Decline and fall | 8 November 2018

For a millennium and a half now, one of the great pleasures of being a commentator on current affairs has been comparing a political crisis to the fall of the Roman Empire. Nothing recently has quite so turbo-charged this perennial trend like the presidency of Donald Trump. The flamboyant egotism, the patent amorality, the porn stars: all seem conjured up from the reign of a peculiarly depraved Caesar.

The vague sense that Rome fell because its rulers were decadent — no matter how divorced from historical reality such a myth may be — still lurks in the public imagination. Bill Kristol, one of the most prominent Republicans to have joined the Never Trump movement, summed up the mood with a single dyspeptic tweet: ‘The speed with which we’re recapitulating the decline and fall of Rome is impressive. What took Rome centuries we’re achieving in months.’

Anxieties like these, of a Capitol humbled into the dust, of an America that will never be made great again, are nothing new.