Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned
By: Dr. Zach Zachariah
Tags: Tweetstorm, Donald Trump, Nero, Politics, Covid 19 Crisis

Nero Fiddled While Rome Burned

Image: Via Shutterstock

Nero was the boy-emperor who ruled Rome in the first century A.D. His mother, Agrippina, married Emperor Claudius intending to make her son his heir. Agrippina murdered Claudius by ingesting him with poisonous mushrooms. Nero, when he became the emperor, was ruthless and murdered his mother. He made plans to tear down a third of Rome and build a series of palaces known as Neropolis, which the Roman senate did not approve. A fire broke out near Rome’s chariot stadium. Emperor Nero was nowhere near, and the city burned continuously for several days, destroying 70 percent of the buildings. A contemporary historian, Tacitus, claimed that Nero watched Rome burn while merrily playing his fiddle. This historical background was summarized from the account of an episode of Secrets of the Dead on PBS.

Nero could not have played the fiddle because the instrument did not exist at that time. Fiddle and similar string instruments were invented only by the 11tth century. He was known for his talent on another type of string instrument, the lyre. “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” has become a phrase used to criticize someone who is engaged in things trivial or behaves irresponsibly in the face of an emergency. Nero was blamed for ignoring the fire and neglecting his people while they suffered.

What has this phrase to do with Donald Trump, 2000 years later?

On Sunday, March 8, 2020, White House social media director Dan Scavino tweeted a meme of President Donald Trump playing the violin with his eyes closed. The caption said, “My next piece is called nothing can stop what’s coming.” This phrase is a much-used QAnon catchphrase, and some attribute it as a subtle nod to the conspiracy theory. Trump later retweeted the meme, adding: “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!” As ‘Nero’ started trending on social media, people began to link the ancient legend to President Trump’s reaction to the Coronavirus pandemic. On that day in March, there were just 546 confirmed cases and 22 deaths in the United States.

According to Johns Hopkins University Resource Center, the number of cases in the U.S. has climbed to over 17.8 million and 317,700 deaths. We can not put all the blame on President Trump for the Coronavirus reaching U.S. shores from China and Europe. Still, his tepid response, false claims, and lack of promoting his own CDC guidelines on masking and social distancing exasperated the situation.

On December 19, 2020, the Washington Post published an in-depth analysis of how Trump’s mismanagement led to the pandemic’s dark winter. After the Thanksgiving celebrations, public health experts anticipated a surge in COVID-19 cases. The four top public health officials, Deborah Birx, Anthony Fauci, Stephen Hahn, and Robert Redfield, went to the Oval Office to convince the President to persuade all Americans to wear masks and to expand testing. Trump simply ignored the advice. By then, the president had abdicated his responsibility to manage the public health crisis and instead went golfing and resorted to tweeting. In a barrage of tweets after the November 3 election, he accused the Democrats of stealing the election and the officials of states he lost, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, of fraud and election irregularities. All this was an attempt to overturn the results of the election he lost to President-elect Joe Biden.

There are no excuses for Trump’s ongoing dereliction of duty and responsibility. His mismanagement and lack of leadership led to this modern-day pandemic that resulted in hundreds of thousands of preventable death of the country’s young and old.

Trump’s recent tweet was to repudiate his intelligence officials and the Secretary of State Pompeo, who accused the Russians of being behind the newly uncovered cyber hacking.

“The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning, adding, “everything is well under control,” and “Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)”

Why is he afraid to blame Russia for the cyber hack? Does Putin have some dirt on Trump?