Crossing the Rubicon Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Newspaper front pages with former U.S. President Donald Trump are displayed at a news stand in New York on March 31, 2023. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

The time was 49 BC. The players were Julius Caesar and the members of Rome’s Senate. Caesar had shown himself to be one of the most gifted generals in Rome’s history: In a remarkable series of campaigns starting in 58 BC and conducted over approximately eight years, Caesar turned Gaul from a hostile territory into a pacified Roman province.

Caesar’s goal was to become ruler of Rome. He was popular with the common people and often championed their interests against Rome’s powerful elites. The elites had enriched themselves by corrupting public officials to accumulate vast tracts of land at the expense of those less powerful. As a result of his military success, widespread popularity, and populist policies, it’s no surprise that the elite interests in the Senate vehemently opposed Caesar. In 49 BC the senate made its move: It ordered him to disband his army.

This left Caesar with a difficult decision: He could disband his army and return to Rome, and most likely fail in his goal, or he could march his army across the river Rubicon and take power in an open act of rebellion. The latter move would make civil war inevitable.

Caesar chose the latter course. As he crossed the Rubicon, he famously said, “Alea iacta est” (the die is cast). This move did, indeed, lead to a civil war, which Caesar eventually won. He took power, established the dictatorial Roman empire, and, in doing so, ended the republic. Ultimately, it also led to Caesar’s murder on March 15, 44 BC at the hands of his Senate enemies.

In modern usage, “crossing the Rubicon” refers to an irreversible act that commits one to a fateful course of events. This usage relies on the idea that it was Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon that ultimately caused the collapse of Rome’s republican form of government.

Yet, major tensions had been building in Rome for decades. One trend was political corruption: The elite increasingly used their power to pass laws that favored their interests. Another was rising economic inequality: The interests that were being favored were those that led to elite control of most of the land resources, which—in an agrarian society—resulted in the widespread loss of economic opportunity among the common people. Another was the insertion of military power into internal affairs: This became possible as soldiers increasingly shifted loyalty away from the state and onto their military commanders who, themselves, belonged to one political faction or another.

Thus, according to one school of thought, although Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon may have been the proximate cause of the social chaos that followed, a blowup was inevitable one way or the other. The toxic trends causing the rifts in Roman society couldn’t be stopped using the very same social institutions that they had so perverted. The point of no return had really been crossed long before: when the toxic trends had become self-sustaining and unstoppable through existing institutions. Once those dynamics were in place, something would inevitably happen to break the system. Historically, Caesar was that something.

On Thursday, March 30, Tucker Carlson said, referring to the indictment of Donald Trump announced just hours before his show, that, “there is no coming back from this moment.” In other words, by his analysis, the Democrats had just initiated a crossing-the-Rubicon act. To be historically accurate, though, this was not such a moment. Rather, this was just the latest increment in our present socioeconomic dynamic—eerily analogous to Rome, 49 BC—which is pushing this country toward the brink.

In response to the Trump indictment, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced, “Florida will not assist in an extradition request,” which will hardly be remembered as a pivotal moment in history. A crossing-the-Rubicon moment would have been putting the Florida National Guard on alert and then announcing, “If the Democrats and their allies want a civil war, then this is where it is going to start. I will not permit President Trump to be extradited against his will and will use force to prevent it if necessary.” That would have rated as an irrevocable commitment. And many are breathing a sigh of relief that it was not.

In my judgment, that sigh is premature. Perhaps Trump will be the something that pushes us over the Rubicon as he responds to the long stream of machinations by the powerful elites who are attempting to take him off the political chess board. Maybe it will be something or someone else. The point is that, whoever or whatever it is, it’s difficult to see how the toxic forces at work in this country can be stopped before some such cataclysmic event causes the system to self-destruct. That will be remembered as the crossing-the-Rubicon event. But the real pivot point was reached when the toxic forces presently in play could no longer be turned back through the normal operation of the existing institutions.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.