America’s Circus Maximus

Roman games at the Circus Maximus reached their height under Emperor Trajan around 100 CE. Claude AI says there were 123 days of games involving 10,000 gladiators and 11, 000 animals. This period “coincided with Rome’s territorial height and increased wealth from conquests.

I dreamed about the Circus Maximus after an evening of watching the “news” recently. (I put news is brackets because, as a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism, I was taught that there was a difference between the news and opinion. Clearly that distinction has evaporated. Yes, we get the big chunks of “fact,” but it is always laced with looping reels showing the most extreme footage and pundits who have no problem sharing opinions.)

In my half sleep I kept think about the parallels with Rome.It feels to me like America is experiencing an echo of this earlier time. The purpose of the games in Rome was to promote the power and wealth of Rome, unite the people with shows of generosity, and satisfy human attraction to disruption and violence. Where Rome had the great Circus Maximus, there are challenges in our society which doesn’t have a physical Circus Maximus that can gather all the people. Media becomes that amphitheater. Media has some of the ingredients. It is good at communicating shock and disbelief. There are plenty of gladiators. But they aren’t physically concentrated. Our digital game area is an increasingly fragmented cacophony of warring political meme tribes, all having digital platforms and identified combatants ready for skewering, and completely different schedules.

But Jan 6 may have reignited the Circus Maximus meme. For a brief time, the Capitol and rotunda made do. The drama of gladiators against enforcers provided the chilling danger and even death that perpetuated the games. Media united in its round-the-clock coverage. Perhaps this parallel inflamed Trump’s imagination.

I know that Trump’s template in life is privilege embedded in a checkered past with his so-called peers in New York City. He eventually found fame in reality TV on the Apprentice and became adept at the jarring, attention-engaging performances he mounted around firing people. During this time, he was also involved with professional wrestling, hosting events at Trump venues. He was a friend of World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon. I also know that in 2000 Jeff Zucker was head of NBC Entertainment and became CEO in 2008 when the Apprentice was being produced. He felt the show was very good at increasing view ship and was a big supporter. He became CEO of CNN in 2013 and featured Trump 30% more than other channels during the election. CNN seemed quite critical of Trump at the time, but it struck me then that CNN and Trump were engaged, not in public discourse, but in professional political wrestling.

I also know from experience that professional success templates are very difficult to change, and it appears that Trump has no interest in deviating from his own success pattern. The problem is how to get the roar of the crowds that he expects from his rallies on a more national stage, where there isn’t one media Circus Maximus. It appears now that he is tearing a page out of Trajan’s playbook and simply increasing the number and intensity of “games.”

I can imagine his thinking about his new MAGA show. “Let’s relive Jan 6 by empowering the gladiators with pardons! Let’s go to Pacific Palisades and throw Governor Newsom against the ropes! (Forget Altadena, it’s not game material.) Then let’s round up immigrants at schools, hospitals, and churches and directly defy my predecessor’s cautions in that regard. That will enrage the audience. Let’s drill in the Arctic refuge! And hold on, I have episodes planned around Greenland, Panama, and Ukraine with Hegseth and Kennedy making dramatic guest appearances.”

You can infer from my earlier writing that the whole idea of gladiator games as a substitute for governance grinds my moral compass like the heel of a boot crushing an old man’s glasses. But it also leads me to reflect on the type of society that accepts all this by paying attention. Does the major media have any responsibility as they provide the bleachers for the circus? Are we complicit by giving our attention to this man who’s byproduct is generating new wealth for those that perpetuate the games? How numbed are we willing to be as more and more people’s lives are destroyed and maimed by the outrage?

I need to break this upsetting line of thinking. Maybe I’ll take a walk with Jesus (See earlier blog piece), skip the circus, and pray for the hapless victims in this national distraction. It saddens me to think that the Circus Maximus metaphor may be real.