After breaking pretty much every convention, and certainly the expectations of the Founding Fathers, Donald Trump has essentially declared he is Emperor, or at least as much of an emperor as is currently possible. But, I have to give him credit, he’s done things that I didn’t think were possible.

With the exception of Mitt Romney, who’s now facing potential censure by the Utah state legislature for his vote to convict Trump, Trump has turned the Republican Senate into slobbering and apologetic lap-dogs. He’s continuing to gut environmental protection, and the people who suffer the most are, paradoxically, those who support Trump. His tariffs and trade wars are hurting the farm sector, and he’s kept the support of out-of-work or underemployed and undereducated white males, as well as the evangelicals, despite having given them nothing but enormous quantities of the rhetoric they want to hear.

His supporters cite the great economy, but the vast majority of economic benefits have gone to the top 5-10% of the population. Serious and well-researched studies show that real inflation is running at 6% annually, while the “official” rate is 1.8%, or thereabout. Who cares? The stock market is at an all-time high – except all the Trump cheerleaders don’t seem to understand that the stock market is so high and the Fed can still push T-bills because there’s no other place to get any return on savings… and, again, those capital gains and dividends [now approaching an all-time low, by the way] aren’t generally going to Trump supporters, who are lucky to get 1-2% on their savings accounts, if they even have enough money to save.

Is Mitt Romney the closest we can come to a Brutus? Well, the original Brutus ended up committing suicide after Antony and Octavian defeated him in battle. While I don’t expect Mitt Romney to do that, he’s definitely committed political suicide, particularly with the Republicans.

What’s overlooked in comparing the United States republic to the Roman Republic is that the root cause of the disaster that destroyed the Roman Republic and threatens ours wasn’t a bullying strongman like Caesar or Trump, but the underlying corruption of the Senate… and just like Brutus’s assassination of Caesar, which simply resulted in one strongman replacing another, the figurative or literal assassination of Trump, or even his defeat in the next election [which is appearing highly unlikely] will not address the underlying problems of corruption, especially a Senate that’s up for sale to the highest bidder.