The present spectacle of President Trump denouncing the House’s bipartisan rebuke over his Iranian escapade as ‘unpatriotic’ is but another scene in a long-running tragedy of American political decay. It recalls not the robust debates of the Founding Fathers but the hysterical recriminations of a late Roman court, where loyalty was measured by applause and dissent by the dagger. Mr Trump’s tantrum – for it is little else – reveals a deeper malady: the erosion of any shared understanding of national interest.
The House resolution, however flawed, sought to remind the executive that war powers are not a personal fiefdom. Yet the President’s response is to cry treason. This is the language of a man who mistakes his own whim for the nation’s will.
One thinks of Caligula, who demanded his horse be made consul. Here, we have a president demanding that his every rash act be hailed as patriotic. The chaos in the White House is not a bug; it is a feature.
It reflects a governing philosophy that prizes loyalty over competence, and spectacle over substance. The Iran crisis, born of a reckless assassination and a bungled retaliation, is now a backdrop for this latest instalment of executive narcissism. The intellectual decadence of modern conservatism, which once prided itself on realism and prudence, has given way to a cult of personality.
The President’s men, from the Secretary of State to the National Security Advisor, appear less as statesmen than as courtiers, each vying to outdo the other in sycophancy. Meanwhile, the nation drifts, its alliances frayed, its institutions mocked. This is not the Fall of Rome; it is the farce of a republic that has forgotten its own virtues.
The House rebuke, for all its procedural gravity, is a symptom of the same disease: a legislature that cannot legislate, but only posture. In the Victorian era, such a display would have been met with a stiff upper lip and a quiet reform. Today, we have only rage and recrimination.
The American experiment, once the envy of the world, now resembles a reality show. And the audience, weary and bewildered, wonders when the credits will roll.
