PugJesus @ PugJesus @lemmy.world

Cripple. History Major. Irritable and in constant pain. Vaguely Left-Wing.

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I agree with your points, I think bad things would happen within a Rome-like collapse of the US. But I think the overall global impact would be primarily limited to North America and other countries which are bound more closely to American geopolitics.

The whole world is bound up in American politics, man.

I think that is still mainly a consideration of the acute effects which occurred within the Roman empire, though, and not so much the effect that it had on the periphery of Rome and beyond its borders.

... how core do you think Britannia was to the Roman Empire, exactly? There's a reason I chose it as an example.

Expect to see MAGA idiots parroting their talking points shortly.

I wish that was true. But if we had a feast tonight, by tomorrow morning, there would already be new ghouls lining up to take their place.

We're a deeply broken society.

Aw, thanks!

Fuckwad.

Umberto Eco's 14 Points of Ur-Fascism

1. The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”
2. The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”
3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”
4. Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”
5. Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.”
6. Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”
7. The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”
8. The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”
10. Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”
11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”
12. Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”
13. Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”
14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Chincoteague is popular amongst some

Caesar may even have genuinely believed in the popular opposition, to some degree - he was a lifelong populare when the norm was to waver between populism and conservatism as suited one's political career. Trump has no beliefs, because he has no thoughts.

Of course, notably, Caesar didn't kill the Republic. The man who came after Caesar killed the Republic (Augustus).

So when Trump 'goes', we still may need to be vigilant...

Maybe not globally but in the Americas maybe yes?

I would bet only 'globally' before betting on 'only the Americas', and I would bet 'unlike the fall of Rome' before I bet on either.

If we collapse soft, British Empire or Soviet Union style, there will be suffering and a massive recalculation of international politics, but life largely goes on.

Of course, global geopolitics means there won’t be a total power vacuum. China & Russia waiting in the wings to tip things in their favor.

Russia has no hope of anything at this point except vassalage to the PRC. China is exactly what I'm worried about, though.

But the mines were far from exhausted when the inflation started - inflationary policies of debasing the denarius were clustered from Septimius Severus to Diocletian, and each time done by Emperors whose grasp on power was not secure, yet needed to spend money to maintain their legitimacy.

For that matter, they were far from exhausted when the inflation ended, along with the monetary system.

The only real difference is that modern Caesar (Trump) happens to be an idiot.

And a loser, don't forget that.

Edit: I should clarify this, because it looks like I’m describing inflation here. When Romans ran out of new conquests and mineral deposits, they debased their currency (reduced the amount of precious metals in the coins) which caused the value of new coins to be lower, but also caused those metals (and by extension older coins) to be worth more.

Oh, I was going for a different route.

(note - the decrease in silver content previously was not because of a lack of new conquests or mineral deposits, but because Emperors wanted to spend money without needing to raise or collect taxes on their wealthy supporters)

In the later period of the crisis of the Third Century, inflation had gotten bad - several hundred percent by that debasement of the currency. But when the Emperors chose to reform the currency, at long last, they did so by only marginally improving the silver currency, but reinforcing the gold coins to a high standard and decoupling the value of the silver coinage from the gold. This resulted in 'merely' bad inflation turning to hyperinflation for the silver currency, which had its value no longer 'guaranteed' by the gold coins, and the golden coins becoming increasingly used - the equivalent of the only bills keeping their value being 100s and 1000s. If those are all you can reliably use, a lot of poor folk are fucking screwed. From there, the deflationary nature of gold (ie the low rate of extraction and transformation into currency due to its rarity) meant the demonetization of the Roman economy, which damaged trade, especially small-scale trade, which screwed... everyone, but the poor, especially.

Traditionally, in pre-information age systems, silver is the inflationary currency - it can be turned into money at a speed greater than the economy can generally grow.

Nah, the Romans had free public utilities

Citizen, you are obligated to report any illegal taps in the aqueduct for non-authorized use, by the order of the Senate and People of Rome!

It's important to remember that the fall of the Roman Republic was not the story of an evil dictator destroying a Free People(tm), but that of a sickened plutocratic oligarchy refusing to listen to its people for long enough that the people became directly hostile to the state, and when a political crisis came, it could not call upon the people to save it, considering - perhaps not entirely incorrectly - that to be ruled by an autocrat was not really any worse to them than being ruled by a sufficiently callous and ruthless oligarchy.

The comparison may still be apt.

I’m not sure if I’d go that far. Things definitely got worse for Rome, or the regions formerly known as Rome. And they also got somewhat worse for Rome’s neighbors who benefited from the regional stability and trade. But for distant provincials and other people who lived their lives outside of the power vacuum, things were fine or even better.

Strong disagree. Throughout the decline (roughly putting it at ~284 AD because I hate Diocletian, to 474 AD), not only was there a massive and sharp drop in living standards all across the former Empire, but one that dropped some areas below their pre-Roman living standards, most notably Britain (abandoned ~410 AD), but all across the western provinces.

Not only that, but that the decline was accompanied by a collapse of the pax Romana was not some abstract thing for the provincials - it meant, quite literally, war coming to their doorstep. Armies, Roman and barbarian, fighting in their lands and despoiling it, conscripting their children, seizing their grain. And when it was all over, those wars didn't stop - it was just Romans were no longer involved. There was a massive depopulation of Europe through the fall of the Empire.

And on top of all of that, the collapse of Roman civilization sent Europe and North Africa spiraling back in terms of societal complexity; economic, legal, and architectural complexity would not fully recover for some ~1200 years.

I don't think the US is quite that level of powerful. But please don't wish a Roman fall on the US, or you wish a fall on us all.

For better or worse, though, I think it is safe to say that the supposed “Pax Americana” is approaching its end. Hopefully the world is prepared for that.

Yeah. Europe, gear up, please.

https://lemmy.world/post/26099488

A community for wholesome memes and pics about you and the person you care about most in the world.

Whether they be your best friend, a family member, romantic partner, or anyone else (like zucchinis!), this is the perfect place for finding and sharing memes / pics that make you feel warm inside.

They can be sappy, lovey-dovey, or full of goober energy.

Jumping from "Two people being childish with each other" to "Abusive childhood codependent adulthood" just to be edgy in a comm explicitly about wholesome and sappy posts?

YDI.

"Inflation scary, we must deflate" - Rome Circa 270 AD

"Why do the poors not have any money???" - Rome Circa 390 AD

I was referring to the ungovernability of the empire due to its sheer size,

The Empire wasn't ungovernable, though. Far from it. In fact, Roman governance was remarkably maintained throughout the decline and fall. As your quote demonstrates, claims that Rome fell to overexpansion rely on issues of defense.

And the issue of defending Rome's borders is a complex topic, but one where overexpansion is a very questionable position.

Rome’s fall was due to overexpansion, not fascist self-destruction.

Definitely not due to overexpansion. 'Fascism' is a questionable label, but self-destruction, certainly. All of Rome's institutions were hollowed out in service to autocracy, which, in turn, empowered an aristocracy wholly dependent on that same autocracy at the expense of the rest of society.

That barbarians were loudly and insistently knocking at the door was just the trigger of the collapse, not the underlying cause.

Jesus fucking Christ