This is what late-stage empire feels like
the vibes are weird, ominous, and disorienting
I used to ask friends, What’s your fall of Rome strategy?
If you were a citizen of 4th or 5th century Rome and saw where things were heading, what would you do?
Would you try to forestall decline? Join the barbarians? Embrace decadence? Or take the Benedict Option and retreat to a monastery?
I never had a clear answer. Until recently, I’d forgotten about the thought experiment.
But lately, as I try to understand what’s happening, the hair on my arms stands up as a haunting voice whispers: This is what late-stage empire feels like. I hear the tambourines of Rome echo through me. I get the creeping sense of living through tectonic shifts in slow motion.
It’s tempting to make this exclusively about Trump, but the late-stage vibes predate his presidency. It’s the money-printing going brrrrr, the loss of shared values and purpose, and the sense that American hegemony is running on fumes. It’s the dystopia of dopamine, six-figure student debt, and social deconstruction of everything once taken for granted. I am of this. I am a symptom. We all are.
Trump 2.0 can be seen as attempt to reverse late-stage decline. But as I see it, he’s accelerating it. That’s the paradox of this administration. Smart Trumpists aren’t wrong about the rot: free-riding allies, a sold-out middle-class, sclerotic institutions, and cultural elite unmoored from reality. They see the nepo-baby syndrome of American power: still rich and powerful but increasingly hollow. In many ways, they are less deluded than Democrats — more willing to look straight in the face at late-stage realities.
Yet their solutions are so dumb. So corrupt. So goddamn performative. Every time I think we’ve hit peaked stupid, it gets even dumber. Trump’s tariffs are a perfect case study in late-stage-empire thrashing. Pitched as a way to help the American middle class, they’re almost certain to harm it. Framed as an attempt to forestall decline, they’re already cratering the stock market (the S&P 500 is down 3% today as of this writing). It’s policy by bad math, ego, and narrow-minded transactionalism.
It’s the same geopolitically. Trump talks about defending Western civilization, but his actions seem designed to weaken it. Look at the damage done to the transatlantic alliance within his first 100 days in office. Why torch Denmark of all countries? Or the UK? Or Canada? Denmark is a pro-West, high-trust, democratic nation that supported us through our dumbest military adventures, controls Greenland, and is a paying member of NATO that just bumped defense spending to 3% of GDP. It’s senseless.
Immigration is the same kind of late-stage thrashing. Of course I want our borders and immigration laws enforced. I’m upset too! But that doesn't justify sending people to Salvadoran gulags over tattoos, with no due process. The blend of authoritarian theatrics and performative cruelty destroys moral authority while failing to solve the underlying problem. Quietly enforcing employment ID laws would do more to reduce illegal immigration than any of this nonsense.
But again, the late-stage vibes aren’t just about politics or the global order. They’re cultural, emotional, and spiritual as well. You can feel it in an unspoken hunger for purpose, the doomscrolling of jaded young men, the anxieties of navigating life when old scripts and structures no longer are reliable. A tsunami of simulacra is washing over the arts, media, and humanities due to AI. Trust is scarce. Distraction is everywhere. Everyone is vaguely aware something is off yet unable to name it. So I am naming it here: late-stage-empire vibes.
The other night, I took a walk under a starry sky and talked to ChatGPT in voice mode about existentialism. It felt meta and kind of spooky to talk to a computer about human existence and meaning. I asked for book recommendations and places to visit for an upcoming solo trip. It gave me a full itinerary with a corresponding reading list.
Oddly, it felt like a metaphor for this moment: walking under the stars, talking to an all-knowing machine about human existence. And I suspect the existentialists have something to offer us. Even amid the late-stage-empire vibes, we still have choices. Historical determinists might say the cake is already baked, but I don’t fully buy that. We still have agency. We still have freedom. We still get to choose our story amid the absurdity.
Is this cope? Maybe.
But I choose to believe.
This hit. The mood, the disorientation, the quiet spiritual collapse—weigh you caught all that without forcing it. It’s rare to name a vibe and still leave space for freedom, not doom. Felt like a real-time dispatch from the edge of something ancient breaking. I’m with you. Let’s choose better.
I feel sad that reading someone as honest and forthright as you makes me feel a sense of relief. It shouldn't be as rare as it is, it shouldn't take an act of bravery, but it does, and I thank you for doing it. Excellent piece.