Excellent observation, and I suspect most serious historians think dialectically even if they don’t necessarily recognize it. I do think collapse of the empire is well under way, and I predict that it’s actually going to be climate change that drives the final nail in. US already had massive crop failures due to extreme weather this year, and aquifers that millions of people depend on are drying up. As extreme weather continues to get worse, that’s going to further strain food production. And of course weather is also affecting infrastructure as well with events like Texas freeze causing massive economic damage. US is utterly unprepared to deal with these problems and the people in charge don’t appear to even recognize that these things are happening. This was a particularly insightful observation in my opinion:

It took a long time, decades, for the true reality of the change to hit the Romans whose writings have survived. Aristocratic Roman officials in Italy maintained the same kind of bureaucratic structure their fathers and grandfathers had, writing the same kinds of administrative letters for Ostrogothic kings of Italy that they had for emperors beforehand. The pull of the past is strong.

Since people in positions of power are least affected, it’s hard for them to see problems in time to take meaningful action while it’s still possible.