No question that this country is on the brink of something. We definitely haven’t been a Constitutional republic for a very long time, and, as you say, states seem to follow very similar paths historically, eventually reaching a point where something has to break.
Yes, and it's a
process, with lots of moving parts scattered around, all in motion over an appreciable curve of time. And that's how people miss what happens, since they are more prone to be event oriented, and not alert to watching the assorted
processes in motion, if they can be observed and recognized. It is a process to win freedom - and so it is to lose it.