I wasn’t arguing that the division into the Western and Eastern empires was a splintering; it was an administrative and bureaucratic response to the crises of the third century, and a reflection of the shifting political economy in late antiquity. I just don’t see a good analogy to that in modern America.

Right wingism is not very different from rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

The rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire was a consolidation of cultural and political power in an institution that had been vital but decentralized. The pantheon was a constant in Roman life, but there was no Pope of Roman mythology. Each region or town had its own particular version of the mythology and practice, each had a particular god it focused veneration on. Christianity supplanted that with an explicitly hierarchical religion tied to the state.

Conservatism in America isn’t going through that because it’s already a hierarchical movement tied to the state. The centralizing has already been done and has been in place for centuries. If anything, the MAGA movement is less centralized and top down than the preceding neoconservative era. Trump opened up a conservative politics that succeeds on thumbing its nose at the establishment.