“GET THOSE SYRIANS OFF MY LAWN!” –QUOTES FOR OUR TIME

Juvenal, the Roman Poet, provides us with a few quotes that easily to our own troubled times.

In Satire 6, concerned about the infidelity of wives, he toys with the idea of keeping a wife under the watch of guards. But he reasonably wonders, “Who shall watch the watchmen themselves?” Who can promise one’s own guards may not be the ones bedding his wife?

Considering the various cases of abuse of the FBI in our own time – colluding with the Democrats to create the demon of “white supremacy”, or to never admit the origins of the “Pee Dossier” – the quote applies neatly. Who indeed watches over the FBI? Who holds to account those in charge of watching us?

The watchmen, apparently, like to dress up as homosexuals revelers from WeHo.

More spice can be found in Satire 3. The poet notices late-1st-century Rome’s “diversity” and does not like it. He complains about Syrian whores, strange Syrian musical instruments, and Syrian barbarous behavior in the streets of Rome, where once the noble Quirites and Patricians had serenely walked about. He thus observes:

“Iam pridem Syrus Tiberim defluxit Orontes.” Meaning, “the Syrian [river] Orontes has emptied itself into the [Roman] Tiber”.

In our time, this would be the equivalent of noticing America’s “diversity,” that of parks strewn with chicken bones, of quiant Michigan towns now populated by the hijab-covered variety, and of Minneapolis, now a center of female genital mutilation. We would then comment:

“The Mexican Rio Grande, the Arab Tigris, and the Somali Shebelle have emptied themselves into the Mississippi.”

I guess in Latin it would be “Magnum Flumen Mexicanum, Tigris Arabicum, Shebellumque Somalicum iam Flumen Mississippiense defluxint.”