Progressive Politics

1659 readers

119 users here now

Welcome to Progressive Politics! A place for news updates and political discussion from a left perspective. Conservatives and centrists are welcome just try and keep it civil :)

(Sidebar still a work in progress post recommendations if you have them such as reading lists)

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

863

The United States is Falling Apart and the World is Taking Notice (www.counterpunch.org)

submitted 5 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

379 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It's absolutely not. It's their very internal policies that force them into destroying themselves. They start believing their own propaganda. For both Rome and Constantinople it was wasting huge amounts of it's power on fighting Persia and trying to extend its borders in ways that outran it's logistics capacity. For the Ottomans it was the rise of nationalism and their ham fisted attempts to combat it. For the modern Western imperialists it was the base fact that direct colonial rule was always a monetary drain for the state and only made businesses money. Making these stupid decisions was because each empire had created a web of political commitments and internal propaganda that was unsustainable.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The Roman Empire took centuries to eventually collapse and a lot of it was corruption, hyperinflation, and complacency. It's happening here but at a much quicker rate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth.

Rome was a place where power consolidated, but the various eras might as well have been different empires.

The system collapsed, dissolved, reconstituted, and expanded several times during the 1400 years it existed.

Same with China. 5000 years of history emerging from Beijing, but each dynasty was distinct.

Even the US has reinvented itself several times over by now. Antebellum America might as well have been a different country. New Deal America was radically different from it's Coolidge Era predecessor. Reagan's America became it's own thing in turn. Trumpian America is a new thing, not an end point.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Didn't Constantinople outlast the Persian empire by quite a while?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

They did, and were so weak and ineffectual afterwards that they even got sacked by the crusaders. It was essentially a long decline.