Look to the End of the Roman Republic

Always hearing or reading comparisons of America with the Roman Empire jarred me by being an apples and oranges discussion. Empire is not where I found fault with these discussions but with the equating of American Presidents with Roman Emperors. The former have usurped power from the legislature (while the legislature has ceded its expertise in drafting laws to the presidency for the sinecure of their salaries) without escaping constitutional restraints as did the Emperors. Those who see the physical, the military, expansion of American power as grounds for equating the American Empire with the Roman Empire must not have noticed most of the Roman Empire was acquired by the Roman Republic.

I think we need pay more attention to the Roman Republic. See What the Founders Learned From the Greeks and Romans. The following comes from America, Rome and the Slow Erosion of Republics:

The republic falls in the first century BCE (Before the Common Era), but the path was actually charted nearly a hundred years before. The real issues that led to this should resonate for us now. It started because there was a revolution in the way the Roman economy worked in the mid-second century that created massively wealthy people. They were entitled by law to this wealth, but it did not feel fair. They were doing this when most Romans were not getting the full advantages of this economic revolution. This was a political problem that could have been solved through law and through electoral politics, but the republic could not come up with consensus-based policies to address this wealth inequality fast enough to eliminate anger and resentment. And it was in the 130s BCE that politicians began to demagogue on this issue.

And:

 Watts: Right. The situation we're probably going to be looking at in 2021 is a lot like what Caesar faced. There were massive problems that Rome was not able to deal with because of political paralysis in the '60s BCE. It's remarkable that it was allowed to fester for as long as it did, because it involved things like trying to create a governing structure to incorporate the conquered Middle East into a constitutional Roman order. This was blocked for years by the Senate. You had millions of people in the Middle East who literally didn't know what legal system they were under. Rome refused to act.

Donald J. Trump is not Julius Caesar. He is the bog of demagogic corruption to which Caesar was opposed and for which he died. Trump's type in Rome led to the rise of the Empire with an absolutist ruler.

Reading Livy's History of Rome would be time well spent.

sch 6/17/22