The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence.
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From Wikipedia: "Romans regarded peace not as an absence of war, but as a rare situation which existed when all opponents had been beaten down and lost the ability to resist."
Again, so goshdarn interesting innit...
@cyberlyra I want to just walk away from this death cult we call "civilization" with anybody else who feels the same and go focus on living instead of killing and dying.
It seems like such a simple and obvious idea, but damn if it isn't elusive.
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The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
@cyberlyra And in memory of him, we now refer to a toilet as the commode.*
* Not actually true
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The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
@cyberlyra
Don't forget the lead in the water pipes. Very bad for the brain. -
The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
@cyberlyra
After reading his Wikipedia page, I'm 1000% gonna refer to trump as 'Commodus' from now on. The only major difference seems to be their physical characteristics, as Commodus was handsome and athletic and trump is...a wretching husk of greasy feces.Other than that, though- twinsies
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The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
@cyberlyra as much as I'm not au fait with the inner workings of the Roman Empire, even I got the idea behind the "fall of Rome".
It's the same story, played out again and again
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The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
TIL I found out that "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon is a six-volume historical work published between 1776 (
) and 1788." -
The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
@cyberlyra much of Rome's history is prescient today. Of course it is ironic we modeled our society on Greek and Roman civilization.
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@oscarfalcon Yes. there was no democracy again in those territories for ... 1500 years or so.
(admittedly democracy as practiced by the Roman republic excluded huge proportions of the population but still).
And change didn't move against THAT needle until a massive pandemic wiped out a third of the population and made the feudal lifestyles that the Church had naturalized impossible.
@cyberlyra @oscarfalcon I would also add that pure democracy is not electing dictatorial decisions.
Which is what implementations of democracy have largely become.
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The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
@cyberlyra Interesting.
However, it's worth remembering that the eastern half of the Roman Empire continued just fine.
This so called Pax Americana is really a ~35 year period dominated by an alliance of the USA, Europe/Commonwealth, and Japan/South Korea/Taiwan etc.
The fall of the USA still leaves Europe to continue just fine (so far). We'll see about east Asia, but most of these countries are VERY anti-eager to submit to China.
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From Wikipedia: "Romans regarded peace not as an absence of war, but as a rare situation which existed when all opponents had been beaten down and lost the ability to resist."
Again, so goshdarn interesting innit...
@cyberlyra this is what the white roman statue avatar guys mean when they say “retvrn”
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The Pax Americana's namesake is, of course, the Pax Romana, which also endured about 200 years and oversaw and impressive expansion of the empire and influence. That is, until a series of disastrous leaders starting with the narcissistic and dictatorial Commodus with his cult of personality (based on wrestling matches, hmmm), brought the empire to ruin. His death precipitated a period of crisis in leadership in the vacuum and the empire fell gradually over the ensuing third century through subsequent invasions, loss of influence and territory.
Gosh history is just so darn fascinating. Just one terrible leader can bring the economic and political stability the world depends on crashing down and completely re-draw the geopolitical map.
America didn't fall because Trump was elected. Trump was elected because America had already fallen.
@cyberlyra -
TIL I found out that "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon is a six-volume historical work published between 1776 (
) and 1788."@hnapel @cyberlyra go check out “The History of Rome” podcast. 170+ episodes covering ~300 BCE to the mid 5th century CE. I’ve listened to it at least 1/2 a dozen times.
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The scary thing is not the the empire fell, it's that it fell into the Catholic Church dominating EVERYTHING! for a few centuries in fact (and it is still here unfortunately).
@oscarfalcon @cyberlyra not long ago, I believe it was on “The Rest is History” podcast that the Roman Empire didn’t disappear it became a church and the British empire didn’t disappear it became a bank.
That leaves the question, what will the American empire become?
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@oscarfalcon Yes. there was no democracy again in those territories for ... 1500 years or so.
(admittedly democracy as practiced by the Roman republic excluded huge proportions of the population but still).
And change didn't move against THAT needle until a massive pandemic wiped out a third of the population and made the feudal lifestyles that the Church had naturalized impossible.
@cyberlyra @oscarfalcon This is what inspired Assimov to write The Foundation series. So... I'm not too worried. Wikipedia is more than ready
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TIL I found out that "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon is a six-volume historical work published between 1776 (
) and 1788."@hnapel There's an audiobook version of this I have somewhere as a collection of MP3s... it is VERY VERY long.
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@oscarfalcon @cyberlyra not long ago, I believe it was on “The Rest is History” podcast that the Roman Empire didn’t disappear it became a church and the British empire didn’t disappear it became a bank.
That leaves the question, what will the American empire become?
The Internet.
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America didn't fall because Trump was elected. Trump was elected because America had already fallen.
@cyberlyra@BenAveling Indeed much the same can be said of the Romans too. The system teeters and doesn't topple all at once, but there are nevertheless inflection points along th eway.
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