Also I’m pretty certain Caesar wasn’t borderline illiterate.

In fact, not only did Caesar read books, unlike Trump, he wrote them too. And didn't use a ghost writer and then claim he wrote the best-selling book ever.

Stupid Sulla is a more accurate comparison

Sulla started a civil war with his militrary leaders being against it and strip any and all power from the plebians

The most important difference between Caesar and Trump is that Trump isn't a war leader, and he doesn't have a personal army backing him. Now, if Trump (or a more competent person) personally lead his own private army on a highly successful decade-long campaign of foreign conquest and plunder, enriching the population and becoming spectacularly popular in the process, and then was willing and able to use that army to successfully fight a civil war, AND if the US was already war-weary from decades of civil war among its warlords, well then we might have similar conditions to the time of Caesar. I just don't see that happening in America. When America eventually falls from global hegemony, it will probably be more like the end of the British Empire than the end of the Roman Republic.

I think it's just playing into people's fantasies of power. Look at how much of.our entertainment is about ultra wealthy people (the romcom billionaire who falls for a humble working class woman, the rappers who brag about getting bags, etc.) despite most Americans living humbly or struggling. It may also be because most people in the US grew up on fairy tales and Disney movies involving royalty (ETA: Now that i think about it these children's entertainments sound like propaganda).

Every once in a while it comes up in RPG spaces, especially DND. Like, why are we doing the whole "king and rightful heir" trope played straight again? Monarchy is fundamentally unjust.

And then people get mad. "it's just a game". "Don't make things political". (As if a story about a king and heirs isn't already political!)

I did a nice campaign arc that was about a small city state that had overthrown their king and established a collective, and how counter-revolutionaries were trying to bring the king back. It was good. Probably one of the best I've run.

Also one of the larger cities in the setting had an elected mayor, and we had an arc about getting out the vote.

Anyway. We can tell different stories. But you need to go against the grain. And be ready for chuds to get upset.

Caesar started a civil war that ended with him being emperor.

His crossing of the river precipitated Caesar's civil war,[4] which ultimately led to Caesar's becoming dictator for life (dictator perpetuo). Caesar had been appointed to a governorship over a region that ranged from southern Gaul to Illyricum. As his term of governorship ended, the Senate ordered him to disband his army and return to Rome. As it was illegal to bring armies into Italy (the northern border of which was marked by the river Rubicon) his crossing the river under arms amounted to insurrection, treason, and a declaration of war on the state. According to some authors, he uttered the phrase alea iacta est ("the die is cast") before crossing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Rubicon

He was declared dictator-for-life and was in open war with much of the senate. Not hyper-democratic. And then he was killed, so we don't know what his final goal was. Maybe he was going to set things right (in his opinion) and then hand back control to the senate, like Sulla had done a generation earlier, or maybe he would have done what Octavian did later.

That was a good start.