I get that collapse is a slow ongoing process but when the history books are written, what do you think will be considered the US' own Battle of Ravenna? What will occur that historians can point to it and say, "this was the effective end of the American empire." ?
I think it may actually be an event that has already happened. It's the sort of thing that seems more clear looking back 300 years from now on a 100 year period.
Reminds me of how the Chinese years of humiliation are conventionally marked by the first opium war but no one in China thought that was the start of the end at the time. They went through that, the Taiping rebellion, (which was the bloodiest war in history until WWI), and the second opium war thinking these were just setbacks.
It took the first Sino-Japanese war for the Qing to come to terms with just how bad things were. So in American terms that's like going through our own civil war, having other nations ransack New York, but not getting it through our heads until Mexico takes back Texas.
exactly! history is often exactly like that. looking back, we might see something starting entire generations before the people back then actually recognized it.