"Rome" has been the go-to comparison to "bad thing happened in this place, and therefore bad things will happen here" for centuries. It's usually as ignorant about Roman history as it is about current events.
It's always seeing a point and drawing a curve. It's absurd to think that you could make any predictions based on a single point of comparison -- even if that comparison was actually well-informed, which it rarely is.
So I wouldn't even go looking for that article comparing the US to Rome. If you're interested in sociology, you'd want to compare it to many nations over many centuries, and seeing what actual patterns form. Anything less than that is just going to be exhibiting somebody's bias about what they thing the bad things are, and cherry-picking an illustration.