Tiberius:
Suetonius has stories about Tiberius attempting to rape a woman and raping two boys, but Champlin (2015) and other historians have strong doubts about these and consider them fictinoal in nature.
Suetonius is hardly scrupulous in his stories - a lot of his accounts are gossip.
Tacitus is not really reliable when it comes to the Julio-Claudian dynasty as he over-glorifies the late republic and then paints the Julio-Claudians as almost cartoonically evil.
https://www.amazon.com/Tiberius-Caesar-G-P-Baker/dp/0815411138
This gives a bit more fair-minded biography.
Caligula and Nero
— comparing them to the populists Mao, Stalin and Hitler - well, that’s incorrect.
Caligula and Nero failed at playing to the crow, while M, S and H most certainly succeeded.
Caligula and Nero were monsters like the ancient kings from various countries from China to Ireland, who seemed to get off on the shrieks of the tortured.
But in terms of the way Mao, Stalin and Hitler were able to direct swarms of people to commit murders on a vast scale was something else.
Perhaps you know more about Tiberius than I do.
Of course it's true that Nero and Caligula had no sway over large numbers of people, as did Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, but they were all five monsters.
Caligula--or "bootsie"--came to power with great popular support but soon lost it as his monstrous nature expressed itself in his behavior.
Of course, such monsters as these should not be allowed to attain great power. The problem is how to prevent it--and how to recognize them before they can. I suppose this is the great dilemma of the Information Age, when one would expect a monstrous nature to reveal itself but is doomed to disappointment by the power of propaganda.
The other question is how much power corrupts and whether anyone is absolutely incorruptible.
Certainly the enormous power concentrated in a place like Washington would be inevitably a magnet for the ambitious and the corrupt and also a corrupting influence on anyone who isn't saintly.
Ambitious people--especially ambitious scoundrels--have always dreamed of seizing the enormous wealth and power of the USA for themselves, some no doubt flattering and deceiving themselves that they would use it only for good purposes. The great danger is that today, with America weakened by decadence, they see a real opportunity for doing it.
The history of Rome is a huge warning. There are many others.
Can the American People save themselves and their precious heritage? Certainly nobody else can.
What do you think?