In the end, all the leaders can offer is Bread and Circuses.
Is this what the fall of Rome felt like? Increasingly absurd?
yes
Rome took about a thousand years to "fall" so it might be tricky to attribute any particular "feeling". In some ways, perhaps it still exists, just in a different form (not unlike how the current People's Republic of China might be considered a more contemporary manifestation of the Shang Dynasty)
Baja California should be returned to California! Commence special military operation!