Old lies, new lies

What just happened in the USA is nothing new. I write historical fiction, and if it’s any help to right-thinking people in America, it’s happened throughout history.

We know this. I can still hear my grandparents quoting, “There’s nowt so strange as folk.” People repeat their mistakes over and over again.

So let me take you back way beyond the fascists and dictators we’ve all heard about.

Julius Caesar found a way to manipulate and dupe the Roman public. He arranged to have a free hand throughout Gaul (modern day France and Belgium) where he committed genocide and justified it with letters and articles to be posted in the Forum back in Rome and circulated among the people.

Pure 2,000-year-old social media. It secured him the popular vote.

His AI was several skilled writers and editors who obeyed his every whim.

It made him rich. He went to Gaul heavily in debt and returned a wealthy man on the back of slavery and control of a vast area of natural resources.

Roman democracy was already a joke and subject to Musk-like bribery. He played the system.

Photo: Bing AI

Can we believe anything we read in Caesar’s own account of his subjugation of Gaul, Commentarii de Bello Gallico?

His aim was absolute control in Rome. His allies were duped and by the time he crossed the Rubicon, he mistakenly believed Rome and a potential empire were his and his alone.

Sound familiar?

Trump has now crossed his Rubicon. Will educated people fold in despair like Pompey and the Senate did?

I’ve just read Walter Rhein’s Substack, “I’d Rather Be Writing” in which he says, “Constant lies have an effect on people. We can’t expect our fellow Americans to ‘know better’ when nobody defends them against the cesspool of lies. Do we really not understand that misinformation is a threat to democracy?” (Link below).

I’m midway through writing the second book in a series set in that time when Caesar had swept throughout Gaul and turned his attention on Britain, hopefully published next year.

One of Caesar’s ‘editors’ was Aulus Hirtius, unashamedly gay and ultimately noble enough to see the folly of the regime that Caesar built. He plays a part in my story, trying to understand the politics from both sides but not finding redemption until after Caesar’s death.

My sympathies in at least three novels will be firmly in the Celtic camp. A friend once warned, Celtic historical novels are not popular because they lost. My view is, well that’s history for you, so did the Jews in the Holocaust, but that didn’t stop many moving and inspirational accounts.

The other aspect that I will always champion is women’s rights, a theme that Trump can brush aside with lies like ‘I will protect women’. My stories are not mere cut-and-thrust military heroics. All of them, now and in the future, feature women who suffer more than men:

A priestess who found herself in the path of the Roman invasion of Gaul; a Philistine princess and her Hebrew servant in the time preceding the Davidic monarchy of Israel; a handmaiden to Queen Cleopatra at make-or-break time for Rome; a poised young woman who will rule a city-port in southern Spain.

Middle East and Mediterranean powers did not want women like this and will do unspeakable things to those who think differently. Again, not just an ancient attitude.

Spin doctors and liars

I’ve been a frontline journalist (politics, among other things) and I’ve run a PR company in my chequered past. Currently, I advise a small island government on their media relations. So I get the temptation to ‘spin’ the facts.

That I will not do. But Caesar did. So do modern politicians the world over. So does Trump, even more outrageously every time he opens his mouth.

The trick is not to be duped. Too late for the USA. Or is it…?

So what are we to do?

For those in America (and anywhere for that matter) who feel genuine grief at what happened on November 5, especially Kamala Harris, remember the words of REM:

When the day is long, hold on.

Everybody hurts, take comfort in your friends, everybody hurts

Don’t throw your hand when you feel like you’re alone

When you think you’ve had too much of this life to hang on

Everybody hurts, sometimes everybody cries

Everybody hurts sometimes.

Hold on…”

And don’t forget to smile

My Latin teacher in a light-hearted moment, on the blackboard:

“Caesar adsum jam forte, Brutus aderat”

Links

Walter Rhein: Your Fellow Americans Are Not Your Enemy, Misinformation Is Your Enemy

Links to my books and social media