Byzantium was in decline for seven centuries until the Ottomans pulled the plug. Rome was in decline for several centuries prior to its sacking.

Climate change and the accompanying plagues, droughts, famines, and calamities that accompany it might accelerate and exacerbate the state's capacity and willingness to respond to these crises, but all it might mean is that this is a new normal added to the reproleterization of American life.

I don't really have a point but it is just a thought that I (perhaps others) are going to have to accept that future, and that is a kind of new world I am unsure as to how to adapt to.

  • ComradeRat [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Overly optimistic counterpoint: in this era, everything seems to move faster than in the past. Germany rose, fell, rose again and fell again in less than a hundred years, for example. The USSR rose and fell in less than a hundred years too. Entire states can collapse in ridiculously short times (Syria for example). The US has already been in decline for a while, and all these compounding crises all at once might be enough of a push to destroy it.

    • ned_ludd [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      That's not optimistic. The US state falling apart right now, with no left party at all, would be a massive disaster.

      • hogposting [he/him,comrade/them]
        1·
        4 years ago

        For us, sure. But it would be a net positive for the rest of the world unless we murder-suicide a few countries on the way out.

        • ned_ludd [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Hard to imagine something like that being a clean little implosion within our own borders.

        • FieriDepthsofHell [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          We have more than a dozen nuclear-armed submarines out at sea right now, each with the capability to essentially destroy a continent. The collapse of this empire doesn't end well for anyone.

          Libs always play the existence of previous apocalyptic feelings like a trump card about left overreaction, but European Christians approaching 1000AD didn't have weapons that could wipe out humanity.