That is a question that I have asked many times.
The Decline and Fall of the USA
thanks to the Liberal/Socialist/Marxist/Progressives that are in government.
Maybe it’s time to move the capital to ‘New Washington’ (say, built on the site of Wichita), so when the barbarians overrun (Old) Washington (whether you take that to mean the demonRATs or the Muslims), we can keep our civiliation running another thousand years or so.
(All comparisons with Rome that assume Gibbon’s false telling in which the Roman Empire ‘fell’ when the last Western Augustus was retired to a villa near Naples in 476 are useless, since they are comparisons with a false history.)