It is a truth universally unacknowledged that the modern American governor, like the late Roman senator, possesses an unerring instinct for making himself the victim. The latest dispatch from the Golden State, where reality often seems to be an optional extra, informs us that Gavin Newsom has alleged a federal probe into his wife and former staff. One can almost hear the sound of a violin being sharpened.
Let us parse this with the cold steel of historical analysis. In the late Republic, when Cicero was exiled, he spent his days writing letters bemoaning his fate, blaming Clodius and the political mob. His wife Terentia was dragged into the mud, her financial affairs scrutinised. Sound familiar? The governor’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker of some repute, now finds her former aides under a federal microscope. Or so the governor says.
What Newsom is doing is a classic political manoeuvre: pre-empting scandal by alleging persecution. He is not merely claiming that the Biden Justice Department has it in for him; he is extending the circle of indignity to his family and entourage. This is noble, in a sense. But it also reeks of the intellectual decadence I have warned about. The Left, I mean the progressive establishment, believes itself to be a class of superior beings, worthy of exemption from the mundane rules of graft and governance. When the Feds come knocking, they do not say ‘we may have broken a law’. They say ‘this is a political hit job’.
The irony is rich. Newsom, who once dined with the same federal apparatus he now decries, is now sounding the alarm of a deep state conspiracy. But the deep state is a fiction, a convenient bogeyman for those who wish to evade accountability. The real corrupt nexus is the one between the governor’s mansion and the donors’ boardrooms. Not to mention the revolving door of staffers who float from campaign to administration to lobbying firms. That the federal government should take an interest is not persecution; it is what a functioning democracy does.
Yet here we are, in the twilight of American empire, watching our leaders adopt the pose of martyrs. Newsom’s statement — I have read it — is full of the usual cant: ‘we will fight this injustice’, ‘my family is being targeted’. He invokes the spirit of the Resistance, as if he were fighting fascism rather than a subpoena. The historical parallel is not Rome but rather the Victorian era, where every scandal was met with the phrase ‘the lady doth protest too much’.
The real tragedy is that this distracts from genuine issues: California’s homelessness crisis, its failing schools, its blackouts. But Newsom would rather play the victim than the governor. He understands that in the modern media ecosystem, grievance is currency. The more you howl, the more attention you get. And attention, in this fourth-century decline of ours, is the only thing that matters.
So let us see what emerges from this probe. If it is nothing, Newsom will claim vindication: the system tried to crush him and failed. If it is something, he will claim it is a witch-hunt. Either way, he wins. The only losers are the voters, who are treated to a spectacle of self-pity rather than governance. One wonders if we shall ever see a statesman again, or only politicians in the Roman mould, declaiming their virtue while the barbarians are at the gate.
