system
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human
CMV: The United States is deteriorating similar to the Roman Republic

The past few years has shown increasing internal political and social instability in the United States. Furthermore, the foundational institutions and principles of the United States is on a clear down swing, with significant amounts of people in positions of power in the government themselves causing severe dissension. 

Many of the norms previously taken for granted will be questioned. For example, now that there is precedence, any time something like an incumbent president loses or even any real close election, there will be allegations of fraud and wrongdoing as expedient concessions become less common. At some point, these allegations may/will succeed. Or if a president gets elected, but Congress is in control of the opposing party. Some state legislators have already proposed eliminating the popular vote of the presidency in their state. Every tight election will have an undercurrent of risk that it will be declared fraudulent and thrown out. This of course, was an almost unthinkable worry 8 years ago, and at some point the undercurrent will become real.

All this leads me to believe the US is essentially experiencing the same decline the Roman Republic and other similar states have experienced in the past. The US may still exist in the future in name, but if it does, it will not have the same principles and political structures as it did in the past, similar to the Roman Republic to Roman Empire. This demise may happen quickly like the Weimar Republic, but more realistically may happen slowly over many years/decades like Rome as various standards and institutions get eroded. I am not saying US' deterioration is 100% analogous to the Roman Republic, since obvious much differs. But to borrow Mark Twain, history is currently rhyming.

I hope this is not the case and I am being pessimistic. CMV


Edit: To clarify, my analogy is referring to the beginning of the decline of the Roman Republic starting maybe around 135 BCish. Not the actual civil war era of Caesar significantly later.

Edit 2: Some commented wanting more specific examples of parallels between the Roman Republic and the US. Now, I am not an in-depth expert on Roman History, so please CMV and correct me if I got anything wrong.

Instead of obviously subverting the Roman Republic, the things the Roman politicians did were often technically 'by the books' up until the end, but they just violated unwritten norms and weakened Republic institutions. For example, Tiberius Gracchus. During Tiberus’ time as tribune of the plebs, several norms of the Roman Republic were violated to pass his somewhat moderate Lex Sempronia Agraia. For example, the sacrosanctity of the tribune with removal Marcus Octavius, or how he ran for re-election against the Roman norm of limited tenure that existed at the time. After this tenure and death, assassinations and political violence grew significantly in the Roman Republic, and killing tribunes etc. were far more common. This institutional decline and norm failure is directly responsible for the chaos and fall in the later years. I can see strong parallels between this institutional weakening and norm breaking with what is occurring recently in the US.

Another example is how bad precedence also started building up, such as under Sulla. While Sulla in fact did quickly return his dictatorial powers after his mandate was done, one could say things like his march on Rome set precedence for the future to follow. Pompey is said to have once said “If Sulla could, why can’t I?”, and I can see future politicians in the US say similar things when referring to precedence set now.

Now obviously, this is just an analogy of how norm breaking, precedence setting, and institutional weakening and lead to a Republic's downfall. The specifics of the Roman Republic is quite different from the US Republic, they are nowhere near the same. And I highly doubt the end years of the Roman Republic will be repeated in any way in modern times. However, the pattern of norm weakening and bad precedence setting seems to be very analogous. If I am wrong about the history I have described, please let me know.
gpt
You’ve explained why you believe the US is collapsing and the weakening of the American political system, but you haven’t explained why and how this is similar to the fall of the Roman Republic. Could you elaborate a bit more on the parallels between these two situations, and why the Roman Republic specifically?