There Is A Lot Of Wrong...

... with parallels he tries to draw. It is expected from artsy types, especially from ones who are venerated (I personally do not give a shit about God Father) in the low culture environment like Hollywood, but there are very few if any parallels between the US and Rome, other than some superficial similarities politically. 

The US is not even in the same league militarily or culturally as Rome was. There is no Marcus Aurelius nor are there any phalanx which could crush first rate enemies. He should concentrate on what he did best--making movies about Italian Mafia and not go where no Hollywood screenwriter or director ever could due to primitive education. But, what do I know... This is POTUS today.

Members of the Greatest Generation, who 80 years ago next week, took to the beaches of Normandy and liberated a continent and literally saved the world. Others who stood against communism in Korea and Vietnam.

Of course, Red Army crushing Axis doesn't count, as long as there are Coppolas and Spilbergs in this world confabulating US history which, with the exception of Ike and King with Nimitz, produced about a zero strategists and military leaders of  a historical scale, unlike it was with Rome. Hey, as long as we have Hollywood and stolen valor being a MO... 

Let me give you a definition of the press, which extends by definition to US intellectual and cultural "elite" by a person who actually invented gonzo-journalism Hunter S. Thompson. Feel free to substitute term press for whatever "creative" class you want...

The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage

That's Western "intellectual" elite for ya... press is not even there, because it is below this rather obsolete definition.