Here is a fairly short, 25 minute overview of the American political landscape that Thomas Frank delivers in The Shaw Address in Australia.
He urges them not to go down a similar path in 'this low, dishonest age.'
"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Plunder, rape, and murder they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
Tacitus, Agricola