Last September, as many Republicans wrestled with their conscience over whether or not to support Donald Trump as their nominee, an anonymous article appeared in a short-lived online magazine, the Journal of American Greatness, urging his critics to set their scruples aside. It appeared under the pen name Publius Decius Mus: a tribute to a Roman consul who sacrificed himself in 340BC in return for victory in battle. With his army facing almost certain defeat, Decius mounted his horse and plunged headlong into a hail of arrows. It was a suicide mission but one that so shocked the enemy, it caused a breach in its defences, through which Decius’s men then flooded to devastating effect.
At the time the article appeared, Hillary Clinton was riding so high in the polls that some Democrats boasted they were heading for an emphatic victory that would give them power for a generation. According to Decius, therefore, Republicans faced what he called “the Flight 93 Election”: a rather bracing reference to the heroic passengers who tackled al-Qaeda hijackers on 9/11, bringing down their plane in rural Pennsylvania. However repulsive conservatives might find Trump, there was no choice but to try to charge the cockpit. “You may die anyway,” Decius wrote. “You – or the leader of your party – may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane.” The choice was stark. For American conservatives, a Clinton presidency was “Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.”
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