How America could fall like Rome

In this Vice News video, Mike Duncan, the author and award-winner podcaster behind The History of Rome and Revolutions, looks at parallels between the rise of Trumpism and the January 6th insurrection and societal upheavals of the past. He fears that the worst might be yet to come.

I like how he clarifies that Trump isn't a Louis XVI or a Tsar Nicholas, because though horrible, they were much smarter, better rulers and politicians. For a Trump analog, we have to look at the teen emperors of Rome and their flippant and nonchalant attitudes towards the powers they wielded.

What Duncan fears is that, a national political class that only cares now about holding onto power at all costs, an Executive Branch that has tested the fit of an Imperial presidency, and the willingness of mobs to reinforce the agendas of corrupt leaders are the clear beginnings of a drift into dictatorship.