Post 4443372 - (Will the US be like a rerun of the fall of the Roman Empire?)

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

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Todesking
Suspected Cannibal
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Age: 43
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Location: Depew NY

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 2:52 am Post subject:

Kraichgauer wrote:

Todesking wrote:

On serious note. I wonder what type of hellish born again christian facist organization would come crawling out of the ashes to command of the surviving remenents of the old USA? It would be like when Hitler took over the collapsed Germany creating the nightmarish facist government except our new facist "fearless leader" will have some of the best military technology at his disposal. We will go from being the world's policeman to the world's wicked warden.

Maybe you could expect some sort of future dystopia like you'll find in the Mad Max movies, or The Postman.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I will reap a horrible revenge against the NT's in such a world. If it becomes a new political system in America if the masses go too far left and are waving little red books becoming communist I'll be in the front row waving my little red book with such a fury and screaming at the crowd to burn it all down. If the masses go too far right and the masses are giving the facist salute I will be in the front row saluting higher and longer than everyone else then I will scream burn it all down. Either way I will try to worm my way into whatever group takes over where I will try to get a job as an inquisitor so I can punish those who did me wrong in my life so I can send them and their families to the work camps declaring them traitors to the party. If it becomes a theocracy I will be the foaming at the mouth religious zealot even though I do not believe in any diety jsut so long as I can get some power over my former tormentors. I will do whatever it takes to see my enemies sent away to horrible existances some I'll kill right away others I will let exist as their suffering would please me. Twisted Evil

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There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die -Hunter S. Thompson

Kraichgauer
Phoenix
Phoenix

Joined: Apr 13, 2010
Age: 47
Posts: 12733

Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2011 3:04 am Post subject:

Todesking wrote:

Kraichgauer wrote:

Todesking wrote:

Maybe you could expect some sort of future dystopia like you'll find in the Mad Max movies, or The Postman.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Every Aspie's dream, man! Cool

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Biokinetica
Toucan
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Age: 24
Posts: 266
Location: Vulcan

Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 1:16 pm Post subject:

naturalplastic wrote:

Biokinetica wrote:

ruveyn wrote:

The U.S. barely had an empire and it lasted for a short time. We had our little adventures in the Carribean and have terminated them. We gave up the loot, the Phillipines, and Cuba and we hang on to Puerto Rico only because the PR folks want us to. No more Panama Canal.

Good bye empire. Our decline will have almost nothing in common with the fall of Rome.

ruveyn

I disagree; nearly every empire that has fallen has done so due to economics. The US is displaying some of that now. The Aztecs are the only ones who fell due to invasion, and even then, there was a weird religious component to it.

Your definition of "empire" is also debatable. While no one disagrees that acquisition of land is a component, how the land is actually claimed is a political matter that can have many different flavors to it.

How can you say that the USA is an "empire"!
Not only are we not an empire, but we invade and conquer everyone who claims that we are one!

Conquest assumes assimilation; while the US regularly exports its culture to the outside and especially the territories, it very rarely brings those territories or any portions of their culture into the fold of the US. All cultural import is voluntary, with almost no help from the state. Not like the Roman empire which actively enforced its own culture on newly conquered populations.

Longshanks
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Posts: 513
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 1:08 am Post subject:

Nothing scares a politician more than having to face a tax professional (which is an area of law that I am expert in, being an IRS Enrolled Agent), because we look at the numbers and think about the impact of the numbers before we think about our political desires. So whether you are conservative or liberal, you will be nervous when you get through reading this post. Why is our country in a deficit - has anybody really truly investigated the truth? In 1992 when I was an investigator for the CHAMPUS (Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services) of the Defense Department (Now called Tri-Care), I broke the biggest medical fraud case in history. It involved a 110 mental hospital chain with hospitals in some 11 states and involved some $72.4 Billion in medical fraud from that program alone. When I began tracing the other sources of government money originating from Medicare/Medicaid and the various state health programs, the number jumped to over $112 Billion. None of this money was recovered. None. All that happened was a bunch of greedy doctors going to prison for the rest of their lives. And I, along with the team of investigators that were assigned to support me in the investigation took a lot of heat from both sides of the aisle because a number of their higher paying constituents were going to jail. The irony of the situation was when Time Magazine came out with an article talking about their figure of $80 Billion in medical fraud going through the country's economy in a given year. We all laughed. This case was just one case of 68 cases on my desk at any given time. The average case load per investigator was around 55. There were 105 investigators nationwide. The average case was worth approximately $64,468,487.39. Thus, by average alone, the total amount that the whole force was dealing with was $460,305,000,000. This, of course, does not take into account my case, which I excluded out. This also does not take into account the fraud that takes place in Medicare/Medicaid. And these are early 90's figures and yes, we had computers then. Medical Fraud, like any other white collar criminal activity, is the easiest to prove, but it takes months to years to investigate. And by the time you bring the culprits to justice, the money is all gone. Now speed frame up to today and look at the practically non-existant fraud control parameters of Obamacare (and I did read the law - the entire law) and look at the population that it will serve - folks, we will go broke on that alone. While I have never doubted the altruisim of medical assistance programs, I question their effectiveness because they hurt the economy more than they help it because of the sheer uncontrollable greed that takes hold. And we will never posess enough manpower to control the fraud! That is why we have uncontrollable deficits in this country. Bush - Obama - it doesn't matter. What both sides need to understand is that, from a strictly financial point of view, the best solution to not having a deficit is by not having these programs at all. Fraud in Defense spending pales in comparison to Medical Fraud! And now they want to do the dream act. Folks - we need a third party - I agree. But what we need is a third party of Certified Public Accountants, Enrolled Agents, and Enrolled Actuaries who are able to do the math and say NO! _________________ Supporter of the Brian Terry Foundation @ www.honorbrianterry.com. Special Agent Brian Terry (1970-2010) was murdered as a direct result of Operation Fast & Furious - which Barry O won't discuss - wonder why?

greengeek
Deinonychus

Joined: Jul 19, 2007
Age: 21
Posts: 360
Location: New York USA

Posted: Thu Mar 01, 2012 11:03 pm Post subject:

I wonder if we're going to end up with a revolution like the Romanian Revolution, but instead of almost everybody turning against a dictator, we turn against Congress. _________________ Nothing is fool proof only fool resistant

Longshanks
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Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:12 pm Post subject:

naturalplastic wrote:

Stick to teaching English, and dont try to teach history because you obviously have no grasp of it.

Okay.
Lessay the US litereally "repeats the history of Rome".

Rome was the global superpower (rivaled only by the newly unified China on the opposite end of Eurasia) for over a centurey before the fifty year period in which Julius Ceasar died and Christ was born.

The first chapter of Gibbon's 18th centurey classic "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" doesnt begin until two centuries after the time of Ceasar and Christ. And he then fills thirteen surprisingly easy to read volumes (not chapters- hardbound VOLUMES) describing the two centuries of decling and falling before the barbarians finnally starting sacking Rome in the fifth centurey.

The last Roman Emperor was finnally toppled in 476 AD (exactly 13 centuries before our declaration of indenpendence -so its ez to remember).

So the western half of the empire finnally collapsed around AD 500, but the eastern half (which morphed into the Byzantine empire) lasted another 1000 years.

Finnally Constandinople was siezed by the Ottoman Turks in AD 1453 snuffing out the last bit of the Roman Empire- just a fortnight before Columbus discovered America.

So if it takes you two hundred years to get your degree, and you are terrified of the danger that you will live as a long a Methusula ( 1000 years) you might indeed have something to worry about.

Otherwise I would worry more about the instablity of your potential employers: the third world regimes that hire people like you to teach their pupils- than about the USA going anywhere.

Well said! Hooah!!!!

Longshanks
_________________
Supporter of the Brian Terry Foundation @ www.honorbrianterry.com. Special Agent Brian Terry (1970-2010) was murdered as a direct result of Operation Fast & Furious - which Barry O won't discuss - wonder why?

MrXxx
Moderator/Enigmatus Paradoxius
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Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 12:53 pm Post subject:

It has been said their plumbing had a lot to do with the fall of the Roman Empire due to the insanity caused by lead contamination. I'm willing to bet the wrangling of political pundits here will eventually have the same effect. _________________ MrXxx is taking a long sabbatical, and no longer moderating.

Kraichgauer
Phoenix
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Age: 47
Posts: 12733

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:02 pm Post subject:

MrXxx wrote:

It has been said their plumbing had a lot to do with the fall of the Roman Empire due to the insanity caused by lead contamination.

I'm willing to bet the wrangling of political pundits here will eventually have the same effect.

That has been so exaggerated. In fact, the amount of lead in the pipes was no different in the end of the western empire than it was at its height.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

MrXxx
Moderator/Enigmatus Paradoxius
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Posts: 5678
Location: New England

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:33 pm Post subject:

Kraichgauer wrote:

MrXxx wrote:

That has been so exaggerated. In fact, the amount of lead in the pipes was no different in the end of the western empire than it was at its height.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

"It has been said..." it wasn't a history lesson. That wasn't the point.
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MrXxx is taking a long sabbatical, and no longer moderating.

ruveyn
Phoenix
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Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:39 pm Post subject:

No. It will not be a rerun of the fall of Rome which was mostly caused by lead poisoning of Rome's ruling classes. ruveyn

WorldsEdge
Deinonychus

Joined: Dec 14, 2009
Age: 49
Posts: 383
Location: Massachusetts

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 3:17 pm Post subject:

visagrunt wrote:

I think you are taking too narrow a view of "empire."

The fact that your nation does not exercise direct authority over others does not diminish imperialism.

Sure it does, at least to a point. The example that immediately springs to mind: When George W. Bush tried to cobble together that "coalition of the willing," most of Europe essentially either told him to shove it or sent some kind of token force, that was pulled out of either Afghanistan or Iraq as soon as they could.

Quote:

US attempts to rely on extraterritoriality, and the imposition of US standards to international relations are both significant examples of imperialism.

In the wet dreams of the more rabid neo-cons this might be the case, but if by "extraterritoriality" you mean things like military bases, it is almost the reverse situation. The US has to avoid pissing off Turkey, any number of those countries carved from the old USSR whose names all look like a random collection of Scrabble tiles, Saudi Arabia and probably even Japan and Italy. It is almost like they're held hostage vs. the US. And when a country wants a base gone, it goes. The US had a continuous presence from 1903 to 1991 (with a little blip in the '40s Wink

) at what became Clark Air Base in the Phillipines. When the lease ran out and the two sides couldn't agree on terms for a new one, the US left. That's how an empire acts?

And could you list off some of these "standards" the US has imposed unilaterally on the world? Certainly the US was the driving force behind the current insane state of copyright laws, but I'd say that that is more than counterbalanced by the amount of knockoffs of everything from tires to clothing made all over the world about which the US does beans. And there is also our curious "alliance" with Israel, though who bosses who around is certainly open to question.

Quote:

The fact that the fifty states each form a constituent part of a single nation-state does not diminish imperialism. Has 200 years of free trade with the United States really done Maine that much good?

The Civil War decided the primacy of the federal government over state governments, so it is unclear to me where you're going on that one. Though I suppose The League of the South (link) would be right there with you on the imperialism score of federal primacy over state's rights.

Maine? Maine was territory administered by Massachusetts until 1820, when it gained statehood on its own. So its been in the United States as long as there has been one. And I suppose the answer to your question would be: the Constitutional system works far better for Maine than the Articles of Confederation did, when each state could create its own currency, place tariffs on state to state trade, etc.

Quote:

Are you prepared to hand back Hawaii? The Louisiana Purchase? Texas?

If you wish to call everything that was done under the rubric of "Manifest Destiny" imperialism, I won't quarrel with you. But didn't Canada have its own variation on the same theme? If so, does this make Canada an imperialist nation? Or did British Columbia just magically spring into existence somehow? And are you prepared to hand back Quebec (though to whom precisely, I'm not so sure)?

Quote:

The fact that a vast amount of power is exercised out of the hands of government does not diminish imperialism. Your cultural exports alone are worthy of a treatise on non-governmental imperialism.

Piffle. Who exactly is having a gun held to their head to watch the latest Tom Cruise vehicle, eat at McDonalds or listen to Eminem hoot like a baboon and grab his crotch? Note that I'm not claiming these exports are exactly edifying, simply that this garbage is not a replay of, say, the Opium Wars, where when China tried to restrict opium imports the British smashed them militarily and essentially commanded them to flood the market with Indian opium imports.

Quote:

You will decay--all empires do. You will fracture--all empires do. And you will fail to recognize it when it happens--all empires who are neither conquered nor anihilated do.

Drop the empire bit, and how is any of the above any less applicable to Canada?
_________________
"The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken." — Bertrand Russell

Kraichgauer
Phoenix
Phoenix

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Age: 47
Posts: 12733

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 3:57 pm Post subject:

MrXxx wrote:

Kraichgauer wrote:

MrXxx wrote:

That has been so exaggerated. In fact, the amount of lead in the pipes was no different in the end of the western empire than it was at its height.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

"It has been said..." it wasn't a history lesson. That wasn't the point.

Granted.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Longshanks
Phoenix
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Posts: 513
Location: At an undisclosed airbase at Shangri-la

Posted: Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:02 pm Post subject:

WorldsEdge wrote:

visagrunt wrote:

I think you are taking too narrow a view of "empire."

The fact that your nation does not exercise direct authority over others does not diminish imperialism.

Quote:

US attempts to rely on extraterritoriality, and the imposition of US standards to international relations are both significant examples of imperialism.

Quote:

Are you prepared to hand back Hawaii? The Louisiana Purchase? Texas?

Quote:

The fact that a vast amount of power is exercised out of the hands of government does not diminish imperialism. Your cultural exports alone are worthy of a treatise on non-governmental imperialism.

Quote:

You will decay--all empires do. You will fracture--all empires do. And you will fail to recognize it when it happens--all empires who are neither conquered nor anihilated do.

Drop the empire bit, and how is any of the above any less applicable to Canada?

1) Nice points. I like your style.

2) I like your avatar. Baldwin IV, King of Jerusalem, is a relation of mine in that we have a mutual direct ancestor, Fulk V, King of Jerusalem. Fulk was Baldwin's grandfather and my great (to the 22nd power) grandfather if I've numbered the "greats" correctly. Both were great military leaders. You are a man of taste, sir.

My very best,

Longshanks
_________________
Supporter of the Brian Terry Foundation @ www.honorbrianterry.com. Special Agent Brian Terry (1970-2010) was murdered as a direct result of Operation Fast & Furious - which Barry O won't discuss - wonder why?

heavenlyabyss
Phoenix
Phoenix

Joined: Sep 10, 2011
Posts: 530

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2012 12:36 am Post subject:

The one thing I've noticed is that engaging in politics may hurt you and reading about politics too much may turn you into a paranoiac. Go about your life, do your daily things, you will probably realize that it doesn't matter who is in charge, your daily life is not going to be affected all too much as long as the leader is not a tyrant. Obama is not a tyrant. The US is not going to crumble to pieces. I think you are fine going about your daily business as usual which includes college.

Invader
Velociraptor

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Age: 29
Posts: 458
Location: UK

Posted: Sat Mar 03, 2012 5:39 am Post subject: Re: Will the US be like a rerun of the fall of the Roman Emp

Alienboy wrote:

I'm sure if the US fell or something this serious happened...who knows...Asia might not even feel the need to study American English anymore? I could always fake a British accent haha!

Speaking of British accents... Didn't the British empire collapse too? It's certainly not what it once was.

I doubt you'd have much to worry about though. Your qualification would probably still be considered as a valid measure of your level of education.

For what that's worth...

Degrees themselves don't mean much any more though. If you can already get a job overseas without one and you're really that worried about the state of the USA, maybe you should just cut your losses and go back to China.

Todesking wrote:

Kraichgauer wrote:

Todesking wrote:

Maybe you could expect some sort of future dystopia like you'll find in the Mad Max movies, or The Postman.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Why wait? Why don't you just do that now?

It's already the way the world works now, and always will be, so nothing will have changed after the collapse other than the level of safety that you have while you're trying to worm your way into the system. Right now it's awkward and uncomfortable, but later one false step will get you lynched by an angry mob.

It would be easier to do your worming while the mob is still being forced to behave.

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