Will America need a Caesar?

Earlier this month, San Francisco’s Hamilton Society held a debate on a question that would have sounded absurd not long ago: Does America need a Caesar?

Older Americans may scoff. Younger politically engaged Americans are less likely to. Many came of age after 9/11 amid corruption, institutional drift, and visible decline. Even a presidency that has slowed the Biden-era collapse has not repaired the deeper sense that the system no longer works.

America needs a path out of cybernetic collapse that does not end in machine rule or technologically enhanced autocracy.

From that premise, the temptation follows: If everything is broken, perhaps history’s oldest emergency remedy deserves a second look.

But one does not simply “have a Caesar.” Critics who dismiss the whole discussion as live-action role-playing or strongman