I mean, Trump literally dropped English for “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein …” and just didn’t quite make it to “Fuhrer!” some months back in some speech or another.
Anyone want to bet whether Javanka delivered the message to KSA that it would be OK with Donald if they invaded Qatar? I’ll take the ‘yes’ side of that bet, please.
Imagine a cookie jar. Now imagine Secretary of Commerce Ross stealing 120 million of them. At least, that’s the grift that Forbes sees.
Trump has given up on pesky details like “appointments” and “government” and is now having random dudes from Mar-a-Lago (including Marvel CEO and all-around asshole Ike Perlmutter) with no government experience or legal authority run the VA.
I don’t understand why no one is doing anything about this.
Oh, no. Wait. Nothing matters.
Can we impeach this c$%t now? Pretty please?
I can’t help feeling that if this ever ends, a whole lot of people need to go up against the wall which frightens me because I never would have imagined myself thinking such a thing. I imagine it wouldn’t solve anything anymore than the proscriptions of Sulla and Marius did but it makes me so angry to see a great country irrevocably damaged.
I mean, I don’t think (I hope) that we’re not at the point where we must destroy the Republic to save it, but the fact that I can see it on the horizon terrifies me.
Think of how many values you could cherish you could implement if your state (and a few states around you with similar values) left the country and created a new nation, with a new constitution.
Now imagine trying to implement those values in the country as it exists right now, or for the foreseeable future.
What happens when everyone is “better off” (insofar as implementing their particular values) leaving the country? It seems like keeping the country together is going to require something like force, or an imperial government rather than a democratic one, if things like social media keep accelerating the centrifugal cultural and demographic forces already present.
What happens when not everyone agrees with our values of what’s better and right? Stuff like that is enforceable in a citystate scenario or an ostensibly benevolent totalitarian state. A segmented republic doesn’t seem doable, as no region would cede their autonomy to the extent needed to pull this off.
Ironically, this is the kind of friction Trump is running into. He’s trying to run the country like he does his business (in other words, POORLY), but of course it’s not remotely the same because we aren’t his employees.
A civil war isn’t happening, but civil unrest already is and it will grow until change occurs.
Considering that as far as i know every diverse “empire” rapidly spun off into ethno-nationalism, probably not great. Yugoslavia almost immediately broke apart, Rwanda went full genocide, Bangladesh and Pakistan exist because differences trump similarities. The real point of greatest danger is when no one group in the US will have enough authority to resist or impose its will on the nation; that’s when the splitting forces will be strongest, because everyone will be miserable with each other simultaneously.
I worry about losing sight of principles and focusing on results; and if results are all that matter there isn’t any “glue” to hold people together. We have to believe in “something” to hold us together; the Constitution, fundamental liberties, freedom of religion, whatever. It does feel like right now people have resigned themselves to being together not because they want to be but because they’re prevented from leaving.
If both sides dismiss and degrade these commonalties (conservatives: we’ll preach Duty and Patriotism and literally do the opposite once your back is turned / liberals: all these traditions are just meaningless tools of oppression and we’re Woke and don’t believe a word of it) then, honestly, why stick together without some shared common principle? Unless there’s some larger, imperious government above you; which, frankly, many would probably agree we’re halfway there now.
Rule 78 of the Internet: in any post critical of any aspect of the political system, “both sides” must come under equal disapprobation, no matter how lopsided the situation is in reality. “Sure Sauron wanted to enslave the world and turn it into a blighted wasteland, but the hobbits ate and smoked a lot.”
I like to think of it as a marriage of convenience. By consolidating, we’ve gained significant leverage over other nations. However, with such marriages there’s a lot of sacrifice and compromise.
Let me just concede this is my “how do things fall apart” way of framing things, since this was a response to the Fall of the Republic sort of thinking everywhere around now (it’s also funny how Stoicism seems to be gaining traction again, as the philosophy saw its popularity increase during times of political decline). Everyone is obviously better off together (overall) as far as economics and defense, and arguably, economics is half the battle. But everyone was better off together in the Austrio-Hungarian Empire, and we see how that went.
Nah, it has nothing to do with fault. As i’ve said (ad nausium) the Conservative / Republican populism based around racism, xenophobia and the decline of truth based world views have been the increasingly bad actor for decades on.
Not only that, but hobbits were racist against Orcs. Sauron is the true egalitarian.
Not disputing your point, but those are strange examples. Better examples might be China (which effectively never fell apart), or India (ditto), or Russia (which sort of fell apart but in some ways not really), or even Rome, which fell apart but which to a great extent still dominates the culture of much of Europe and the New World.
I think there’s less near-term chance that the US falls apart (because it’s been tried and it wasn’t pretty, and because the usual suspects have more to lose than gain from trying again) than there is that the US slowly declines for a long time, at least when it comes to economic and military clout. I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing; people in Iowa ought to be able to live a decent life without enslaving Bangladeshis or bombing Yemenis into the Stone Age.
No, the real danger as I see it is that people will come to power who will be resistant to the idea of eventual US decline and will seek to reverse it by, you guessed it, bombing some people into the Stone Age. This may already have happened!
Wait, what time frame are we talking about? I mean, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms was about the fact that China for a long time was three kingdoms. Also, there was their conquest by the Mongols.
And India was ever really unified before the British?
What came after? The Mongols laid a small bureaucracy over China without ever changing the essential nature of the state or its people.
Yes. Most of what amounts to modern India was incorporated into the Mughal empire in the 16th century. The British basically economically colonized that empire in the 19th century.
With respect to Rome, Philip K Dick wrote a book (Valis, as I recall) the premise of which was that the Roman Empire never fell at all, that we’re still living in it. It was a piece of fiction, of course, but it came to mind when I saw this story today:
Basically, Western civilization can be viewed as an extension through time of the Roman Empire. It’s an exaggeration, sure, but it’s an exaggeration of something genuinely true, as all good exaggerations are.