There is a story about the Roman emperor Caligula. It concerns his favorite horse, Incitatus.
The word Incitatus apparently means “one who moves quickly.”
Caligula unquestionably favored Incitatus and treated him exceedingly well. Whether he actually appointed the horse to the Roman senate, or made him consul, is not known definitively.
I’m not sure quite what led me to associate Incitatus with Matt Gaetz. I’m not so familiar with Roman history or mythology, and I certainly didn’t know Incitatus’s name before I googled “Caligula horse consul.” (Actually, I Perplexity’d “tell me the story of California
But having done so, and having done just a little reading, I learned both that I’m spot on and not alone in my thinking that Matt Gaetz is Incitatus. Some take the story of Caligula’s nomination of Incitatus as evidence of his mental illness. But the more dominant reading of the tale is one which feels more apt for the moment: naming a horse to the senate was a giant “fuck you” to the senators. In one stroke, it made clear both what Caligula thought of the senators and the power he had over them to humiliate them.
Does anyone think Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz is anything different?
I sure don’t.
As far as I’m concerned, Matt Gaetz is Incitatus. Or maybe Trump’s sub. And just as Caligula was a catastrophe for the Roman Empire, so too is his modern-day equivalent a threat to the American democracy.
