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That was because of those collapses were all in the Age of the Gun. Many writers have noted the correlation between whether a society, at a given time, is more "aristocratic" or "democratic," and whether its methods of war-fighting are more capital-intensive or labor-intensive, respectively.
I remember once reading a legal paper on the 2nd Amendment, specifically the debate as to whether it's about a right of the people to own civilian weapons for hunting/personal defense, or a right of the people to have the means to overthrow a tyrannical government, with both views finding support in the writings of the Founders. The author's position was that the Founders clearly meant for it to do both, because they lived in a time when the means of meeting both goals pretty much overlapped — "civilian" guns were also useful as weapons of war, the weapons of war were broadly affordable, and it did not take much time or money to turn a "militia" of ordinary civilian riflemen into an effective war-fighting force. Hence, why they thought we could do without a standing military, relying entirely upon the general citizenry for national defense. But, the author then noted, changes in military technology over the centuries mean that no longer holds. The modern "tip of the spear" soldier is an expensive, well-equipped, highly-trained elite. Our jurisprudence has, in practice, favored the "personal defense" goal/interpretation of 2Am over the other… because it's the only one that's remotely practical in our present world. The Age of the Gun was already on its way out during the First World War. (Hence, why you get people arguing that we're now entering the Age of the Drone, with drone operators as the "new knights.") It's been slow, and papered over by various illusions, but over the last century, we've all been becoming peasants again.
What makes you think they would?
What form do you picture this "resistance" taking, and why wouldn't those who engage in it not end up arrested for said crimes (or, at the extreme, meeting a Waco/Ruby Ridge fate)?
Even if he somehow gets elected, Donald Trump will be even less effective in his second term than his first, because they're not being taken by surprise this time, and they've been preparing to more effectively #Resist him — or any other GOP president.
The "powers" of the president are all dependent on having large numbers of people in DC enforce his decisions and orders. If they all simply don't…
They might not have been elite, but they had people who were part of the elite in agreement with those goals — if they didn't, they'd never have won. This is a point Boot makes about guerrilla warfare in Invisible Armies; one of the necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for a guerrilla force to win is for some portion of the "elites" on the other side to sympathize with them. I'd argue that the only reason the American Revolution succeeded is because too many on the British side, like Burke (and, I would argue, the Howe brothers) were sympathetic to the American side.
Again, it only works when it provides some portion of the elite an excuse to do what they want anyway.
Why not?
Trump is not our Julius Caesar. At best, he's the Gracchi brothers. And just who is our Augustus, then?
Caesar was Lincoln. Augustus was FDR. The first destroyed the Republic by choosing civil war, winning the war he started, and then getting assassinated for his trouble. The second consolidated power into an imperial executive, ruled for decades, and left the empire shaped in his image.
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Agreed.
But if history is any indication our Augustus is still a good generation or two away.
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