It’s good practice to re-read Gibbon from time to time.
There’s a story about Edward Gibbon Eating at a restaurant in Paris during the early years of the American Revolution at the same time that Benjamin Franklin was there drumming up French support for the colonists. Franklin was apparently a massive fan of Gibbon and sent someone over to ask if he could meet him. Gibbon sent the messenger back saying ‘I don’t consort with rebels and traitors’. To which the deeply offended Franklin sent a message back ‘I just thought I might be able to help you write a sequel to your book, entitled “The Decline and Fall of the British Empire”...
Yes, it is. That was a GREAT book.
History is repeating itself.