There is a somewhat famous poem by a somewhat famous poet that went like this:
-What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
-Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
-Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.
-Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
-Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
-Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
Constantine P. Cavafy
Cavafy was a Greek living in late 19th and early 20th century Egypt, who was fascinated with the Byzantine past. The history of that worn down vestige of the Roman Empire helped him define his place in the world. After all Egypt where he lived had been an important part of the empire until the Muslim conquests sheard it away. And so, he imagined what it was like to be in Constantinople after all those centuries of Goths, Bulgars, Turks, Arabs and other hordes washing over the lands of their realm and crashing against the impenetrable walls of the city but inexorably wearing away the “empire” until all that was left was the city itself.
And so, you reach the mindset of the poem. The life of the Byzantines was defined by the idea of just resisting the passage of time, of the changing of epochs of even the disappearance of whole civilizations by shutting the gates and withdrawing inwardly. Eventually you can justify almost any decadence or depravity by shrugging your shoulders and pointing at the chaos outside your walls.
This familiar end of empire mentality is appropriate for any number of decaying systems. It applies almost equally well for western civilization as a whole, the British Empire, the American Global Empire, American “democracy” and in particular the Republican Party. Waiting for the barbarians could be the description of how the “conservatives” have handled their campaign to resist the progressives. It’s a crouching posture of weakness where resistance is merely a reluctant acquiescence to whatever new outrage has broken out under the eyes of the faithful standing on the walls of the city, above the wreckage of the empire. As the last of their possessions are appropriated and converted by the enemy, the nobles and their lackeys look down from their protected heights and wonder how this all came to be. The fact that they long ago gave up leading their followers into battle isn’t even a memory. All they remember is the ancient glories of the “Gipper” and how wonderful it was back then to be real men.
But now a real problem emerges. What if there are no more barbarians. “Those people were a kind of solution.” They could blame their uselessness on their enemy’s strength. What if, heaven forbid, Donald Trump wins the election and they have to rule? How could they pretend to be beautiful losers? Well, they’ve come up with the answer. Now Donald Trump and the MAGA conservatives becomes the barbarians and they’ll cooperate with the Democrats to destroy them so that things can go back to normal.
And that’s the situation we may be faced with. Joe Biden is so incompetent and despicable that even Democrats have begun to mock him. The Democrat party is beginning to sound desperate to find a convenient way to ditch him and Kamala Harris together. And, of course, the bait and switch at or after the convention seems like the obvious ploy. But what if they bungle this whole election and Trump wins so convincingly that even these master cheats can’t make it happen? What then?
My belief is that the Republicans will sabotage the Trump administration just as they did during his first term. They will cooperate with the Deep State and throw away the chance at reform. They will see the Democrats as their natural masters and cripple all attempts at reform.
That’s what my instincts tell me. But there is always the chance that Trump will find a way to get things done. It’s not likely or even explicable. How would he get things done without the Congress? How would he break the power of the Justice Department? To carry this already overtaxed metaphor to its utter absurd conclusion Trump would have to be the founder of a new empire and re-order the old world into something new and dynamic.
Of course, that’s a different era. Ends of empires only go in one direction. So, we won’t be on the walls but we’ll get a ringside seat to the next act in this drama. “Those people were a kind of solution.”