Reconciliation, not Retribution
Making my peace with the madness of the 2024 election is going to require some help, from its winner
I don’t imagine Donald Trump has any interest in taking advice from the likes of me. For one thing, he doesn’t much like taking advice from anyone.
For another, I’m the sort he’s spent the last year calling vermin, scum, demonic, the enemy within.
Of course, that’s true of roughly half the people Trump just got himself elected to govern. So in the spirit of keeping the country governable, I’ll persist. Here’s a modest suggestion for the incoming president. Take a page from a leadership playbook shared by the Roman Emperor Theodosius and the English King Henry II.
Both were the sort of brutally powerful leaders Mr. Trump and his testosterone-fueled MAGA-bro campaign would have admired. Henry II even kept his queen locked away in a tower for the last 15 years of his reign.
Yet both performed remarkable acts of contrition at a crucial moment when they had gotten sideways with their people.
In the 4th century Theodosius sent troops to put down a protest at a chariot track in Thessalonica. They ended up massacring seven thousand men, women and children. That was brutal even by the standards of the day…
