John Wight’s Coronavirus Digest #2

In this edition:

Donald Trump’s Caligula moment, the mad scientist Dominic Cummings, and Keir Starmer’s tie

For four years between 37 and 41 CE the Roman Empire was ruled by one Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. He is known both to history and infamy as Caligula, an historical figure whose very name is synonymous with wanton cruelty, barbarity, caprice, sadism, perversity and a disordered mind. Among his more outlandish ideas was his plan to make his horse a consul — in other words a high official within his retinue of officials and advisers. Caligula, somewhat inevitably, was assassinated, hacked to pieces by his own Praetorian Guard in his own palace.

History repeats itself, Marx famously opined, first as tragedy, second as farce. In the personage of Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, tragedy and farce are both present. The tragedy was his election in 2016, which marked the nadir of this grand experiment in placing democratic lipstick on the pig of a state and subsequent empire forged in genocide, ethnic cleansing and human slavery. It was a victory for…