Well said! I also would like to note that something similar happened during the slow decline of the Roman Empire, where it morphed from a representative republic with a powerful senate to a dictatorial regime with one or at most three men in charge.
The only solace one can take from that historical precedent is that the full collapse took centuries, far longer than our lifetimes.
Our grandchildren may live in a time of the New American Empire that is ruled by an Emperor Trump III. It'll have a strange tradition of emperors painting their faces orange in the same manner as Roman emperors had a tradition of wearing purple robes.
The only solace one can take from that historical precedent is that the full collapse took centuries, far longer than our lifetimes.
Our grandchildren may live in a time of the New American Empire that is ruled by an Emperor Trump III. It'll have a strange tradition of emperors painting their faces orange in the same manner as Roman emperors had a tradition of wearing purple robes.