At least we will fall into history as the only empire whose people itself foresaw its demise a mile away from the promised end, but nonetheless cannot do a jack against its compromise and destruction.
A quality that does not exist in Ancient Rome or the Renaissance, that is.
^ The Holy Roman Empire, but yes, this. We still live in a society identical to the Romans, with practically the same laws and government. Every "western" nation has a core code of "justice" and "rights" rooted in the Roman laws. The current American government has more in common with Rome than with the Constitution of the United States.
At the same time, the eastern half of the empire never "fell" at all, it just got subverted and rebranded as the Ottoman Empire. Well, that did fall, a little more than a century ago. Everyone likes to pretend like it's dead, but it's just waiting for the right leader to spring back to life overnight.
And before anyone says "But muh modern Democracy!" Rome invented that to. And the Republic, and the Monarchy as we know that. Rome was at different points in time each of those things. Sometimes a Democracy where Ceasar had no more power than a president or a prime minister, sometimes a Monarchy where the Senate were the puppets. And sometimes a Republic, where the citizens actually had a voice in the affairs of state.
The only thing that "fell" was the city itself, and then the city/states/vassals went to perpetual war with each other. And just like the city before them, the have each been sometimes a Monarchy and sometimes a Democracy, and sometimes a Republic.
Kings/Emperors become tyrants, or birth them.
Democracies become decadent and corrupt.
Republics fall to mob rule and riots.
America tried to create a system with all three balancing each other. It sort of worked, for a century or so. Fell to communism slower than the rest of them did at least. But we're all still living in the Roman empire, we just call it "Western Society" now because the atheists won the culture war 50 years ago.