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FICTION
Cincinnatus
He was choosing the kind of power that is transmitted through the performance of its refusal
“Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.”
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The room smells of carpet cleaner and cold ambition.
This is the smell of every government building I have ever entered, from the secured conference rooms in the Pentagon where men decide things that cannot afterward be admitted to, to the smaller, quieter offices where they are denied, to the two suites in the west wing where I made what I chose at the time to call decisions.
I have been in this chamber before. Twenty-two years ago I sat in the opposite chair, the one facing inward toward the dais, and I answered questions about a war that had recently, after considerable effort on several continents, ceased. The senators were different then. The carpet was the same, or possibly replaced with identical carpet, which amounts to the same thing. The light from the high windows was the same: institutional, noncommittal, the light of…
