I’m thinking of it more as the decline of the Roman Republic.

don’t worry, there’s still a lot of way to go for the American empire.

If you help the regime come into existence, you are rewarded

well don’t count on that. totalitarian regimes have a tendency to be paranoid and to enact rather unpleasant purges at every level of the organisation.

Ha, yes. I just learned this a couple weeks ago and about thirty years too late. My past self couldve looked a lot better.