At least it will be well documented for future historians
At least it will be well documented for future historians
85 comments
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Except that what we are living through isn't the collapse of the Roman Empire. It's the Birth of the Roman Empire and the collapse of the Roman Republic.
If we don't put a stop to it at it's beginning, we're looking at a few hundred years of oligarchy under a line of emperors who vary from corrupt and stupid, to capable but evil.
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It's important to remember that the fall of the Roman Republic was not the story of an evil dictator destroying a Free People(tm), but that of a sickened plutocratic oligarchy refusing to listen to its people for long enough that the people became directly hostile to the state, and when a political crisis came, it could not call upon the people to save it, considering - perhaps not entirely incorrectly - that to be ruled by an autocrat was not really any worse to them than being ruled by a sufficiently callous and ruthless oligarchy.
The comparison may still be apt.
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and the collapse took a long, long time. It took longer for rome to collapse than the US has existed.
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Except that what we are living through isn’t the collapse of the Roman Empire. It’s the Birth of the Roman Empire and the collapse of the Roman Republic.
Counterargument: the leadership change is well thought out, but the economic part isn't at all. The US system is built on consumption => the first thing people cut back under existential duress is consumption. I still don't see a well hashed out plan on replacing consumption with something else to drive the economy. Of course the US could go and start annexing new territories to maintain "growth" but I suspect it isn't really a sustainable approach, and thus far they just let trump talk shit about it as a tool of distraction rather than a concrete plan.
TL;DR: empires need to have viable economies. The US isn't ready to switch away from a consumer society, and scared people don't consume.
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I have the impression that Neo-Roman Empire would collapse within a couple decades, since it consists solely of Nero(s).
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at its* beginning
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gawddammit. I've been hoisted by own grammar petard. I'm usually pretty careful.
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More so than you know. The United States is modeled after Rome. Even down to the layout of Washington DC is modeled after Rome (the National Mall is equivalent to the Roman forum.) The founding fathers were giant Romaboos. It's poetic that America is following almost the exact trajectory just on a much shorter time frame.
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Rome’s fall was due to overexpansion, not fascist self-destruction.
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Rome’s fall was due to overexpansion, not fascist self-destruction.
Definitely not due to overexpansion. 'Fascism' is a questionable label, but self-destruction, certainly. All of Rome's institutions were hollowed out in service to autocracy, which, in turn, empowered an aristocracy wholly dependent on that same autocracy at the expense of the rest of society.
That barbarians were loudly and insistently knocking at the door was just the trigger of the collapse, not the underlying cause.
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Was it? Look at the first century BC. Octavian took power and transformed the Republic into an empire. Even the word fascism comes from the Latin Fasces, a bundle of rods with an axe in the middle, used to execute citizens at the order of magistrates. The story of Rome is absolutely about fascist self destruction.
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That and also an inherently deflationary currency tied to resource extraction. Bitcoin is also deflationary. Coincidence?
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i mean, it's really not like the collapse of the roman empire, because it uh, how do i put this one... Hasn't collapsed yet?
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It doesn't say the end of the collapse, it is like the collapse, the active part of it collapsing...
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Yeah, it took a plague, real shit winter, famine, mass migration invasions and many civil wars. US has a long way to go to reach that point.
Historians might look at this point in time and say "Trump's second presidency severely weakened the dollar. This had the knock on effects to make borrowing more expensive which made it harder to maintain their public expenses. Their issue was that the army always eats first, the people get the rest. No bread and games was ultimately the downfall."
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yes, and that's my problem with these posts, they act as if america is currently in the process of the soviet collapse, problem is, we are literally nowhere near that stage of progression, if we even get there at all.
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Hasn't collapsed yet?
yep, just like the romans, there's a rich guy turning it from a republic to an empire
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we still have a congress and state governments, the judicial branch still exists. The entire rest of the government still exists in an isolated and distinctly separate form.
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Impending, incipient, in-progress.
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that's what people keep telling me, but the worst thing to happen is DOGE making up numbers, and trump changing the head of the military (no martial law has been enforced, nothing interesting has happened)
There have been a literal million counter suits in regards to every single thing the trump admin has done, those people are still alive, they aren't getting defenestrated yet.
I'm really trying to see it happening, but all i'm seeing is bad things happening, not the destruction of a country.
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Well documented you say? In an age where dissinformation rules supreme?
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Actually, its all digital. So there wont be any documentation.
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The US will collapse like WWII Germany. Although, there’s a possibility of collapse due to over-expansion if Trump tries to take North America.
Come to think of it, both are possible.
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WWII Germany collapsed because it was defeated by a superior military. That seems unlikely in this case, unless the US military sides against the MAGAs.
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My money is on a Soviet style collapse where within a couple days the whole thing ends up dissolved.
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yeah sure, just be sure to note that WiFi is creepy beyond imagination (and is proposed to keep getting worse)
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wi-fi-routers-used-to-detect-human-locations-poses-within-a-room
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Poor Americams can't even afford mobile data, and have to rely on wifi. Come to the 2nd world and experience mobile freedom.
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Nah, the Romans had free public utilities and entertainment.
Both are poisoned with lead, though
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Nah, the Romans had free public utilities
Citizen, you are obligated to report any illegal taps in the aqueduct for non-authorized use, by the order of the Senate and People of Rome!
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... until the wifi stops working, along with the rest of the infrastructure.
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Canadian goth invasion
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Roman empire was in constant state of collapse, it was somewhere along the lines of Somalia and Sudan, US is absolutely fine in comparison.
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Lol Rome was like one of those YouTube videos of someone slipping on ice for 20 mins before they fall.
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Lol not even close
The Roman empire has not collapsed LMAO 🤣
85 comments
Please don't say that. Please let us collapse like the British Empire, or the Soviet Union.
If we follow Rome's trajectory, things get much worse for everyone else for a very long time.
The collapse of the USSR didn’t exactly go smoothly. We’re still dealing with the fallout decades later
All things are relative - like I said, I mean it only in contrast to a fall the way the Roman Empire went.
I'm not sure if I'd go that far. Things definitely got worse for Rome, or the regions formerly known as Rome. And they also got somewhat worse for Rome's neighbors who benefited from the regional stability and trade. But for distant provincials and other people who lived their lives outside of the power vacuum, things were fine or even better.
I'd say things in the US would not go well during the "fall." Canada and Mexico would also have a bevvy of new problems to deal with, and maybe even places like Japan and Britain where the US wields a lot of soft power would also decline. But it would open doors to others around the world, where growth has been long hindered or exploited by the US and allies under the current globalist model.
For better or worse, though, I think it is safe to say that the supposed "Pax Americana" is approaching its end. Hopefully the world is prepared for that.
Strong disagree. Throughout the decline (roughly putting it at ~284 AD because I hate Diocletian, to 474 AD), not only was there a massive and sharp drop in living standards all across the former Empire, but one that dropped some areas below their pre-Roman living standards, most notably Britain (abandoned ~410 AD), but all across the western provinces.
Not only that, but that the decline was accompanied by a collapse of the pax Romana was not some abstract thing for the provincials - it meant, quite literally, war coming to their doorstep. Armies, Roman and barbarian, fighting in their lands and despoiling it, conscripting their children, seizing their grain. And when it was all over, those wars didn't stop - it was just Romans were no longer involved. There was a massive depopulation of Europe through the fall of the Empire.
And on top of all of that, the collapse of Roman civilization sent Europe and North Africa spiraling back in terms of societal complexity; economic, legal, and architectural complexity would not fully recover for some ~1200 years.
I don't think the US is quite that level of powerful. But please don't wish a Roman fall on the US, or you wish a fall on us all.
Yeah. Europe, gear up, please.
That last bit is the dark ages myth, mostly created in the 19th century.
The middle ages were way better than is commonly suggested. Aside from a couple of major epidemics, but we've recently seen that we're not immune to that.
O yeah and quite a few warmongering autocrats, about territory and religion. We've risen above that too, haven't we?
No.
The Dark Ages myth is separate from the idea that the fall of the Roman Empire negatively impacted Europe in a massive way.