What's changed, and when?

 

23/1/2026 

We all think about the Roman Empire all the time (well, I don't, but apparently everyone else does). Of course the interesting bit of Roman history isn't the Empire, or the Republic, it's the bit in between. When the republic fell, the Romans didn't notice. There wasn't a single moment, or even a Rubicon, where the average senator in the forum would have agreed: "Today the Republic fell, tomorrow we will be subjects of the Empire". On the other hand at some point everyone was shouting "Hail Caesar" and not wondering, not even for a second, when the Senate was going to sort things out. Remember, the Senate murdered the first Caesar with knives, which was a pretty definitive expression of checks and balances I think.

The Roman Republic fell sometime after JC (both of them) tested the boundaries, and before Caligula decided he was a God. I expect that even as Augustus was proclaimed there were many people who saw it as a temporary, expedient, blip.  There was no point on the road after which there was no turning back, but eventually there was no turning back. Probably most Romans decided that the Republic was a bust during the first civil war, and some of them during the war of Actium, and some of them as they watched Octavian rule through all those long summers and they realised that the old sprit of Rome was slipping away. Once Caligula was in there wasn't any more discussion anywhere.

Well, ok, there might have been some discussion but it probably ended quite quickly with worried whispering about being tied up with ropes and thrown on a bonfire, or similar but worse.

Although any analogy between Rome and the USA stretches credulity, the governance that managed the Roman Republic and the governance of the USA was explicitly linked by the founders of the USA, and I think that the change in the governance of the USA in the last twenty five years is the driving phenomena behind the international poly crisis that we find ourselves in today.

The US system has been incredibly successful in the sense that it has provided an effective and yet continuous state entity. The British pulled off a similar trick with their empire, essentially by marginalising their head of state and distributing power across their ruling class. This was a necessary feature of the British Empire due to its distributed nature. It took weeks and months for messages to cross the empire, until it didn't... where upon its contradictions became embarrassingly obvious leading to a project to find a way to dismantle it (cf. the dominion system and the commonwealth) and (as Elon Musk might say) a short period of unplanned disassembly post WW2. On the other hand the USA was a contiguous land empire until the end of the first world war, it's afairs and structures managed by the post civil war settlement and continetal scale loot. 

This is apparent in the history of the constitution.

While the USA managed the expansion and materialisation of a contenential imperial project the bill of rights and reconstruction worked. Once it was forced into the dynamic post colonial world things had to change. 

The mechanism of amending the constitution enabled the flexibility of the US state to accommodate the challenges of civil war (reconstruction) and global hegemony (the progressive era). But that mechanic broke down and since then there's been disintegration of the type that the Brits endured, it's just that the premis of US power was always so much more convincing and secure than the crazy idea that England should rule a quarter of the world and dominate the rest. Look at a map, chaps, the USA doesn't run the world island, no one runs the world island, yet, but the USA does run a chunk of the rest. That logic has been enough to sustain things for the last fifty years. 

I say fifty years because the last amendment to the constitution (27th) occurred in 1992, a child of four years old will tell you that 92-26 isn't a fifty year span.  But in fact that amendment was a hold over from a long dispute about pay for elected officials. The last real amendment happened in 1971, to enable soldiers drafted to Vietnam to vote. So, I feel I can argue that for fifty years, even as the power of the United States reached its apogee, even as men walked on the moon and the internet grew and blossomed, even as the finances of the world flowed into its coffers, and the brightest and best into its cities, the governing principles of the USA have remained static. 

This is because the mechanisms that previously operated to manage and refresh the constitution as the state that it governed evolved in the modern world became ineffective. There is no issue that can be imagined that will unify the Congress and States sufficiently to pass another amendment. Elites have become so encourged by the empire that they can resist any attempt to dislogdge them from their privilages, and the disconnection between the issues of empire and the issues of home are much greater for a power with hundreds of millions at home than they were for powers like Britain with scores of millions and a broader deeper investment in the imperial system due to colonisation. 

At the same time the system froze,  the checks and balances on the executive, founded on the constitution, have dissipated. Again, this happened very slowly and then all at once. The two other legs of the US government - Congress, and the Supreme Court have struggled to act or function for years, but in the face of new challenge they have suddenly disappeared. Congress has simply handed the reigns to the White House and the Supreme Court is refusing to rule on any issue that effects the executive that is brought before it, apart from what I think will likely be seen as the Supreme Courts last great act of folly.

In 2024. Justice Roberts wrote a judgement that extended presidental immunity. It provides that a president has "some" immuity and that the president is entitled to a "presumption" that he or she has immunity. Both of these terms sound limited and constrained, but from what little I understand of legal mechanisms I have a belief that in fact they grant presidents almost total immunity from US law, of any sort. Roberts and the court have elevated the president so far beyond good King George III that it's doubtful that the president can see the crown from his orbit. The president has coupled this blanket immunity with extensive use of his power to grant clemency to criminals using a presidential pardon. It is clear to me that every member of the regime knows two things, first, if they stay close to the president and do what they are told they have the promise of a pardon. The second is that if they do not then the crimes that they are committing at the moment, some of which we know about but many we do not, will result in their prosecution and given the styles and structures of US justice this will guarentee the destruction of themselves, their families and their associates. Perhaps Epstien was the first to die in this way, perhaps there will be many more.  

The truth is that whereas from 1800 to 1970ish the USA was a constitutional Republic, it no longer is. The USA is now a personalised regime. The consequence of this is that the citizens of the United States have lost their constitutional protection and the USA has lost its continuous identity as a state in international affairs.  

As a US citizen you can now be killed or detained by the US state at any time with no recourse. Anyone witnessing what's happening in Minneapolis cannot dispute this, and this will have sharp impacts if or when the mid term elections are held in a matter of months. But, given that I am not a US citizen, it is the end of the USA's identity on the global stage that effects me most. Fundamentally from now on we cannot rely on the USA not because the majority of the citizens of the USA would not see us as allies or share our values and objectives on the internation stage, but because the reaction and behaviour of the USA is now dependent on the characteristics of one individual.

Trump will leave the stage soon enough, and contrary to councils of despair I can well imagine a much better, more enlightened and benevolent president or presidents following him. But this does not matter, because at any election the USA may now become a mad or evil player on the global stage. In fact a better US president would actually be bad now, because it will allow our ruling classes to lull themselves back into the long golden post cold war dream. Only if a future US president conscientiously and successfully rebuilds a dynamic, assertive, and effective constitutional regime can I see the USA returning to greatness and goodness. I cannot imagine any future president having the mandate or motivation to do this. Fundamentally it would absorb the whole effort of several presidential terms, fundamentally the elites and domestic interests of the US establishment will not grant any future president the manadate required. 

So, what next? 

This is a unique time because since the beginning of true modernity, that is since the industrial revolution, the dominant power in the world has been managed by a system of law, norms, and checks and balances. Now all of the great powers of the world are personalised. The hopes that I can see are that the insitiutions of the CCP and EU are reformed. It is possible that after Xi Jingping the CCP will evolve away from personal power in the way that it did after Mao. It is also possible that the EU will legitimize the centralisation and deployment of its power by democratizing its insititions. In addition the development of Brazil, India and Indoniesia and the alignment of Austrailia, Canada, Korea and Japan with Europe may provide additional locus of power and weight of power to these blocks.  Reform of this sort may create structures that are able to manage an new international system between them despite the malign behaviours that a personalised US government may indulge in, and the malign behaviours that a future Russian state will definitely indulge in. 

Unfortuantely there are a lot of ifs, buts and fantasy in this vision of the future. India and Brazil have very weak governement insitutions and huge problems with their neighbours and the USA. The CCP is just as likely to develop the governance of China in corrosive ways as they are to evolve more benevolently and face terrible issues of demography and economic viability. Even a democratic reform of the EU seems unlikely. These alternative futures are almost certainly a vain hope, so we are left only with the hope that something else turns up that is as surprising, and as good, as the building of the city on the hill after 1865.