Richard Painter - American Nero: The History of the Destruction of the Rule of Law, and Why Trump Is the Worst Offender

Contents

Praise for American Nero

Whenever Richard Painter appears in public to offer his lacerating opinionson Donald Trump's unethical actions, I stop to listen. In this revealing book,Painter and writer Peter Golenbock, place those sharp opinions in a fascinatinghistorical context.

David Maraniss, author of The Red Scare and My Father

A quintessential book! Usually, political experts do not understand or appreciate enough of the psychological domain, and psychological experts enough of the political domain, for the two areas to meet. This has proven a debilitating deficiency in the era of Donald Trump. Richard Painter and Peter Golenbock take an important step to correcting this. Through their keen awareness of the importance of psychological soundness in a leader, they demonstrate the devastations that can resultnot just to democracy and the rule of law but to the survival of humankindwhen we hand power to a dangerously disordered one. Through parallels with this sick presidency, they issue a stark warning before we go the same route as two other empires that collapsed, both more established and longer in duration than we so far, because of a leaders psychological defects.

Bandy X. Lee, professor at Yale School of Medicine and editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

While this book is intended to provide accurate and up-to-date information, because of the potential for civil and criminal appeals, its impossible to ensure all the information provided is accurate at the time of publication.

American Nero copyright 2020 by Richard Painter and Peter Golenbock

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

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First E-Book Edition: March 2020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control Number: 201904662

ISBN 9781948836012 (trade cloth)

ISBN 9781950665273 (electronic)

Editing by Lee Oglesby and Alexa Stevenson

Copyediting by Scott Calamar

Proofreading by Michael Fedison

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Text design by Aaron Edmiston

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To William H. Painter (19272018)

And to Wendy Grassi, Wendy Golenbock, and Robert Golenbock,
love you all.

CONTENTS

T HE FIRST QUESTION A READER MIGHT ASK IS WHY THIS book is entitled American Nero. What does Nero have to do with Donald Trump? There was a Roman emperor famous for building a wall, but it was not Nero. The reason the book is called American Nero is because the emperor, like Donald Trump, was a notorious narcissist who put himself above everyone else, causing chaos and confusion with every irrational decision.

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (December 15, 37June 9, 68 AD) was the last Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was a man with low self-esteem who would cheat the system and declare himself a winner whenever he could. He rigged the Olympic Games in 67 AD to win the chariot race, even though hed been thrown out of the chariot while making a turn. During public performances, he would wow his audience with his singing ability, though in fact he had a weak voice. The audience dared not reveal to him the truth about his meager talent lest he feed them to the lions.

Nero was obsessed with popularity and loyaltythe loyalty of others to him, of course. He paid informants to spy on the senators to see who was loyal to him and who wasnt. He wanted to know who applauded his stage performances, who flattered him and fawned on him. He especially wanted to know who mocked him.

Publius Clodius Thrasea Paetus was one senator who didnt make the cut. He refused to take an oath of loyalty, kept his hands in his lap during Neros performances, and stormed out of the senate when Nero defended himself for murdering his own mother. Nero had him tried for treason, found guilty, and forced to commit suicide.

Nero felt his mother, Agrippina, favored her other son, Britannicus. Agrippina had criticized Nero for shacking up with a slave. Nero, like all narcissists, wouldnt abide criticism, so he banished his mother from the castle. She died mysteriously. Britannicus died suddenly and mysteriously while attending a banquet.

Nero killed his wife, Octavia. Though he had her death ruled a suicide, Nero sent Octavias head to his mistress, Poppaea, as a gift.

It didnt stop at murder. In ten years, Nero stripped the senate of all its power, and in a display of arrogance and poor judgment, he decided he no longer needed to heed the wishes of the senators.

Nero was a nativist. He sought to rid his country of Christians, whom he relentlessly persecuted.

Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths, the historian Tacitus wrote. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired.

Nero was said to have ordered the execution of the Apostle Paul, and in one of the worst fake news events of world history, when Rome burned down, he blamed the Christians for its destruction.

Nero bankrolled a lavish, expensive lifestyle with funds from the Roman government. To build an extravagant villa, an edifice to himself, he raised taxes and stole money from the local temples. In one of his last moves, he reinstated a policy that allowed him to confiscate property from anyone suspected of treason. Of course, he alone decided who was suspected of treason.

In 65 AD, Nero discovered a plot to assassinate him, so he killed many of those involved, including former advisors and close friends.

Now he was universally hated. Nero had no friends left. He had killed them all. When his own army deserted him, he knew it was time to flee.

Nero was assailed by his enemies for being greedy, frivolous, and self-indulgent, and the senate ordered him to be beaten to death. In his own defense, he claimed to be an artist who was misunderstood. As he heard the hoofbeats of the horses bearing the men ordered to carry out his execution, Nero refused to give them the satisfaction and ended his life by suicide.

Nero was the fifth Roman emperor, succeeding Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, and Claudius in that order. These emperors succeeded a series of authoritarian leaders who had gradually transformed Rome from a republic to a dictatorship. Much of the political foundation for the rise of dictators and emperors including Nero had been laid ninety years earlier during the populist dictatorship of Julius Caesar, who ruled from 49 to 44 bc.

Most dictatorships emerge out of other authoritarian governments, as happened after the French Revolution, which began in 1789, and the Russian Revolution in 1917. Rome was one of two examples in history of a major economic and military power being transformed from a republic into a dictatorship. The second example was the transformation of the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany in 1933.