Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny

by C. W. Wilson

Publisher:

Bloomsbury USA

, 2010

Overview

In this inventive and biting satire, acclaimed novelist and cultural critic Cintra Wilson reimagines America’s Manifest Destiny as helmed by Caligula, the only leader in world history capable of turning our floundering democracy into a fully functioning-and totally fun-tyranny, both here and abroad. With Caligula running the show, America will finally be able to achieve what the founding fathers really wanted, but never had the nerve to admit. Like, how to:

• Achieve the guilt-free looting of natural resources for the sake of immediate gratification;
  
• Declare war on abstract concepts (drugs, terror, the ocean) for the sake of imperial expansion;
  
• Utilize propaganda, psychological operations, and other prisoner-of-war techniques to create a sense of learned helplessness in the citizenry, gain their utterly terrified trust and obedience-and leave them begging for more;
  
• Rape, pillage, and loot-both here and abroad-with impunity

Wilson also traces the historical arc of Caligula’s life and not-so-hard times, from his privileged childhood in Syria to his ascent to power to his eventual takedown by the hands of an angry populace, to point out the unsettling parallels between his own extravagant reign and the avariciousness of other administrations, which helped usher in a new golden age of unlimited executive power. Part political parable, part cautionary tale, Caligula for President is an ingenious and hilarious send-up of the current state of our Union by one of this generation’s sharpest satirists.

Praise for Caligula for President

Cintra Wilson [is] the thinking woman’s David Foster Wallace.

The Dorothy Parker of the Cyber Age.

Wilson cranks out the zingers.

Hilarious.

A blazing satirist.

Product Details

• Title: Caligula for President: Better American Living Through Tyranny
• Author: C. W. Wilson
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Print Publication Date: 2010
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 256
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781608192465, 9781596915886, 1596915889, 1608192466
• Resource ID: LLS:9781608192465
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2025-04-22T15:25:37Z

About C. W. Wilson

Charles William Wilson (1836–1905) was a decorated British military officer and geographer. Wilson is the author of The Recovery of Jerusalem. He attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and became an officer in the Royal Engineers in 1855. He worked on the Ordnance Survey of Jerusalem in 1864, and Wilson’s Arch is named for him. He joined the Palestine Exploration Fund in 1867, and the Society of British Archeology in 1872. He became a fellow of the Royal Society in 1874. He was consul-general in Anatolia from 1879 to 1882, and was a hero of the Khartoum Relief Expedition from 1884 to 1885. Over the course of his career, Wilson participated in various Ordnance Surveys around the world. He was director-general of military education from 1895 to 1898, and held the position of chairman of the Palestine Exploration Fund from 1901 to 1905. Among his honors are the Order of the Bath, the Order of St. Michael and St. George, and the Doctor of Civil Law.