"Let all of the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out."

There is still hope.

While our vision for the future of our democracy may not go our way, it may be of some very small consolation to remember the comment of the Roman Emperor Claudius (10 B.C - 54 A.D), as imagined by his biographer Robert Graves in his novel "I Claudius",which drew on Graves' translation from the Latin of "The Twelve Caesars" by Suetonius.*

To quote the Emperor Claudius in Graves' book,  “I have decided Nero should follow me so that one day the empire will revert back to the Republic, that is to some form of representative government. I have been too good an emperor, too fair and too honest. I will give Rome Nero and when he is done with Rome, Rome will be done with emperors altogether. It will be bad, exceedingly bad…worse even than Caligula but they have to have the whole terrible truth about just how bad it can be before they come to their senses. Let all of the poisons that lurk in the mud, hatch out."

To draw a parallel, I believe that Donald Trump will become, or already is,  our country's modern day Nero, who, along with the billionaires who financed his campaign  and his menagerie of right-wing crackpots, fanatics, sycophants, cranks, and ex-cons who will populate his cabinet, will thoroughly repulse the American people in their abuses and perversions of power. It will be in the backlash to this poisoning of our democracy that the American people will sweep out the Republican Representatives and Senators who are up for election in 2026. The new Congress will then have the power to restrain Trump and exact appropriate remedies.

We will get through this together.