• ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    I’m curious if there are any historians who can chime in on what “imperial collapse” looks like on a week to week, month to month basis.

    Because all “collapses” take a certain amount of time. Even those rich idiots and their unfortunate victims down near the Titanic took a few milliseconds. (Too soon?)

    What “USA” is collapsing in this conjecture? All governments - federal, state, county, city - simultaneously? Or just the feds? Or the feds and some domino effect?

    What precipitates the “collapse” is important, too. Disease? Economy? Social upheaval? Natural disaster? War (are we the aggressor or defender)?

    After Jan 6th and with the prosecutions and convictions and jail sentences for the perpetrators, I think as long as Trump isn’t elected President, we’re actually protected from a “social upheaval” collapse for a good long while now.

    I don’t think there’s a war on the horizon that would collapse is, either. No matter how much the pro war people (on the right and left for different reasons) want one, I don’t see Xi deciding to provoke one, and Putin has blown his wad already (I think by now all of his nuclear guys would refuse a launch order - her missed his chance when all the hot blood was running 12 months ago).

    Economic? Maybe. I can pretty confidently predict that the billionaires think if they were deposed from their stranglehold on American government we’d devolve into a thunderdome situation. I don’t think so. People like Bernie have a plan in their back pocket for when We The People actually take charge. It would be messy for a while. We would probably overcorrect in some unfortunate ways. But when everything settled out, if we eat the rich, all of us (probably including them) would be better off. So a “Happy Hank” instead of a “Mad Max” situation.

    I think disease or natural disaster are most likely, but they’ll probably be very spotty and leave some government in place that might be able to re establish order.