The first time rome fell, nobody had any idea it was happening.

 Rome tumbled halfway down the hill and thought they were still at the peak. Going through it a second time, the issue is obvious and simple.

 The romans, incluing the american-romans, got the ratchet of progress stuck in reverse. They forget things, then, having forgotten them, have no idea they ever existed.

 Example: I learned most of my general scientific knowledge from a magazine called [new scientist], but you can't learn any science from science magazines in the year of our satan 2025. Anyone who doesn't already know the science will never know, and never realize that previous generations knew it.

 The mechanism of decline makes decline invisible. Except to anyone who uses an accountant, of course, but accounting is a superpower, with the associated rarity.

 The atlantic used to be a good magazine. Crazy, right? Magazines died in 1900 too, but they were replaced by new good magazines. In 2000, they are not replaced. The romans wait for the replacement, as it was always replaced before, until they forget that a replacement was supposed to be coming. They start waiting for new car factories instead, for example, forgetting all about the magazines.

 In 2008 the american-roman economy permanently entered a lower gear, which means zoomers can see that boomers could afford much larger houses. In 2038 all the boomers will be dead, and the subseqent generations won't be able to see their houses first hand. They will only be able to see that millennials and zoomers are as poor as they are. Decline will be normalized. It doesn't help that voters and peasants only care about relative wealth. They don't have a problem with decline provided a sinking tide lowers all boats. The demand for solutions is low at best.

 It used to be normal for american-romans to be self-employed. Anyone remember the date off hand? Now they're all like, 'muh jerbs.' Oh noes, applying to jobs is a shitshow at the moment...
 Because they were dumb enough to allow employers to dominate the market at all. Englisch.

 Minor, irrelevant advances give the illusion of growth to generations too young to have ever seen a real invention. Example: better dental floss was invented recently. Nobody can point to decline, because the tech has been forgotten. Everyone can still point to [progress]. AI. Wowee.

 AI will totally invent our flying cars, any day now. One says, as if Communist cars aren't toxic waste.

 The roman roads were still there. They were simply unusable due to the combination of banditry and poverty-driven lack of demand. Likewise, it will be a long time before the internet simply shuts off, but it will get less and less useful.
 Much like the library of alexandria, come to think. By the time the christians burned it, there was nothing left to preserve. Likewise, by the time the internet shuts down (except maybe in china), there will be nothing on it worth keeping. The romans will think they're advancing to a new system, having become too wise to need the internet anymore. Like the Amish [advancing] beyond the need for mineral-fuelled tractors.

 Moral: don't use a ratchet of progress. It has [progress] in it, which means it's Satanism. 

   P.S. If you're lucky trump will constitute your east-west split. Europe will continue as a traditional angels-dancing-on-pinheads theocratic dystopian nightmare, while the western empire decays more vigoriously, as a separate administrative unit.