Empires, Declining

I USED TO TEACH at a university, and one of my friends was an accounting professor who told me that the United States in the late twentieth and early twenty first centureis reminded him of the Roman Emmpire in the second century, either at its peak, or just a bit past it, beginning to decline. This professor was well respected, the author of many accounting texts, knew more about baseball, especially its history, than anyone I have ever known, including myself, and clearly knew a lot of history. I don't recall discussing the topic at length with him; most of our conversations were highly intellectual and mercifully brief. Although I was never told or don't recall the reasons he gave for this interesting comparision, I am sure that he was thinking about the fact that by the second century after Christ the Roman Emmpire had expanded to the largest size it would ever be, including not only all of Italy, but all land adjacent to the Mediterranean Sea, including large swathes of Africa, Asia, and Europe. The government in Rome had a huge responsibility, and over decades of wars, enefficient politics and economis, and societal corruption, the burden of empire began to make itself felt; border defense alone is costly, and Rome's borders were extremely long and far flung. In the late second and third centuries every man who assumed the title and office of "Caesar" seemed more corrupt and less competant than the previous tyrant. Progressive concentration of wealth, widespread poverty, and a steady decline in the living standard of most of the population, of course engendered widespread discontent. Into this cultural context, a sort of cultural vacuum, the Christian religion inserted itself. God and Christ was now a competitor for the patriotic allegiance of all Roman citizens, and the religion won the competition. The Roma Empire, im a sense, exists today, but has contracted back to its original borders, Italy. Flash forward to our modern America, and you wonder whether "we" are going to allow Trump to appoint himself president/fuhrer/dictator for life, and whether the United States will indeed add Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and the Panama canal to its existing empire. With more than eight hundred military bases scattered all over the world, in dozens of other countries, and economic and military power with which the United States involves itself and influences and controls events all over the world, yes, the United States of America is indeed already an "empire",long has been, and seems to be poised to become an even greater one. And yet, national empire is irrepairably in debt to itself and other countries, mostly Japan and China, most American are experiencing a declining standard of living and long have been, and we the American people, or many of us, seem perfectly content to chose a convicted crimainal to lead the country, and seem quite content to allow a plutocracy of corporate billionaires control it. Culturally, morally, America, the land of liberty, gives her people the opportunity to embrace whatever moral standards she prefers. Our corporate masters have convinced us not to worry about extreme economic inequality and pervasive poverty; such things always work themselves out, naturally. Free market capitalism is the only true economic system, and ccompetition produces wealth more efficiently than cooperation, and is therefor the Christian way. Maybe the next edition of the Trump bible will leave out "render unto Caesar" and "give unto the poor", and the conservative Republican Jesus will instead tell us to work hard, make good deals, anad get rich while the getting is good.