Most Empires in History Fell by Age 250. The US Is at a Weighty Crossroads.
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/61936
As a veteran of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, I visit high schools on a regular basis to talk about the military. I try to fill in the blanks that military recruiters intentionally ignore. I find that when asked, most students can say very little about the reasons why the U.S. fights. They often wrongly assume that the U.S. fights in self-defense or to protect democracy when in reality the U.S.
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https://truthout.org/articles/most-empires-in-history-fell-by-age-250-the-us-is-at-a-weighty-crossroads/Open linkView original on lemmy.ca
21 replies
Maybe we could try not being an empire....
Let's be a book club.
Umm, can it be audiobook?
Abridged. Able to fit in a tiktok
'Muricans reading..?
Isn’t that what Trump ran on?
Book clubs read more than one book.
this definitely feels more like usa’s funeral than usa’s birthday
I’ve worn black every 4th of July since 2017.
Now with a memecoin and AI generated NFTs to commemorate!
By so many metrics the US has already failed.
We're outside the pattern. Like Rome was.
There is no pattern. The "most empires fall after 250 years" is just some guy claiming it, there is no facts to back it up, and no historian has ever made such a claim.
Plus even if it was, it’s an average not a pattern
No not that pattern. It's the one where, the closer you get from antiquity to now, the shorter the lifespan of an empire. It's not an absolute, but Rome is the biggest outlier in how long it lasted. In the current age, where empires have much shorter lifespans on average, America is an outlier, proportionately.
Difference is that Rome was able to survive for another thousand years after the fall of the western half of the empire. I severely doubt the US will pull such BS, or if it does it'll be some random ass rump state like Trebizond or Theodoro.
Rome was continually called Rome, but people harkon back to old empires and see themselves as extending it. It had many civil wars and changes and moved capitals and everything. My point is that if we call that one empire, maybe historians will consider the US as part of the larger Anglo American empire
Luckily the underground crime economy is keeping it afloat.
Unluckily?
The US didn't start being an empire until after WW2
Crossroads? It's not like you have a choice. It started as a gradual slope, but you're mid-slide now and there's no going back to your peak.