The accuracy of the famous epithet “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” may be fodder for historians to debate, but it conveys an insight about Nero’s disposition.

That the Roman emperor had a special craving for power is matter of history. Nero’s obsession with dominion was accompanied by its sibling attributes of cruelty and violence; historians think the AD 64 Rome fire may have been the “demo” portion of Nero’s remodeling project.

The noteworthy insight is that his disposition in the midst of calamity was far worse than mere uncaring or inattentiveness — perhaps more comparable to fiendishness, that graduated manifestation of a misguided delight at a dreadful occasion.

That all may have been well and good had Nero been a man of limited means and influence. But he was not. He was the emperor. The damage of his disposition was therefore proportional to the power he was given.

A distinct lesson is the immense responsibility for citizens of our day who have a say in electing our leaders. We must carefully examine their dispositions and especially their actions since the capacity for them to “fiddle” as people suffer will only grow commensurate with their position and their power.

This brings us to Tim Walz.

I Love the Smell of Napalm in the Morning

The summer of 2020 brought weeks of shocking images as a contagion of violent riots raced across the country. Notably, a Neronian-like temperament emerged as many high-ranking state officials purposefully used the power of their office to, as it were, let ’er burn.

One such little Nero was (and still is) the Governor of Minnesota and the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee, Tim Walz. 

As the sun set on the second day of rioting in Minneapolis, the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, contacted Walz with an urgent plea to deploy the National Guard. The governor gave a stupefying response: “He said he would consider it.”

What exactly was there to consider? In three short days, Minneapolis would see more than 1,500 structures damaged, 164 engulfed by flames, stores ransacked and looted, at least three deaths and countless assaults, all of which culminated in $500 million worth of damage.

When confronted about the reason for his sluggardly deployment of the National Guard, Walz gave the mind-numbing response that he wasn’t provided with “specific plans.”

This begs the question: Was his decision a sign of spinelessness? After all, we have since learned that he bolted from military service rather than face deployment with his own troops.

Or is Walz simply the kind of fastidious detailist who needs a Gantt Chart to mow the lawn?

No, a more fitting explanation is that he is much more like Nero, and like the Roman despot, Walz’s inaction reveals weighty insights about the man’s disposition. In an interview a few weeks after the riots, his wife painted an unsettling yet confirmatory picture of the family’s mindset.

“I could smell the burning tires,” recalled Gwen Walz, “and I kept the windows open as long as I could. I felt that that was a touchstone of what was happening.”

We are left with the bewildering image of the Walz family reclining in the plush governor’s residence, wreathed in a billowing miasma from burning tires and smoldering buildings — which somehow produced in their conscience a twisted approval.

As the acrid mist of social upheaval replenished his senses, Tim Walz took extra time to “consider” if or when to deploy the necessary magnitude of National Guard resources needed to safeguard the very people and infrastructure that he had taken an oath to protect.

The Blue State Nursing Home Genocide

Walz’s Neronian disposition would further manifest in his drastic COVID-19 edicts that made mere lockdowns look like despot amateur hour.

He adopted the Cuomo Protocol and ordered that hospital patients infected with the virus be shipped back into nursing homes, to infect the elderly.

He so blatantly singled out churches during the pandemic that the federal court that overturned his edicts literally ordered him to refrain from “further discrimination against churches.”

Not to be outdone by the Communist Revolutionaries in early twentieth-century Russia, Walz implemented a Cheka-like “spy on your neighbor” program resulting in 10,000 submissions of lockdown violations in the first twelve months alone.

What sort of ethos propels this morbid disposition? In his own recent words, “Never shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

Walz’s “progressive values” fuel the actions for which he is quite proud. And why shouldn’t he be? Afterall, the extreme-lurching American Left have paid homage to him as a torch-bearer for “progressive values” by anointing him with the candidacy for vice president.

You see, the vice presidential candidate himself is a window into the disposition of the American Left: let the nation suffer in order to “fundamentally transform” it into their gilded liberal Utopia.

The Morbid Melody of Chaos

“We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms,” said Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life.”

The Russian dissident who traveled to America to reason and plead with us to learn from his country’s immense demise had clearly diagnosed the Adamic illness which has produced the little Neros we face today. He was also prescient in prescribing the only possible remedy that holds true no matter what happens in November:

“All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all.”

Solzhenitsyn was right. The vision for America was built on the presupposition of our Creator, and this is what we must hold onto in these strange times.

Nero fiddled and Tim waltzed to the morbid melody of chaos. Their kind have tried this sort of Adamic gasp for rebellion and relevance before and they will most certainly do so again.

However, we know how the story ends.

You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. (1 John 4:4)

Joachim Osther is a freelance writer focusing on the intersection of culture and Christianity. He holds a master’s degree in theological studies from Veritas College and Seminary, where he also works as a strategist, advisor, and published author. He is also an occasional contributor to RaymondIbrahim.com, chronicling the relevance of historical clashes between militant Islam and the West.