By Dave Sniadak
It was on this day, 2,055 years ago in ancient Rome, Julius Caesar was assassinated by Brutus. It’s alleged that before the fatal blow that fell the Roman leader, Caesar uttered the famous line, Et tu, Brute? (You too, Brutus?)
You see, Brutus wasn’t just a rogue assassin. He and Caesar were actually fairly close. And while there were personal motivations for Brutus to dislike Julius Caesar, both men shared a political passion for making Rome the greatest empire of its’ time.
But Brutus’ political ambitions weren’t isolated. A group of forty Roman Senators, called the Liberatores, had become disgruntled with the status quo, and felt that Brutus was just the man to rise to the challenge of shifting powers. A mob of men bent on changing Rome’s direction decided that on the Ides of March in 44 B.C., Caesar would fall.
The uprising didn’t end well for Brutus or his co-conspirators. Two years later, after exile from Rome, Brutus and his band of supporters were defeated by Caesars successors.
Thankfully, we’ve come a long way in how we vent our frustrations with public officials. To put the recent transition in perspective, take a look at this powerful post from Mashable in September of 2010, when social media was becoming more of a hot iron in the political arena. Twitter and Facebook were becoming the sounding boards for our disdain and YouTube gave anyone with a camcorder an outlet to post their political rants.
Today, in our own modern era of the Ides of March, the ability of social media to virtually assassinate the work of public officials is off the charts. Look across the border from where we are to the Wisconsin union-busting situation as a perfect example (just Google “union-busting Wisconsin” and you get more than 2.6-million results).
Passion has its place in the world of politics. But what we’re losing sight of is that our words - as innocent and anonymous as they may seem in the social media arena - can come back to haunt us. Once you post something, it has the potential to be out there forever.
Pick your words and battles wisely, or one day, you may be asking Et tu, Followers? as the mouse clicks quickly crack away at your credibility.
