(Rome’s first Emperor, Augustus (63 BCE – 14 AD), ruled for over 40 years; expanding territory and establishing many institutions, systems and customs that would endure for hundreds of years).

What a week. What a year! I stepped out on the back deck to inhale my first lung of Marlboro tars this morning and saw it was going to be magnificent. I paused and allowed the smoke to drift, since there was also a poignant aspect of this beauty, since it is doomed to die. The forewarnings of the first frost have already stiffened passed. But beauty has always passed, in time, though it always strikes with an ethereal vibrancy.

Today, the sky is an impossible limitless blue. The Sun is bright with optimistic yellow. It is the kind of day that makes a simple person in the simple country feel simply wonderful.
I have mentioned over the last few months that the flood of unrequested mail-in ballots associated with our response to a deadly plague might cause some problems. They have, in an oddly mismatched way. Florida was the state that last showed us a clown-show back in 2000 AD (whatever) over elections.
Their response was to establish a fairly rigorous process to deal with mail-in and absentee ballots. It took them twenty years to get it mostly right. The rest of the country was supposed to do the same after a few months without direction from the legislatures. It was fun, and the results were predictably determined by those who counted the votes, not those who may or may not have cast them.

The result will be some minor litigation over the next few months, and in some, the belief that the books were cooked on this one. But in the interests of the nation, we are expected to accept whatever the results are that they tell us an go on with life. I hope we can go back to being Iran’s best pal, rejoin the Paris climate agreement, eliminate single family zoning in the suburbs and favor people based on the color of their skin like the last time Mr. Biden held office.

Thank goodness. One of the other things I mentioned along the way in this tortured year was that it was going to be a historic election. I was right again, as you would expect from the relentlessly bipartisan Socotra team. You have to go back aways in this country to see anything like this. Maybe Tilden and Rutherford was the contest that had as much fun as we are having now. It evokes a certain eerie resemblance. But there are others, some still remembered long after they happened.

In 133 BC, Rome was a democracy. Sorry, that was changed recently. Not the democracy part- just the date. They called it something else in their time, before the Patriarchs stuffed their religious dogma on us. I think the common acceptable term these days is ‘Before Current Era,’ or something. It is hard to keep up with a constantly changing past in an uncertain present and an unknown future. But take this as a measure of chronology, just a century later Rome was governed by an Emperor. This imperial system has become, for us, a by-word for autocracy and the arbitrary exercise of power.

Regardless of what they say, the Romans had a great sense of humor, just as we do today. We can observe great change and simply laugh about it through our masks.
At the end of the second century, BCE, the Roman people formed the basis of ‘the sovereign.’ Power flowed from the people to other people who had to do the heavy lifting True, like today, rich aristocrats dominated politics. In order to become one of those annually elected ‘magistrates’ a man had to be very rich. Just like today.

Back then, even the system of voting was selectively weighted to give more influence to the votes of the wealthy, just as it is now. Similar to today’s America, ultimate power lay with the mass of the Roman people. Large assemblies elected the magistrates, made the laws and took major state decisions in hand, knowing that if they were bad, they could be overturned the next year.
Rome prided itself on being a ‘free republic’ and centuries later, it was the political model for the founding fathers of the United States. The exciting changes that changed the Roman Republic were well documented. They called their system to be one based on the ‘Senate and Roman People (SPQR).’ It is still carved into old stones now cast aside by later developments.
By 14 AD- ‘Year of Our Lord,’ or ‘Anno Domini’ is something else now, but it marked the passing of first Roman Emperor Augustus. In his life, popular elections had all but disappeared. Power was concentrated not in the old republican forum, but in the imperial palace. The assumption was that Augustus’s heirs would inherit his rule over the Roman world. And so they did.
In celebration of the change, there were a lot of public parades by impressively armed columns of men. Much feasting, and rivers of fine wine.

There were certainly men with swords, fine dining aplenty and an ocean of wine before Augustus, but one-man rule was something new for them. Even the Romans acknowledged it was nothing short of a revolution, distilled in a century of constant sometimes civil strife and sometimes open warfare. This ended when Augustus – ‘Octavian’ as he was then called – finally crushed his last remaining rivals. The bold Mark Antony and beguilingly lovely Cleopatra were overwhelmed in 31 BCE, and Augustus established himself alone on the throne.

Two people sitting on a tableDescription automatically generated
I prefer to remember them as Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, since the memory of that change is still alive a couple milleniums later and now on the silver screen. And digital, just like our elections today.

I wonder if the election in 2020 will have that sort of endurance? I have confidence it is going to be at least as much fun. Certainly there will be enough wine.

Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com