What does this have to do with late capitalism? This has happened all throughout history and you just said you read about it yourself
The root of all failure at the level of the society is the fungibility of inherited wealth into political power, which rapidly gets deployed to impoverish everyone else including soldiers, and on its way it tramples institutions once revered.
> The root of all failure at the level of the society is ...
Or maybe the real root is our tendency to fixate on simplistic reductions.
they could have just had an alcoholic parent.