The Roman Empire fell also in part because it’s people stopped giving a shit, they stopped being patriots, they stopped fighting for themselves and for the idea of Rome as an empire. They became divided based on one man seeking ultimate power; essentially the people at the top stopped caring about empire and shifted only to caring about their own power, with some notable exceptions.

At various points plague and war reduced the available labor and soldiers, slaves ruined the economy for Romans at home because of selfish rich people seeking only the next dollar, and yes, various external threats converged at one time or another to sap Roman strength again and again.

The Romans at various points were overexteneded, with Hadrian, and also Augustus before him, trying to redefine defensible frontiers for the empire. You’re right in that this is not the same for America because it’s not outright hegemony, we have allies, but ofcourse our Allie’s spend a hell of a lot less on their militaries than we do. They rely on us marching and sailing around to put out the various fires around the world.

The economic similarities at home, however, with selfish rich fucks who are allowed to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, is actually similar, though not for exactly the same reasons. There’s no slaves in America anymore, so rich people use different mechanisms to achieve the same end, but the greed is exactly the same, and people in power either not giving a shit, joining in on it, or assisting in the redistribution of wealth is similar to what happened in Rome.

Rome had emperors who at times were sons of other emperors or, at their best, were men of merit selected by previous emperors or, at their worst, were selfish generals, or high ranking government officials that were selfishly seeking power. Some of them weren’t completely corrupt, some of them were. You know anyone like that who assumed the most powerful position of the most powerful country in the world? The Presidency of the United States is nowhere near the same, but the general similarities are there. It IS enough to make some comparisons.