(e.g: sanctions against Russia backfiring, Ukraine being a US quagmire, or a fantasy that decline will mean a great awakening of the masses to seize the moment for a second Civil Rights movement or even revolution)
A state of decline can still be kept afloat through debt and intimidation. With receding rewards and profits of being the imperial core, this system of domination and exploitation can , like a dying sun, become more intense, destructive, and normal.
Think of how much in the past twenty to thirty years has been normalized in the US: school shootings, police shootings/murder and abuse of power by police, state, and federal government. Spying on its own citizens, extrajudicial assassinations and black sites. The list goes on.
A state of decline can find a new grounds of sustainability for its capitalist engine through more overt adopted fascist strategies and tactics against labor and enemies, foreign and domestic.
Is decline a good thing in this context? Would a state of decline transmute the volatility of the state to revolutionary moments seized by a neo-nascent American communist front?
These are just some background thoughts I've been having in my mind when I skim the website, forgive me if the tone comes off as :reddit-logo: :debate-me-debate-me: but I found the insight of some of the posters here quite helpful and astute and was hoping for some of thst collective wisdom.
I'm an old, with memories as far back the late 80s. I also majored classical history. And let me tell you, we are collapsing way faster than the western Roman empire did; in the last 40 years we've had at least 150 Roman years' worth of decline. A lot of people reading this will absolutely live to see a time when the USA only exists on paper, if that. tbh there's an argument to be made that we're pretty much there already in most of the ways that count.
as to whether it's a good thing: nothing is a good thing
well the romans were smarter than our leaders
Had about an equal amount of lead poisoning
Inshallah
Death to America