Will the US be like a rerun of the fall of the Roman Empire?

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Succinctly, no.

Maybe I was being harsh, but the OP is talking about two different things.
He has some interesting observations about the similarities between Rome and the USA.
I tend to agree that we are an over extended empire (we are fighting two wars of occupation in the distant provinces as we speak).

But like you yourself just said- he starts off interesting - and then gets downright hysterical, and worries that the nation will crater so fast that HE will be out of his job teaching American English to third world students in the next few years because of a collapse in the status of the USA! ( I felt the need to smack some sense into him)


If the USA got nuked off the map tomorrow his pupils still wouldnt be able to read eighty percent of the scientific and technical literature ever published without learning how to read English.

And face-to-face or on the net they would still have to speak to each other, and the lingua Franca they would continue to use would be some form of English for a long time to come

So there would still be a rabid demand for teachers of English.

India is almost as big as Europe with almost as many languages as Europe has, but the unifying language that keeps the country running is English. So if India keeps rising as a power that alone would prop up English even with a sudden magical absence of the USA.

So not only will america itsself hang around for a while, even if America were to magically vanish the English language would linger in importance for some time because it seems to have taken on a momentum of its own.
Millions of students still study Latin, even today- 1500 hundred years after the fall of Rome. .

It will more closely resemble the French Revolution. We already have this week's Republican front-runner Herman Cain screaming "let them eat pizza!" (or 9-9-9)

Instead of losing his head he will either not be able to run or lose the election.

ruveyn

Does the Republican party have a man who stands out with Presidential Grace at all? At least some sort of aura or rhetorical skill is important for a President. Even Bush seemed more believable than Kerry say. And this is an admission from a friend of mine who was a communist!

Newt Gingrich


Also Herman Cain's plan actually does make sense, I am planning on getting a copy of the assumptions that he and his people used to reach the conclusions they reached.

Herman Cain's math ability is actually extremely good, so to claim without looking at how he arrived to the conclusion that it would work is rather silly.

This is the same man that showed that Hillarycare wouldn't work and the numbers the Clinton Administration was giving out were flat out wrong.

Rome had I,V,X,C,M, and quills to write on parchment.

We have 24/7 Media, and Computers.

Anything they did we can do much faster.

Rome had a few problems, but nothing like Enron, Worldcom, Leahman, CDS, and Bailouts.

When Rome took Gaul they killed 2,500,000 and the army took over farming to feed themselves.

We spend a million a year to keep one troop in the field.

The Roman Army walked to war, brought everything with them.

We are paying air freight rates.

Anything Rome did we can do faster, anything.

Like Plunder the World Faster and more thoroughly Too!! !

And the U.S.A. has a very voracious energy appetite that isn't going to be fed without eating the entire World, and that snack is going to be with an extremely short period of satiation. Going "All Natural" will result in death for 97.5 percent of the human population of Earth. When people notice that something is "wrong", will the rendering program maintain any social order for long? Whoops, the last smart chip just went stupid on the "lucky" ones. Didn't the Biblical Cain kill Abel, proclaiming he wasn't his brother's keeper, and screaming at God to stop his divine whining while refusing responsibility for his satanic creations? (otherwise known on wrongPlanet as iPalmMan or something with the occasional bird, by the same Henri Vidal?).

Tadzio

Results matter.

While all past nations did have there good times, they all ended the same.

Rome went from Empire, to everyone dying, and Latin being forgotten very quickly. The only survivors were on the edge, that produced their own food.

According to Ibn Khaldun, who wrote in 1300, all governments before his time had fallen, in exactly the same way. All since have followed the same pattern.

They exist because they are exploiting something, and that always runs out.

Our version is Energy to run Air Conditioning so we can watch football on TV.

At least the Roman had Silver money.

According to Khaldun, and the history of all paper money, we are in the freefall phase. The landing is always hard.

You know just as an aside Inventor your writing style seems to be the written equivalent of Rorschach's mutterings. That's not an insult.

If America diminishes, it'll be due to the widening class divide:
You have a small, increasingly powerful wealthy elite with no more loyalty to their countrymen, and whose sole motivation is conscienceless self-interest.
Then, you have a growing disenfranchised class of Americans who perceive less and less of the American dream as time goes on, as they're squeezed by the super rich.
America had become great because it was a place where equality was guaranteed under the law (though admittedly not always in practice), and people had an opportunity to rise above their station at birth. After WWII, the majority of Americans had gained enough political and economic muscle through organized labor and labor legislation that they were able to gain middle class standing, with a comfortable lifestyle and disposable income. If anything, this was the American dream that so much of the rest of the world envied us for. Now, the corporations and their political shills are whittling away what the rest of us had. Without this economic prosperity which most Americans had once owned, America will slip further into sharp decline. Oh, we'll still have a military that will be able to run rough shod over anyone else in the world, but America's greatness will be hallow. And with industries that Americans had once depended on for high wages now gone overseas, we will all that much more vulnerable, as foreign powers could much more easily snatch that industrial power away from us.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Technology and technological sophistication knows no political boundaries. Much of the technology of the West at the end of the Middle Ages was imported from China, for example. See the writings of Marco Polo. Similarly many of the inventions that happened in America have traveled abroad.

There are smart people all over the world, so invention and creativity are not American exclusives.

What is happening, however, as that your government and mine along with the Corporate Cronies are stifling invention and creativity in this country. Given that, the rest of the world will run ahead of us. It happened in China. China was several parsecs ahead of the West for hundreds of years, but the dynastic rulers of China became corrupt and sucked the life out of the Chinese people. So China declined just as the West was advancing. Naturally Western powers ran roughshod over a weakened China. You can expect the rest of the world will do the same to us. It is human nature at work.

ruveyn

Unfortunately, that is correct.
On the subject of the fall of the (western) Roman Empire; the Barbarians came to surpass the Romans in metallurgy by the 3rd century. Which means that Germanic weapons and armor were of a better quality when compared to that of the Romans, whose own equipment was steadily becoming inferior due to cost cuts.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Rome strayed from it's core values and had corrupt politicians buying votes with patronage just to keep themselves in power. The similarities are scary.

That being said Rome's influence is still felt today and will likely still be felt a thousand years hence. Rome didn't have nukes though, it's not like the emperor could have despaired that it was all over and launched his entire nuclear arsenal, killing billions.

"But we're the more powerful country for a few more years..." - Homer Simpson

Soon, each horse-power will be equivalent to the Greatest Roman Senator Incitatus!! !

Tadzio