Bob Magaw
Footballguy
Gibbon (not the simian kind) addressed the former question by pounding out the monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
* Contemporary doesn't necessarily connote the current administration. Republicans and Democrats both seem to be plagued by corruption, so as in Rome, some problems may be systemic (in other words, beyond the scope of and not amenable to glib, facile, simplistic partisan answers).
Also worth pointing out that while Rome proper fell considerably earlier, a former part of the Roman Empire, Constantinople, didn't fall for more than a millennium later. So, A) this type of historical analysis is complicated by the fact that there aren't neat demarcation lines that separate one era from another (like Medieval and "Modern"), and B) the "Fall of the Roman Empire" took hundreds of (or depending on how you define it, over a thousand) years - longer than the span of US history and sum total of its existence.
* Contemporary doesn't necessarily connote the current administration. Republicans and Democrats both seem to be plagued by corruption, so as in Rome, some problems may be systemic (in other words, beyond the scope of and not amenable to glib, facile, simplistic partisan answers).
Also worth pointing out that while Rome proper fell considerably earlier, a former part of the Roman Empire, Constantinople, didn't fall for more than a millennium later. So, A) this type of historical analysis is complicated by the fact that there aren't neat demarcation lines that separate one era from another (like Medieval and "Modern"), and B) the "Fall of the Roman Empire" took hundreds of (or depending on how you define it, over a thousand) years - longer than the span of US history and sum total of its existence.
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