he acceded by way of general acclamation, Ambrose was well-versed in dealing with the powerful political leaders and wealthy businessmen with whom his bustling, commercial see was filled. In every situation, he was their equal, if not their superior, and, because of his efforts, the Church found itself on a most secure and dependable footing.  

Perhaps more importantly, he was the man from whom another famous doctor on the list, Augustine, sought advice when he fled the heat of northern Africa and the ardor of his overbearing mother. Augustine, pursuing a career opportunity on the continent of Europe, was not yet ready to relinquish the life of sin to which he’d grown so pleasantly accustomed in the torrid streets of his beloved Algeria. Behind his mother’s back, he travelled to Milan to fill a teaching post in the Italian university’s school of rhetoric. Upon encountering Ambrose, however, he was left utterly speechless. How uncomfortable this must’ve been for a scholar dependent on his tongue for his income? The piety, persuasiveness, and faith of the Milanese bishop provoked Augustine—once he regained his wits—to depart his Manichean flirtation for the splendor of Catholicism. Christian theology was born and, through a revival during the Reformation, remains alive with us today.

The great contribution for which Jerome is responsible is a literary one. Displeased with the obvious shortcomings of the ancient Septuagint, the Greek rendition of the originally Hebrew Bible by which all Christian scholars were perennially vexed, he set himself upon the task of smoothing out its rough edges and refining its ineloquent content. The fruit of his labor was the Vulgate Bible, an immortal work of piety and art of which the Catholic Church still avails herself to this day.  

Fourth among the doctors of the Church is Gregory the Great. He’s best known for his copious writings, his liturgical reforms, his failures at asceticism, his missions to convert English Pagans, and his euphonious contribution to the genre of plainchant. The vocal style that’s come to be called Gregorian chant, of which he was the originator and to which he lends his name, is to be heard, unaccompanied by the usual bells and whistles of instrumental music, in the holiest of atria and the most sanctified of places. These are the venues, after all, in which so great a pope is to be found at home.  

Our list of people deserving of the title, doctor, is all but complete. On it, two people remain: Dr. Samuel Johnson, Britain’s great lexicographer, author, critic, and wit, and Dr. Benjamin Franklin, the first American man to whom the adjective, “Renaissance” might be affixed.

Like the three churchmen, Johnson and Franklin were contemporaries; in birth, Franklin preceded Johnson by a mere three years, and, in death, he survived him by six. While very similar in this regard, their separation was rather geographical than chronological. Split apart by the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, the latter was an eminent Englishman over whom the educated world gushed, while the former was a rising colonist with whom that same world would soon be happily acquainted. Franklin was in the bosom of a revolution against that very mother nation of which Johnson was so proud a son, and their respective impacts during this era can’t be understated.

As just compensation for their scientific, political, and literary efforts, both Franklin and Johnson received honorary doctorate degrees. The former, Franklin, was more promptly recognized and appropriately awarded. In acknowledgement of his contributions to letters and science (his work on the conduction of electricity and the temperate movement of the Gulf Stream had proven milestones in physics and navigation, and his Poor Richard’s Almanac, with all its epigrammatic wisdom, was universally relished), the University of St. Andrews bestowed upon him a doctorate degree. A few years later, Oxford University, that glimmering jewel of English academia, followed suit and did the same.

That school was less willing, however, to elevate her own countryman, Johnson, to that same Franklinian status. Johnson, by far the more accomplished writer of the two, had already finished his famed English Dictionary, his penetrating criticisms of English life, his enlarging annotations of Shakespeare’s plays, his hilarious defense of that divine drink to which he was so sincerely addicted—tea, his didactic History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia from which so many needed morals were derived, and his immortal, satirical poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes. Trinity College Dublin, alma mater of the conservative Edmund Burke, was first to recognize his radical merit. Oxford, as was the case with Franklin, was characteristically late. Ultimately, though, both were made doctors, and so they remain.

In sum, these are the three groups of people, and the only three groups of people, to whom the title doctor ought to be applied: medical doctors, upon whom our physical health hinges; doctors of the Church, by which that of the soul is revived; and Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Johnson, by whom our inner muse is delighted and our scientific spirit restored. All others bearing it, and demanding that they be identified as such, would do well to retire the name and to humble the large vision that they have of themselves. Let us applaud the deserving doctors, or those listed above.

At the conclusion of every speech to which he treated his fellow senators, a rather laconic group of Roman statesmen and grave aristocrats among whom garrulity, no matter the eminence of the speaker from whom it came, nor the melodious tuning of his voice, simply had no quarter, Cato the Elder attached the following three words: Carthago delenda est. Carthage, he proclaimed, must be destroyed.

This was, for him, more than a simple mantra of militancy by which, if only to enflame the excitable passions of his warlike comrades, and to loosen from their scabbards a fleet of restless swords, each one of his hair-raising utterances was capped. More than that, it was a deeply-held commitment from which, having resisted every argument in favor of peace, and ignored every whisper of the benefits of conciliation, he simply couldn’t sway. In time, it became a goal of which he hoped first to remind, and finally to convince his many burly colleagues, a pugnacious group of Italians by whom the power of Rome was held, and the fate of Carthage decided.   

Cato’s exhortation, so he thought, wasn’t just a time-bound imperative to which, given the immediacy of the moment, his fledgling empire’s attention should briefly turn, but a constant, self-evident truth upon which, beyond three words, he really need not further dilate. Carthage, though twice defeated by Rome in the First and Second Punic Wars, desisted not from being a threat to the claims of greatness with which, in the afterglow of its recent victories, and the enjoyment of its hard-won spoils, Rome had begun to flatter herself. Control of the Mediterranean, at least in the opinion of our anxious Cato, persisted in being a rather ambitious goal to which that doughty Phoenician colony still aspired. Burdened by this knowledge, old Cato couldn’t rest easy until the complete disappearance of this threat, and the destruction of that detested African city by which he was so unyieldingly menaced.

To date, Carthage had proven itself capable of mustering an unusually effective mercenary army, a trans-national, ragtag group of soldiers-for-pay by which, despite every advantage of numerical supremacy and territorial acquaintance, the purebred Romans were repeatedly trounced. The unconquerable Hannibal, before whose tactical brilliance, every wrinkled military historian still sits in childlike awe, succeeded, as none previously had, in devastating Rome. After leaping over the inhospitable, snow-laden Alps, behind whose every corner, nettlesome mountaineers waited with foul intent, the young general led his wearied men down the spine of the Roman state. Each vertebrae, cap-a-pie, was a victory as he descended from the top of the peninsula toward its tail. First at Trebia, next at Lake Trasimene, and, most famously, at Cannae, he surprised, engulfed, and finally decimated an ever-growing number of perplexed Roman troops.

This continued for some time, until the aged soldier and former counsel, Quintus Fabius Maximus, was chosen to right the ship. The eponymous techniques by which we remember his name, while unpopular, proved successful, but they didn’t last long. They were as ephemeral as Rome’s patience for their employment was thin. The old delayer (Fabius’ agnomen, a kind of army man’s nickname, was, after all, the Cunctator, a word that survives as a synonym for one who fails decisively to act) was relieved of his appointment as dictator after the completion of the Roman constitution’s prescribed six months. Humbled by a history of loss, and made wise by his life’s six decades of experience, Fabius realized that a war of attrition, as opposed to one of annihilation, was his country’s best and possibly final hope. He was ignored, however, and the Romans were ravaged.

Fortunately for that land that would soon be home to all but a few popes, Hannibal knew how to win battles, but lacked the necessary genius to put his victories to good use. For reasons into which scholars of antiquity continue to probe, out of which, frustratingly, they’ve not yet extracted much profit, Hannibal decided against continuing his march on Rome and taking into possession that storied city atop the Palatine Hill. To this day, Hannibal’s refusal to secure his victory causes one to scratch his head. Had he done so, the empire might’ve been his, and the modern world as we know it, quite different. Indeed, the language in which this lengthy article is written, to which, obligingly, the dear reader has thus far committed her precious time, might’ve been derived rather from a Semitic, than a Latin tongue. We might extol the character of Dido over that of Aeneas, and supplicate ourselves before Baal in a rejection of Christ.

Either way, Hannibal’s mission to conquer Rome, an aim to which, from the time of his bustling, precocious youth, he was unreservedly devoted, was incomplete, and his opportunity to achieve that grand design passed him by. Flustered, he returned to Africa where the ruthless Scipio Africanus, himself an incomparably brilliant general with whom, much to their misfortune, centuries of great Romans must try to compete, waited. The Battle of Zama, over which Scipio claimed a massive victory, sealed Hannibal’s fate. Vanquished, he fled the land of his royal birth for the obscurity of the Middle East, where he was pursued by a band of Romans intent on ensuring his demise. Eventually, their objective was achieved. Hannibal, whose name continues to inspire fear, died of the mixture of Oriental poison in his Punic blood.

But Rome, intoxicated by the dizzying fumes of its glorious triumph and its arch-nemesis’ death, a sweet aroma to which her senses, clogged by a recent string of mortifying defeats, had become strangely unaccustomed, was not yet done. So long as Carthage lived, if only as a feeble shell of its previous self, a statesman like Cato the Elder couldn’t rest. He wanted that terrible city, that rogue southern neighbor by which his beloved Italy was invaded and his countrymen killed, destroyed—trunk, roots, and all. Defeat wouldn’t suffice: Carthago delenda est, Carthage must be destroyed. Nothing of its former grandeur would remain. This, he repeated to his colleagues, and his message wasn’t ignored.

He proved as compelling an orator as he was inveterate a war hawk. The senate of Rome took his advice and, under his direction, thought up a scheme to provoke another war. Ultimately, it would be the third in which the two states were to be engaged. As a means by which their fighting spirit might be renewed, the Romans began to impose increasingly onerous demands on the poor Carthaginians, a people upon whom they now leaned with the bulk of a victor’s weight. Not only did they change the terms of the indemnities by which they were burdened, but they demanded that they abandon their city and re-locate farther inland, to a place less accessible to their cherished maritime trade. From Tyre to Tunisia, the Carthaginians were, throughout the long course of their collective life, a sea-faring people, a civilization of adventurers and navigators never far removed from the sea. Now, by order of some peremptory Roman statesmen, for whom they hadn’t even an ounce of respect, they were forbidden to live within ten miles of the sea.  

In essence, the Carthaginians were made exiles in their own home, a region, mind you, over which they enjoyed an uninterrupted claim of legitimate ownership for nearly six hundred years. Unsurprisingly, these were conditions to which they bravely refused to submit. The Third Punic War ensued, and, at its end, Cato the Elder’s sanguinary goal was realized. Carthage was indeed destroyed, fully and unsparingly, and its power was never rekindled again. The fertile ground atop which its ancient pillars once stood was salted, the stones by which its lofty edifices were built were removed one by one, and the best of her citizens were unmercifully killed. Not even virile Rome, so inclined to conquer and to kill, could’ve hoped for an annihilation so utterly complete. Carthage, in every sense of the word, was totally destroyed.

In some ways, in our own time, this desire for the total annihilation of a party against which we’re ideologically set, this destructive instinct to which Cato the Elder gave so unflagging a voice, persists.

I’m reminded of it when I hear the unfriendly remarks issued by some Democrats and supporters of Joe Biden against their fellow Republicans and the beleaguered incumbent behind whom, through the challenges of the past four years, they’ve loyally stood. Carthago delenda est, converted from Latin to English, and implanted on our own age, now reads, Trump, and everything for which he stands, and everyone by whom he’s been supported, must be destroyed.

The earth upon which his platform once stood must be salted, and every monument to his agenda, dismembered and erased. Those by whom he was so feverishly championed—be it out of calculated expediency or sincere belief—should be made, for all intents and purposes, exiles in the country of their birth. They should be removed from the broad expanse of America’s polite society, a welcoming world through which, without impediment, all are given an equal opportunity to move. They should be sent away into the darkness of the night, as were the Carthaginians from their urban centers and their beloved sea. There, displaced from the “new order” of the state, and under the thumb of an illiberal regime, their careers and their future prospects of work should be symbolically killed. No remnant of Trump’s administration will be allowed to survive, and those responsible for the advancement of his political career must be punished as if murderers or thieves.  

I’ll leave it to the Latinist for this sentence’s proper translation, but I think the point is clear.

Leftist opinion-makers, and the progressive legislatures to whom they preach, have pushed forward the idea of making “enemy lists” to which they might occasionally refer. As disconcerting as they sound, these “lists” would be rosters on which, with the nodding agreement of the bien pensant, Trump-supporting individuals or businesses might find themselves placed. Once there, they might be attacked by the censoriousness of the Left until, like Hannibal and the Punic people, they vanish from sight.

I leave you with this. There was, so it appears, another name by which Cato the Elder, that hoary, warmongering statesman by whom so many Romans were roused, was sometimes known: Cato the Censor. The epithet is fitting for a man whose intention it was to erase a political opponent, and a neighboring city, from the memory of the world. The modern political Left is perhaps even more censorious than was he. While it was Cato’s wish to destroy a city, merely, it’s the Left’s hope to obliterate an ideology. One is material, the other less so. The dynamite needed for so large a task is immeasurable, as, I fear, it soon will learn. The means for its execution will be developed in time, but the end is something about which they’re sure:  Carthago delenda est, Trump et al. must be destroyed.