American decline is real, the only question is whether it’s terminal

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”

• Plutarch

Of all popular pastimes in American political punditry, comparing modern events to those of Ancient Rome has to be among the most cliched. Ever since Edward Gibbon published his definitive works on the Roman Empire in the 1790s, Rome has been the baseline for all great empires to compare themselves to. Google Ngram reveals that British publishers in the 19th century went through a phase of comparing themselves to late Antiquity. Americans adopted this legacy in the 1940s and have continued the habit into the present day. In many such books, America is compared to the early Roman Republic, skillfully beating its opponents through industrial power and advanced engineering, only to be corrupted by wealth and political infighting. The parallel portends that American democracy will inevitably come to an end and be replaced by some kind of imperial superstate. This same trope has been conjured up by science fiction writers like Orson Scott Card and Harry Turtledove. Its enduring popularity means that political pundits are constantly on the lookout for a Julius Caesar-like figure. The same analogy was made by New York’s Public Theater a little too obliquely in 2017 by having Caesar depicted as a large blonde man with a red tie during his assassination.