It happens sometimes that pop culture moments coincide with real-world current events, and resonate eerily in the mind once you encounter them.

Yesterday evening, in watching the final episode of Season 1 of The Morning Show on Apple TV+, a particular piece of scripted dialogue stood out. The series, executive produced by lead actors Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, is a post-#MeToo take on Brian Stelter's 2013 book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV. It dramatises the fallout behind the scenes at an American network morning news show, as its beloved male anchor is hit with sexual misconduct allegations.

In the tense finale, an exchange takes place outside a New York City coffee shop between the show’s ousted executive producer, Chip Black, and his former assistant Rena, in which they plan to expose a top executive responsible for the toxic environment and the conspiracy of silence at the show. As Rena walks away from Chip, to go set the plan in motion, Chip calls out to encourage her with the Latin phrase, ‘Sic semper tyrannis’. Rena echoes it knowingly, forcing the unfamiliar viewer to Google its meaning. The phrase means ‘thus always to tyrants’, suggesting bad outcomes always befall tyrannical rulers.

The phrase is the official state motto of Virginia, which fits with the democratic principles of the America, but also has troubled roots in its Confederate history. According to History.com, the phrase links two famous historical political assassinations: ‘the stabbing of Julius Caesar on March 15, 44 B.C. and the shooting of Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865’:

[It] is attributed to Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of the group of Roman senators who assassinated Caesar after he seized perpetual dictatorial powers in the Roman Republic. Virginia’s seal was adopted in 1776, and its design encapsulates the revolutionary fervor of the day—a bare-chested, female Virtue stands over a toppled and de-crowned Tyranny. Eighty-eight years later, just five days after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, noted actor and Confederate partisan John Wilkes Booth reportedly shouted ‘Sic semper tyrannis!’ after shooting Lincoln in the Presidential box of Ford’s Theatre.

While Julius Caesar is a known tyrant in world history, Lincoln is lionised in American history for having led the country through the Civil War, and for preserving the Union while abolishing slavery. So to imagine him as a tyrant is to pervert a moral truth in the history of civilisation.

Bronze rendering of Virginia's state seal at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; photo by Cliff (cliff1066) on Flickr.

In a stunning turn of events today, I am writing this post as the US Capitol in Washington DC has been breached by a massive mob of pro-Trump supporters who are protesting the Electoral College vote to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s election to the US presidency. In truth I can’t quite believe what I’m watching, but I am also not surprised by it. I have long argued that Trump is a would-be dictator, and these events are proof of it. He is an aspiring tyrant, bent on destroying the democracy he was sworn to protect. The people who support him are racist fanatics, radicalised by his inflammatory words and his corrupt enabling by the Republican party. Disturbing images document that today the Confederate flag - a symbol of hatred and white supremacy - was paraded through the the halls of the US Capitol building, and a gallows and noose were constructed outside. What we are seeing is nothing less than a fascist insurrection in the world’s most powerful democracy.

It’s my deep-seated hope that in the coming days we will see the impeachment and removal of this clearly evil, insane, corrupt - and yes, dangerous - president through the mechanisms of government outlined in the US Constitution. Twelve more days is simply too long to wait for his toppling.

Sic semper tyrannus.