It's the old cliche; USA=Ancient Rome. Any potential political merit such a comparison might have held has been more or less beaten, thoroughly, into the ground by bored pundits and hack reporters who like cheap metaphors.

But occasionally, when you look closely, stuff just leaps out at you. You can't help it. EMPIRES, change, sure, but people don't. There are some personas--some traits of human nature--that stay the same. The slick populist. The self-besotted egotist. And, of course, the war-mongering capitalist. We, as humans, are stuck on narrow grooves--and we need to recognise these grooves so that one day we can, perhaps, get out.