Capitol,
Cincinnati all evoked Rome, not those Athenian assemblies vibrating between tyranny and anarchy and becoming “a mob” even if they were populated by the Socrateses of the world. The Senate would not be an ecclesia; it would meet in the Capitol, a name adopted from the Capitoline Hill in Rome, rather than from the Pnyx, where the ecclesia met. George Washington, resigning his presidency after two terms, modeled himself on the Roman hero Cincinnatus, not Pericles.
Yet in the early 1800s America democratizes. White male suffrage expands, the Democratic Party is founded in the late 1820s, and the pejorative connotations attending
I am seven years old, my exiled South African family living in independent Zambia, when my teacher asks everyone in class to share a song or a nursery rhyme or a proverb. One kid sings a song in the Bemba language. Another child stands up and performs a dance that is popular at the time. He rolls his little hips lewdly, and we all giggle.
When it is my turn, I stand in front of everyone and command their silence with the seriousness of my facial expression. I am stock-still, cradling an imaginary rifle. I crouch and sway from side to side, hissing through my teeth to intimidate my audience. I drop to the floor and begin to crawl, my “gun” slung across my chest. Suddenly I jump up, aiming the weapon at my alarmed schoolmates. The class is transfixed as I draw myself to my full height. I slowly put the gun down and clench my right fist; then I raise it above my head and make the universal Black Power sign. Locking eyes with my audience of enemies, I bark a set of instructions.