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I just imagine all the Roman senate going “Huh. So Caesar just brought his army over the Rubicon? Interesting…”
It feels like Trump was a demonstration of how pretty much every institution failed America. There’s all these “checks and balances” but we got to see how nearly every single one was relying on the president to just follow norms, then when it came right down to it they chose to do next to nothing in the name of “not being divisive.” Inaction was still an action, and it was the wrong one. >

Reminds me a lot of the fall of Rome as a republic. Just a bunch of norms holding the status quo in place until someone breaks the norms and a bunch of power hungry fucks go, oh, I guess we could always have done that!
(That's a simplification of course, a lot of them plausibly thought they were doing the right thing at the time.)