I have read about the Roman emperors since my youth, and one thing has always seemed clear in the stories that survived them, Roman power required two elements to sustain itself before the people, blood as a backdrop and praise as currency. Commodus, the son of Marcus Aurelius, wore a lion skin and wielded the club of Hercules to descend into the arena and slaughter animals and gladiators before tens of thousands of people gathered in the Colosseum. The Senate, which he himself had hollowed out of any real power, applauded and granted him increasingly extravagant titles between one combat and the next. Decades later, Domitian would demand, within the palace itself, to be called lord and god. The purpose of these spectacles was never merely to kill; it was to remind those present that the life of the person in the arena and the approval of those occupying the stands depended on the very same person. Almost two thousand years later, on Sunday, June fourteenth, twenty twenty six, the south lawn of the White House was transformed into an amphitheater to celebrate, simultaneously, the eightieth birthday of Donald Trump and the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of United States independence. A steel structure of twenty eight meters, baptized The Claw, dominated the lawn where presidential helicopters normally land. Actors dressed as Revolutionary War soldiers stood guard while fourteen fighters crossed the corridors of the building, some passing through........

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