The Reign of Error 2
Trumpet
(2017)
Potest solum unum vox pop. — There can be only one voice of the people.
Quintus Curtus Rufus didn’t know why people insisted on separating politics from economics. They were in fact the same thing. Curtus knew that numbers determined economics, economics determined politics, and politics determined numbers. It was a Chain of Being no one could deny. Those who lived by any other philosophy were sentimentalists.
It therefore followed that the philosophy of a historian shouldn’t take a sentimental attitude toward events, but rather an attitude that towered above all sentiment. History, once glossed by the Reality of the Market and the Invisible Hand of Things, lost all its partiality. This was because the writing of true history was itself guided by Things, by the world as it was — not by what Hegel and liberal academics wanted it to be. If history ceased to be written in the interest of the Invisible Hand that guided It, all it amounted to was fake news.
If the emperor believed he was a god, and if he believed that his nation was above all other nations, then it befitted his subjects to acknowledge this new reality, instead of going on about the Olden Days, Augustinian bricks and marble, the fabled Republic, Paxes Romana or otherwise. Let them jabber about Romana, Britannica, or Americana. At no other time in the history of mankind had one nation accumulated so much power or so many things. Even Xerxes Kardashian was green with envy. All one had to do is look around to see that the United States of America was the centre of the world.
The "Tellus" panel of the Ara Pacis (Altar of Augustan Peace), 9 BC, in the Museum of the Ara Pacis, Rome
But somehow being the greatest power on earth wasn't enough. The recent bout of anxiety began in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. Here, the Leader-in-Chief declared that the U.S. now recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Immediately, paramedics were scrambled throughout the Tri-State area. The announcement had set on fire the hair of several thousand Reformed Jews. Once they were hosed down and cooled off, they conceded that of course Jerusalem would be the capital, eventually. Yet announcing this prematurely — without also announcing that East Jerusalem would be the Palestinian capital, and without giving context to the ongoing negotiations — weakened America’s position as a negotiator. It also made Jews look like the Americanized bullies the Palestinians accused them of being.
Following the announcement, the New York Times suggested a variety of ways Trump’s announcement wasn’t likely to improve his image on the international stage:
Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem isolates the United States on one of the world’s most sensitive diplomatic issues. It has drawn a storm of criticism from Arab and European leaders, which swelled on Tuesday night after the White House confirmed Mr. Trump’s plans.
Pope Francis and the Chinese foreign ministry joined the chorus of voices warning that the move could unleash a wave of violence across the region. At a meeting in Brussels, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson was sternly reproached by European allies.
Taking the large view of The Great Historical Sweep, from Empire to Empire, Curtis noted that this was the announcement of a single day, a single day during a year in which every day brought forth a new wonder for the American people to think about. 2017, Annus Mirabilis.
And yet the older rabbis also worried about the manner of the announcement, not just about the content. The problem was the way it was shouted out: without context, without learning. The rabbis were happy to have the blond and buxom likes of Ivanka in their ranks, but did they really want her pig-headed father speaking for Israel? He was nothing but a loud-mouthed schmuck! Although the rabbis all differed on how an American president should deal with enemies of the Promised Land, they all agreed that a turban looked almost as bad as that orange thing on his head.
When they looked up into the New York sky, the rabbis didn't hear the voice of God. They didn't see a break in the clouds, or a fissure through which some angel might trumpet better news. All they heard was the blast of right-wing evangelical Christian trumpets, and all they saw was a gleaming steel building rising into the heavens. Trumpet Tower. This, they feared, was the only trumpeting place that mattered to the man with the orange hair.
"To the trumpeting place" stone from the Jerusalem Archaeology Garden in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem; Author: Yoav Dothan, Wikimedia Commons
Yet Curtus didn't complain. The trains were running on time. The factories were operating full blast, and the stores were bursting with new items. America was the best of all possible worlds. History itself — the pounding of the great Demiurge upon the physical substance of the material world — was once again being guided by the Invisible Hand. This Hand had maintained its grasp since the days of Alexander and Augustus, Tiberius, and Gaius. Today, history was guided by a Destiny ever more Manifest: America, Primus Inter Gentes.
Curtus had little respect for historians who ignored these facts. Who ignored, for instance, that Jerusalem was as their Leader said, “the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times,” and that its recognition “is nothing more, or less, than a recognition of reality.”
Curtus knew that fake historians would try to invent convoluted arguments against these facts. They would concoct spurious theories based on what they called archaeological evidence, evidence that they themselves admitted didn’t exist. They would claim that since there’s no evidence for the First Temple, and since all that’s left of the Second Temple is a stone or two, therefore the Jewish claim on the city is hardly more convincing than that of the Palestinians. Some would even collaborate with the infidels and argue that the Hebrews were in fact Canaanites.
Other writers conceded that the trains were running on time, yet they went on to concoct all sorts of hyperbolic fabrications, which they published in liberal rags like The Frantic Atlantic. One article he read was particularly puzzling. Curtus couldn’t decide if it was a parody of the present political situation, or a parody of those who made the present situation the object of their parody. The article was called “Doom.”
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Next: The Reign of Error 3: Doom