Stepping out of #immigrationtwitter for a minute with question for #historytwitter:
Has any empire approaching the size, wealth, & influence of the USA ever shown its ass to the world as openly we have since 9/11? Ever had a collapse that was both so rapid *and* so evitable?
As I understand it, the Roman Empire collapsed in stages after generations of terrible mismanagement & exploitation. The Mongols ended in overreach and family drama. The USSR voted itself out of existence after failing to hold its diverse client states together. What about us?
I guess it's hard to compare our current moment to anything else in history when we have such an unlimited capacity to record and comment on events as they happen in realtime. Imagine Roman citizens replying to Nero's tweets! That's pretty much where we're at here
We are simultaneously living through plague, economic collapse, intractable social divisions & criminally bad leadership stripping our empire down and selling it to oligarchs for parts. We deserve almsot all of it tbh, but I guess it's the speed of it all that's really getting me
Since I asked the question, I guess I'll say that I think that the fall of the Soviet Union has a familiar ring: an empire far less powerful than what it was projecting to the world pulled apart by regional/cultural division & sold to oligarchs within the space of just a few yrs
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