Let’s Go Ancient on Donald Trump’s Ass

This, right here, is really all that Joe Biden needs to say in order to win the election.

By the time Donald Trump proclaimed himself a wartime president — and the coronavirus the enemy — the United States was already on course to see more of its people die than in the wars of Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined.

The country has adopted an array of wartime measures never employed collectively in U.S. history — banning incoming travelers from two continents, bringing commerce to a near-halt, enlisting industry to make emergency medical gear, and confining 230 million Americans to their homes in a desperate bid to survive an attack by an unseen adversary.

Despite these and other extreme steps, the United States will likely go down as the country that was supposedly best prepared to fight a pandemic but ended up catastrophically overmatched by the novel coronavirus, sustaining heavier casualties than any other nation.

It did not have to happen this way. Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that ultimately fared far better in fending off the virus.

The failure has echoes of the period leading up to 9/11: Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck.

Actually, Biden will have to do more than just say this. He will have to counter all the disinformation that is thrown up in the air by the right in an effort to obfuscate the facts and distract the public.

What really ought to happen though is what happened to Thucydides, the famous Athenian general and historian. After failing to capture Amphipolis, he was exiled for 20 years. That’s how the Greeks often dealt with failed commanders who survived their defeats. Of course, Thucydides used his time in exile most productively and wrote one of the great histories of all antiquity. Trump wouldn’t do anything of value in exile, but why should we care?

He failed. He should be voted off the island. Instead of a regular election in November, we should hold an ostracism.

Ostracism was a political process used in 5th-century BCE Athens whereby those individuals considered too powerful or dangerous to the city were exiled for 10 years by popular vote…

…The decision whether or not to ostracise individuals was taken once each year. First, the decision to hold a vote on ostracism was presented to the popular assembly of Athens, the ekklesia, which met on the hill of Pnyx. There up to 6,000 male citizens voted to proceed or not. If agreed, a special meeting known as the ostracophoria was organised in the agora on a particular day in the eighth prytany in the year (which was divided into ten such units). The voting was supervised by the executive council of 500 (boule) and the 9 highest administrative officials, the archons (archontes). Citizens voted against a particular candidate by scratching his name on a piece of pottery, an ostrakon. Voting was done anonymously. Officials known as phylai then collected the ostraka and made sure that nobody voted twice.

For the result of an ostracism to be effective a minimum of 6,000 votes had to be cast. Then the officials announced which individual had amassed the most votes and that person was ostracised, that is in the original meaning of the term, exiled. There was no possibility of appeal against the decision. The man was given 10 days to organise his affairs and then he must leave the city and never return to the region of Attica for a period of 10 years.

You might think I’m kidding, but I’d rather have the country rebuke Trump by kicking him out of our territory rather than simply out of office. It’s the best punishment for someone who thought he could make America great by denying certain kind of immigrants the right to come here. Of course, he could be stripped of all his property and thrown in prison, too, but that’s too modern for my tastes. I choose something more civilized than going medieval on his ass, but still more basic than what can be provided by our modern judicial system and sensibilities. I want to go ancient on his ass.