That viciousness — the sense of a revolution as a sort of purifying fire — is a zeal rarely seen in US history or British history, unless one counts … - Charlie Kirk

When Trump-hating media star and CNN hostess/comedienne/filth-purveyor Kathy Griffin held up a fake bloodied Donald Trump head in a photo (subsequently being let go by CNN because of it), she may have been closer to the Rome-like truth than she realized — not because Trump is a dictator deserving death but because he, like Cicero, is targeted by powerful forces who mistake themselves for the Republic’s protectors but are in fact in the process of destroying it.

Cicero came from a wealthy family, and through his oratory became what we might now dub a major media star in ancient Rome. He could have enjoyed a life of luxury and avoided conflict but regarded his foray into politics, necessitated by his sense of civic duty, as his greatest achievement. He spent much of that political career combating conspiracies to overthrow the republic, in a fashion that might well be dismissed as paranoid by the complacent elitists of our own day. His fears were proven tragically correct, though, as Julius Caesar (sometimes talked about now as if he were the very pinnacle of Roman achievement but in truth a dictator who was the death knell of the Republic) pushed Rome in the direction of empire. Cicero himself ended up executed by government soldiers, his head and hands later displayed on Rome’s central public speaking platform, a final taunt to Mark Antony — one of Caesar’s allies, and after Caesar’s assassination, part of Rome’s ruling triumvirate.

It is unconscionable that for decades we’ve expected heroes maimed by American involvement in unresolved conflicts overseas, and the families of those killed in those fights, to accept “We tried” as the best assessment of what was achieved by the fighting. Surveys now show most American soldiers think our recent wars have been unproductive. Maybe they, away from the spin machines of the Washington policy establishment, know what they’re talking about.