this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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I feel like saying it's normal for empires to fall due to external causes is not accurate? It's usually the exception. Maybe the external factor is the final kick, knocking over a rotting house of cards, but the cause is almost always division, internal conflict, or unsustainable growth. An empire is much more likely to collapse under its own weight than it is to have Alexander the Great kick its teeth in. The Ottoman Empire was called "The Sick Man of Europe" for a reason.
It's absolutely not. It's their very internal policies that force them into destroying themselves. They start believing their own propaganda. For both Rome and Constantinople it was wasting huge amounts of it's power on fighting Persia and trying to extend its borders in ways that outran it's logistics capacity. For the Ottomans it was the rise of nationalism and their ham fisted attempts to combat it. For the modern Western imperialists it was the base fact that direct colonial rule was always a monetary drain for the state and only made businesses money. Making these stupid decisions was because each empire had created a web of political commitments and internal propaganda that was unsustainable.
The Roman Empire took centuries to eventually collapse and a lot of it was corruption, hyperinflation, and complacency. It's happening here but at a much quicker rate.
Rome was a place where power consolidated, but the various eras might as well have been different empires.
The system collapsed, dissolved, reconstituted, and expanded several times during the 1400 years it existed.
Same with China. 5000 years of history emerging from Beijing, but each dynasty was distinct.
Even the US has reinvented itself several times over by now. Antebellum America might as well have been a different country. New Deal America was radically different from it's Coolidge Era predecessor. Reagan's America became it's own thing in turn. Trumpian America is a new thing, not an end point.
Didn't Constantinople outlast the Persian empire by quite a while?
They did, and were so weak and ineffectual afterwards that they even got sacked by the crusaders. It was essentially a long decline.
Anacyclosis, Polybius was motivated by the fall of the Hellenistic society. When Rome conquered Greece it was unfathomable to them that they could ever even be conquered, let alone so quickly. They were swept aside in such a rapid fashion that it was a cultural shock.
The US has this image of being unassailable, but the reality is that apathy is the greatest enemy we have ever faced. We have no faith in our leadership, and we're short on supply of actual warriors despite what the keyboard warriors would have everyone thing.
All the gun toting rednecks driving large pickup trucks shrink when they're actually confronted with anything, and we've devolved into a system of cowards.
The day America stands up and puts the ruling class heads on spikes, that's the day the rest of the world should fear, but the rest of the world can just live comfortably knowing we're all weak and worthless.
Seriously, just look up "peopleofwalmart", that's the insanely low bar we go by these days.
I refer to it as atrophy. Once it becomes easier and more profitable for the empire to exploit its own populace instead of others, this is what we get.
LOL empire. They haven't lasted for even a century. It will be a footnote in history.
The US..?
This fucker just swings at everyone.
I think someone shit on their waffle this morning.
yes
Damn and they say American education is bad.
Well then, enlighten me and tell me exactly from when to when you consider them an empire?
Probably from the moment of our emancipation from England. Occupied more territory than most European states ever had at that moment.
If you want to be pedantic about it how about when we occupied the width of an entire contenant? September 9th 1850
We didn't spring fully formed from Zeus's forehead to fund the destruction of the Reich.
I was asking from what year, decade even to what year. This is as vague as it gets. If I wanted to be pedantic I would ask what a "contenant" is. That date you mention is about California? I think you don't get what being an empire means. It's not having a really big country.
So you are unaware of the goings on in the year 1776?
How about you define empire? I'm sure Leopold II left lots of decorative plaques for you to learn about it on.
What? Do you think becoming independent makes you an empire? Jeez, I would say stay in school and learn some fundamentals, but then again you're in the US. This is pointless
Jeez I asked for a definition of empire. I'm sure that a resident of the most horrific colonial power in all history knows what it means. So tell me.
Edit: lol it just struck me how funny it is for a Belgian to say the USA's hegemony will be forgotten, most living humans couldn't even find you guys on a map.
He lives in Belgium? I thought that was a type of doughnut...?
It's basically a cocaine ring with a chocolatier influencer account and a trust fund.
And again, basic stuff. I'm not going to educate a child or someone that had education on a child's level. Who TF knows, maybe you've been thought creationism in your weirdo backward country.
Oh. Maybe you didn't know...
A Belgian lecturing about atrocities and empires being forgotten is particularly humorous.
Then again, I suppose the Congo Free State wasn't technically a genocide because it was economically motivated. Not based on national, ethnic, racial, or religious interests, just money.
God. That's like It not being technically murder because you kept them alive and in agony.
Typical Belgian asshole, which is also typical of the descendants of European fuckwads who cried instead of fighting back against the Reich and Fascism. I'm sure you pricks will be looking for an external savior again in no time, meanwhile the rest of the world can't find you on a map. Can your military even afford to drive a tank to the border?
Pretty rich bullshit looking at how your cowardice sticks out like a sore thumb.
Looks like our tiny backwater country friends education missed a couple of pages.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
LOL another american that thinks they ment something in WW2 and think they protect us with their nato protection racket scam. The Soviets alone took out 85% of nazis. The rest was all of Europe together. The US only came in at the end to reap the rewards like the cowardly opportunistic vultures they were. Same as in WW2. Also, even back then the US sucked at fighting and needed to be rescued by Canadians when they got themselves lost. Oh big savior that lost everything from Korea, Vietnam right up to sneaking out of their last base in Afghanistan LOL Embarrassing. No heathcare or education, paid sick leave and what not, all because they want to piss away all of their money on their shit military. And what do you get? The complete failure that is the F-35 and keep failing at making a hypersonic missile. While Russia has 4th gen. China has them India, even Iran. O please tell me savior, who are you going to beat? Grenada? You're a joke. How sad is it making being 'the military country' your whole identity and then completely suck at it. Quicly, go bootlick some loser and thank a fat fuck in his fatigues for his service of wasting your mom's food money? Enjoy your student debt loser. Bye, your blocked
lmao, looks like I struck a nerve about your shithole mooch country. Enjoy the taste of your own shit after Putin's done fucking you all in the ass. I bet you'll enjoy Russian diplomacy far more.
In one, a man sits on a low platform looking at a dismembered small foot and small hand. They belonged to his five-year-old daughter, who was later killed when her village did not produce sufficient rubber. She was not unique - chopping off the limbs of enslaved Congolese was a routine form of retribution when Leopold II's quotas were not met.
Colonial administrators also kidnapped orphaned children from communities and transported them to "child colonies" to work or train as soldiers. Estimates suggest more than 50% died there.
Killings, famine and disease combined to cause the deaths of perhaps 10 million people, though historians dispute the true number.
Leopold II may never have set foot there, but he poured the profits into Belgium and into his pockets.
He built the Africa Museum in the grounds of his palace at Tervuren, with a "human zoo" in the grounds featuring 267 Congolese people as exhibits.
Let's look through US history for our child slave soldier colonies.
But first modern Belgiums take on its past!
former Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel and the father of future prime minister Charles Michel, called Leopold "a hero with ambitions for a small country like Belgium".
In a TV debate this week, a former president of the Free University of Brussels, Hervé Hasquin, argued there were "positive aspects" to colonisation, listing the health system, infrastructure, and primary education he said Belgium brought to Central Africa
Whoops all quote
But it's been around for more than two centuries?
As a country. Britain, Spain, Portugal have been around for much longer as a country. That period is not as long as they have existed in the capacity or form of being an 'empire'.
1787 was less than 100 years ago? Because that's when their Constitution was ratified.
Also their revolutionary war was 1776 to 1783.
How wrong are you willing to be?
They may be referencing the USA's increased international hegemony starting after WWII rather than the founding of the nation.
Either way they are off