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May 23, 2024 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
10:42
The American Caesar

For want of yielding a little, they lost it all. Order Islander #1 here: https://shop.lotuseaters.com/

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It is apparent to the electorates of the West that something is happening that is outside of their control.
Across the West and the world more broadly, it is becoming evident that there is something wrong with democracy.
Studies and polls have shown a general decline in the faith of each generation in the democratic process.
Moreover, the Open Society Foundation found that, while overall people generally preferred democracy, 42% of young people would support a military dictatorship, and 35% felt that an autocrat who did not consult the democratic process might work.
From whence does this lack of faith in democracy originate?
It can't be from a lack of pro-democracy propaganda from within the democracies themselves, and any external influence is heavily curtailed by the powers that be.
Every day, we are constantly told that democracy and human rights are the most important things in the world, and that everything the left doesn't like is an existential threat to our precious democracy.
And this is extremely dangerous to our democracy.
So the answer must come from something internal to democracy itself.
And it seems evident that Western democracies are actually not very responsive to the desires of their electorates.
When polled by Pew Research, people explain that simply democracy doesn't seem to function as they expected.
Overall, most people around the world are dissatisfied with democracy, with 61% of people believing that elected representatives do not care about the public.
38% agree with the statement that no matter who wins the election, things do not change very much.
And in the US and the UK, two-thirds of people think politicians don't care about them at all.
And this is not new.
In a 2014 study from Princeton University, they came to the conclusion that the United States was just an oligarchy, not a democracy.
As Vox magazine summarizes it, basically average citizens only get what they want if economic elites or interest groups also want it.
If fewer than 20% of wealthy Americans supported a policy change, it only happened about 18% of the time.
But when 80% of them were in support, the change ended up happening 45% of the time.
There's no similar effect for average Americans.
Historically, it is out of unrepresentative and disorderly oligarchies that Caesarean figures tend to arise.
When the state has gotten away from the people's interests and is in hock to an unaccountable faction, whether it is the centralized power in the oligarchy and disenfranchisement of the plebs which caused the downfall of the Roman Republic or the madcap seizure of power by an ideological cabal as happened with revolutionary France, it seems that a certain set of conditions needs to be present.
Lodceters.com has published a brand new print magazine called Islander.
This magazine contains unique articles written only for this publication and on page 29 you will find an excellent article entitled On the Future Dispensation by Charles Hayward in which he lays out requirements for a Caesar.
First, societal instability that creates disruption and chaos leading to an undesirable situation for many people.
Most commonly this is the inability to feed one's children.
It can also be oppression of some kind that leads to a spiral of violence or a catastrophic regime failure such as accidentally forcing some kind of poison on the population through greed and incompetence.
Second, the desire of a significant number of ordinary people to improve their situation.
Third, a belief of those people that regime change will improve their situation.
Fourth, the emergence of a ruthless, more or less sociopathic leader who desires to take personal advantage of this situation.
It seems that the United States does fulfil all of those criteria except the last.
No matter what the left say about him, Donald Trump is obviously not a ruthless Machiavellian sociopath, which is evidenced in the fact that his children obviously love him.
Recently, this photo of Baron Trump, Trump's youngest son, went viral on the internet, with many in the online right noticing that he does indeed look as though he could have been captured in portrait on a Roman coin.
Baron was also revealed to be interested in politics, apparently giving his father advice on what he ought to do, and was offered a position as a Republican delegate in Florida, though he turned this down due to prior commitments.
However, it seems that to many, although he's only 18, he might well be the future Caesar figure that they are anticipating.
After all, the parallels of the conditions that led to the emergence of Julius Caesar and Baron Trump are not so dissimilar.
Both were raised in a tempestuous and strongly divided political environment, while figures close to them were openly persecuted by their enemies.
The laws are applied selectively, with favour and prejudice, revealing stark cracks within a republic that is coming apart at the seams.
There are of course fewer prescriptions in the unravelling of the modern American Republic, but the treatment of the January 6th protesters shows us that it is only the magnitude and severity that is different, and not the underlying ethos.
As such, many are looking on excitedly at the prospect and seem to wish to meme Baron Trump into such position.
I would caution against this.
Not only am I not a proponent of Caesarism, but I also believe it is not appropriate to attempt to influence Baron in this direction.
As Hayward put it in his article, This is not to say that Caesar is necessarily inevitable or if he is inevitable, imminent, nor can our future be precisely derived from studying the past.
What happened in the time of Julius Caesar or at other historical moments shows us tendencies, not prophecies.
But it does seem likely, because it is the Gordian knot solution.
The rise of a Caesar is not merely the transfer of existing structures of power to new leadership.
Caesarism is the creation of wholly new structures of power, along with the substantial transformation of surviving structures of power, often following a great deal of precursor violence, and is itself frequently involving much violence.
It also casts a shadow across Baron Trump himself, as Hayward pointed out, the Caesar figure is ruthless and uncaring.
I don't know anything about Baron Trump, but I wouldn't want to say any such thing about any young person, especially one who has such large shoes to fill.
If, or perhaps when, an American Caesar were to emerge, he would be the product of a confluence of forces and events that are out of the control of any one personal faction.
It also would require a man who is not only ruthless, but clever, capable, and at heart a political animal who can grapple with the realities of the circumstances in which he finds himself.
He must have experience and connections to his name, and his goals must be to reshape the nature of the political environment itself.
As Hayward put it, it would be a new dispensation.
Such a thing will likely come, but the magnitude of the undertaking puts it beyond the power of us mere mortals to shape.
It is the product of dramatic forces which take hold of the spirit of the times and push them along on their own path.
But that is not to say that it's not understandable why people would want such a thing.
The political process in America has become uncooperative and calcified into two obstinate camps.
It seems that no good will come in the near future.
But I will reaffirm my commitment to the democratic process at this point and remind you that things are always darkest before the dawn.
From an online perspective, it is frustrating to watch events play out with no apparent movement.
But politics is glacial.
Nothing happens for a long time, then everything happens all at once.
With all this being said, it certainly isn't impossible that such a thing might happen, and even within our lifetimes.
The Democrat media certainly believes it's a possibility, and if they keep saying it often enough, perhaps they will have done their part to lay the groundwork for a future American empire.
In the event of such a thing, it is important to remember that it will be the obstinance of the political class and refusal to accept change in the necessary direction that people desire that will be the real root of the problem.
A Caesar requires popular support against the elite class, and the best way to prevent a Caesar is simply to give ground on certain issues to ensure that people feel that democracy actually serves their interests.
Where Caesar gains his power from the dispossessed public, they in turn gain indirect access to power in the form of a champion who will ostensibly at least do something that is in their interests.
As Plutarch noted in his Life of Lycurgus, political rigidity leads to revolution.
He compares the flexible and accommodating Spartan system in opposition to the unyielding kings of Messina and Argos, and tells us that who, by maintaining their prerogative too strictly for want of yielding a little to the populace, lost it all.
The less people feel invested in their own political system, the more imminent a Caesar becomes.
The American aristocracy also needs to understand that they cannot have it all their own way, and if they do, they don't just make an American Caesar possible, they make him desirable.
I will leave a link in the description where you can purchase this first issue of Islander.
It is an aesthetic and intellectual treat, one of its kind, and it will only be on sale until the middle of next month.
This is the only print run we will do of issue one, and it will never be available again.
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