By Chris Kremidas-Courtney
There is a persistent temptation in American commentary to reach for Rome. It implies grandeur, civilizational greatness, imperial competence, and tragic inevitability. It also offers a cinematic arc that runs through the stages of rise, overreach, decadence, and fall. It reassures Americans that whatever happens next will at least be of an epic scale. But Rome may be the wrong analogy.
If we step back from the mythology and look instead at the structure of governance, legitimacy, and power distribution, the United States in the early twenty-first century resembles something far less centralized, less coherent, and in many ways more revealing; the Holy Roman Empire.
The Holy Roman Empire endured for centuries as a powerful, culturally rich, and often militarily formidable entity. But it was never fully sovereign in the modern sense. Its authority was layered, negotiated, and constrained by semi-autonomous principalities that possessed wealth, territorial identity, and leverage over the imperial center itself.
Wealth and power were also unevenly distributed across these territories, reinforcing the autonomy of local elites and limiting the emperor’s ability to act uniformly across the empire.
The American federal government still commands the most capable military on earth and issues the global reserve currency. It leads alliances and sets norms that apply across continents. Yet domestically, sovereignty is unevenly distributed across states due to not only federalism but political blocs funded by oligarchs and various cultural blocs. This results in people experiencing the country differently than their fellow citizens much like in the Holy Roman Empire.
And if this diagnosis is correct, the path forward after the age of Trumpist fascism is not restoration but a rebuilding of plural democracy.
The Holy Roman Empire was not weak in the conventional sense since it fielded armies, conducted diplomacy, and shaped Europe’s intellectual and religious life. Where it struggled was in coherence. The emperor depended on princes whose autonomy was entrenched so every policy required constant negotiation.
In the US today, we see similar dynamics. Wealth concentration now plays a similar role, shaping how authority is exercised and who ultimately controls it across different parts of the country.
States exercise meaningful autonomy on matters that impact citizens’ lives; reproductive rights, voting rules, education policy, criminal justice, public health mandates, and energy regulation. Citizens move across state lines not merely for economic opportunity but for a better legal climate. That signal alone indicates a shift from a common civic experience to differentiated political habitats.
At the same time, private actors own and operate the core infrastructure of modern life. Cloud computing, digital communication, financial clearing systems, semiconductor production, algorithmic content distribution, logistics networks, and significant elements of defense innovation are concentrated within a relatively small set of firms. These entities do not govern in the formal constitutional sense, but the state increasingly depends on them to function.
That dependence alters the power relationship. When the imperial center cannot move without the consent or cooperation of powerful houses, sovereignty becomes shared in practice, even if not in law.
Citizens and the Fragmented Experience of Nationhood. A central symptom of this trend is when more citizens stop experiencing the same country, much as black Americans have for most of the country’s history.
For starters, legal divergence creates distinct civic environments. A woman in one state may possess rights denied in another. A voter may encounter dramatically different ballot access rules depending on their geography. Gun regulation may be strict in one jurisdiction and permissive in the next. School curricula in different counties and states may present radically different accounts of history, identity, and civic obligation.
Federalism always contained variations, but within this new trend, citizens increasingly inhabit different moral and legal orders inside of the same constitutional framework.
The information environment compounds this fragmentation. Algorithmic feeds create epistemic tribal territories. Two Americans can encounter entirely different versions of reality, shaped by opaque ranking systems optimized for engagement rather than shared understanding. As a result, trust in institutions fragments accordingly. Courts are seen not as referees but as partisan instruments and even public health agencies become ideological actors while universities are seen as suspect. This is why elections now feel like existential contests rather than routine transitions.
Economic divergence also deepens the divide. Asset ownership has concentrated to a degree that creates distinct material realities. High-growth metropolitan professionals connected to global capital markets inhabit a different America from deindustrialized towns of the rust belt, gig workers, or rural communities disconnected from the innovation economy. When economic fate no longer feels shared, national solidarity weakens and resentment grows.
This is where the comparison to the Holy Roman Empire comes into stronger focus.
Polarization in the United States increasingly resembles a confessional divide rather than a routine partisan split, echoing the Holy Roman Empire. After the Reformation, the empire’s theological disagreement started to harden into territorially distinct moral orders. During this time, authority, legitimacy, and identity within these regions became fused.
Today’s American divide is not religious per se, but its confessional in its structure. Citizens inhabit separate informational ecosystems, assign trust to different institutions, and interpret courts, agencies, and elections through incompatible frameworks of legitimacy. Political defeat is no longer a policy loss but a threat to an entire way of life. As in the Holy Roman Empire, the center persists, but cohesion of the union weakens.
The transition to more digital living has accelerated this dynamic. Algorithmic amplification reinforces identity, grievance, and emotional intensity, while geographic sorting turns federalism into a de facto ideological boundary system. US states increasingly function as differentiated civic environments, much as imperial territories once reflected the confessional commitments of their rulers. The United States remains constitutionally unified but now its psychologically segmented. This is not a prelude to immediate collapse since the Holy Roman Empire endured for centuries under similar conditions.
The greater danger is chronic ungovernability of a republic that survives formally while shared civic reality erodes, and where sovereignty becomes negotiated among factions rather than anchored in broadly accepted democratic legitimacy.
Oligarchic Capture. Oligarchic capture is often misunderstood as corruption in the sense of secret deals and overt manipulation. Modern oligarchy emerges as capital accumulates and network effects consolidate markets. Regulatory complexity favors wealthy first-movers incumbents who can afford shape what regulations they must comply with. Political fundraising grows more expensive while public capacity hollows out. Over time, the state outsources expertise and infrastructure to private actors because it lacks the talent or authorization to build any of it internally.
Over time, concentrated wealth translates into leverage. Campaign finance becomes a barrier to entry while lobbying shapes if not writes new legislation. Revolving doors blur regulatory boundaries while think tanks and media depend on philanthropic funding or advertising from major donors. Finally, government procurement decisions lock agencies into vendor ecosystems so that crisis response relies on companies deemed too critical to fail.
When cloud providers host government systems, financial clearinghouses stabilize liquidity, technology firms provide battlefield intelligence, and social platforms mediate public discourse, democratic institutions lose power to carry out the responsibilities they were elected to fulfill.
The state retains authority to regulate, tax, prosecute, and subpoena. Yet its ability to function without private intermediaries diminishes. This is how sovereignty migrates outward from democratically controlled institutions to entities controlled by oligarchs. Elections may alter the rhetoric but little changes since this loss of democratic sovereignty persists. Citizens trust in such a system declines accordingly.
National Security in a Negotiated State. The United States remains militarily formidable. Yet the nature of security has shifted away from industrial mobilization to networked digital integration.
Cyber defense depends on private security firms and artificial intelligence research resides largely in commercial labs. Satellite constellations for communication and reconnaissance are increasingly private. Advanced semiconductor fabrication relies on complex global supply chains and financial sanctions require coordination with private banking networks.
In this environment, the state’s capacity to project power externally coexists with internal fragility. Adversaries can exploit domestic polarization through information operations, economic leverage, and cyber intrusions. The existing condition of fragmented legitimacy amplifies vulnerability.
Alliances also observe these dynamics. They continue to rely on American power while questioning the durability of American commitment. Domestic instability becomes a strategic variable in Allied capitals.
A negotiated state may remain strong, but it becomes a less reliable partner that is harder to trust.
Restoration Versus Reconstruction of Democracy. Faced with these dynamics, many in the United States advocate restoration of traditional democracy. The impulse is understandable since it seeks to revive institutional norms, reinvigorate bipartisan civility, and restore established guardrails. But the main difficulty lies in structural change.
The post-war American consensus rested on conditions that no longer exist; lower inequality, stronger local journalism, fewer partisan media channels, slower information flows, and less concentrated technical infrastructure. During this time, democratic norms worked within a relatively cohesive civic ecosystem.
Today’s environment is polarized because it is networked, accelerated, and capital-intensive. Restoration presumes that reinforcing old norms will suffice. They won’t.
Instead, American democracy must be reconstructed. Reconstruction recognizes that the environment in which democracy happens has shifted.
A rebuilt democracy would need to accept several premises:
First, the information environment has been permanently altered. Algorithmic amplification, Agentic AI, synthetic media, and data-driven persuasion are structural features of modern politics. Governance must incorporate transparency, accountability, and resilience tailored to digital systems. This includes leveraging digital means to give citizens a say in how their government runs more often than voting every few years.
Second, capital concentration is unlikely to reverse spontaneously. Counterweights must be institutional. Antitrust enforcement requires technical competence and political will. Campaign finance reform must abolish the concept of corporate personhood which has been used to fill dark money coffers and skew US elections since the Citizens United decision in 2010. These reforms must also lower barriers to entry to enable citizens outside of the millionaire class to run for office with a chance to win. Procurement systems must also be reformed to prevent vendor lock-in so private actors do not gain a stranglehold over democratic institutions.
Thirdly, lean into plurality as a strength, not a condition to be managed. The aim should be toward procedural legitimacy. Citizens do not need to share all the values to accept electoral outcomes. They need to trust that the rules are fair and consistently applied.
Fourth, strategic competition is constant. External actors will exploit domestic fractures. Information resilience becomes civic infrastructure. Electoral systems require technical hardening and journalistic integrity must be restored. Security and liberty must be co-designed rather than treated as antagonists.
Reconstruction is less glamorous than restoration since it demands effectiveness and competence over feel-good symbolism.
Democratic Capacity Building in a Networked Age. Democratic resilience is not exciting; it’s boring and focused on completing administrative tasks with integrity and accountability.
Rebuilding enforcement budgets. Agencies require skilled personnel capable of auditing complex digital systems and financial structures. Without technical expertise, regulation becomes little more than theater. And enforcement alone is insufficient if the state cannot execute. Democratic capacity must include the ability to design, build, and deliver solutions at scale.
Rebuilding procurement reform. Rebuilding procurement. A state that cannot procure independently cannot govern independently. Today’s systems often channel contracts toward a narrow set of firms, not because they are always the best, but because they are the only ones able to navigate the process. This creates a quiet shift in power. Government becomes reliant on private actors not just for delivery, but for the ability to act at all.
Reform must break that dependency. Procurement should expand access, prevent lock-in, and ensure that no critical function rests on a single provider or closed ecosystem. Otherwise, public authority is exercised only with private permission.
Rebuilding transparency. Real-time disclosure of political spending, enforceable conflict-of-interest rules, and cooling-off periods for sensitive roles raise the cost of hidden influence. Transparency must also be paired with simplification. Systems that are too complex to navigate do not empower citizens; they advantage those with the resources to work around them.
Rebuilding local civic infrastructure. Journalism ecosystems that are independent yet financially viable reduce epistemic fragmentation. Civic education focused on institutional literacy equips citizens to navigate a complex governance landscape. A voluntary tax donation to support local journalism modeled on the presidential campaign block on the US tax forms is one possible solution to revive local media.
Rebuilding economic policy. Excessive rent extraction and the hoarding of housing by large corporations erodes political equality. But extraction is only part of the story. The more corrosive failure is scarcity engineered through inaction. When housing is not built and infrastructure takes decades instead of years, the system stops functioning as a source of shared progress and becomes a mechanism for distributing scarcity.
Rebuilding economic policy therefore requires restoring the ability to build quickly, at scale, and across regions for all citizens.
None of this restores a mythical past but instead builds a durable present and future.
Coalitions are essential. Reform does not require unanimity, but it does require alignment among actors who perceive concentrated power as destabilizing, including segments of business disadvantaged by monopolistic incumbents.
Reconstruction is measured in years, not months. A rebuilt democracy does not eliminate inequality or disagreement, but it makes every effort to do so. It establishes conditions under which disagreement remains bounded and those at the bottom have some hope of rising to far less precarious living conditions.
The Psychological Transition. Perhaps the most significant shift is psychological since restoration is nostalgic while reconstruction is pragmatic.
The United States cannot rewind technological change or global capital flows. What it can do is redesign democratic institutions to operate effectively within them so it can deliver the promises of its Constitution all, not just the few.
Doing so will demand humility. It will require us to acknowledge that many contemporary failures are systemic rather than moral. If our current system was effective in today’s environment, we would not be where we are now.
We must invite citizens to recognize and value competence over spectacle. This cultural adjustment may be the hardest reform of all.
The Republic at a Crossroads. If the United States resembles the Holy Roman Empire more than Rome, the danger is not imminent collapse. Instead, we face a future of negotiated sovereignty and a continued hollowing out of democratic accountability.
The appearance of a strong center can persist symbolically while practical authority diffuses across states, oligarchic networks, and tech platforms. Citizens may continue to vote while living in separate civic realities, where rights, opportunities, and even shared facts depend on where they stand. National power may remain formidable abroad while legitimacy thins out at home.
The deeper risk is not collapse, but a system that continues to function without delivering for most of the people inside it.
The path forward is not a return to mid-century consensus, but the deliberate construction of democratic institutions suited to a networked and pluralistic world.
The work ahead is not the kind that looks good on film, and it will not satisfy those seeking heroic narrative arcs. Its long and grinding but deeply rewarding work.
