The Great Depression is a good one (>Keynes rant<). Civil wars are always a biggie but not that unusual.
Vietnam I’ll disagree with, as the Vietnamese had greater casualties than the Americans in the war.
The Civil War wasn’t a mini-fall, although the Great Depression was, I’ll admit. However, our huge Roman Empire imitation to the point of being some sort of freakish historical pantomime echo began after World War II, so that’s mostly what I’m referring to.
I’ll give you, though, that we have done slightly better at handling affairs than the Romans, we’ve gone more and more their way during the last century. World War II was the beginning of our version of the Roman Empire, and before that we were the slightly less-troubled Roman Republic, effectively.
I’m serious, if you happen to read on Roman History on your own while taking a US History class, it can be eerie, if you time it right. I did it last year, and the way I was reading them, it ended up being the same respective periods in the two histories almost always matched, and were so similar as to be frightening. Especially when you hit WWI and the Punic Wars. Everything from then on out, in America and Rome, anyway, (Carthage and Germany behaved very differently, that is to say), is so nearly the same that were their histories novels, the writer of Roman history would’ve sued our Historian for copyright infringement and won unquestionably.
By recovering greatly until they warred on two fronts?
By voting in a fascist government dedicated towards taking over the world and exterminating all Jews.
I’m serious, if you happen to read on Roman History on your own while taking a US History class, it can be eerie, if you time it right. I did it last year, and the way I was reading them, it ended up being the same respective periods in the two histories almost always matched, and were so similar as to be frightening.
Just goes to show you how little human nature has changed. These parallels are also why I think that Iraq was inevitable. History develops according to human nature combined with geography and lone individuals can do little to stop the tide.
Arac, I don’t see the one to one analogy America has with the Roman Empire. Since our Punic Wars, in your words, we haven’t much expanded and all our “wars” have been against small fry. (When are we going to go back and destroy Berlin, by the way?)
Ha, the united states is far bigger and more powerful than the roman empire ever was.
Vorpy: On the contrary, in it’s historical context the Roman empire was probably bigger and more powerful than the US is in today’s context. You have to take in account that there were a lot fewer people around, for one.
At least you don’t have one small village of indomitable Gauls that still holds out against the invaders.
I dunno. I don’t think the Romans could destroy the earth many times over if they felt like it.
Good point there, my good man.
Hmm, but that’s an interesting point of discussion. The Romans couldn’t REALLY destroy the earth, but they could lay waste to all the known countries under their rule. In that way, they could have destroyed large portions of what was their known world if they had felt like it.
Well, we didn’t destroy it as totally, but we (along with Europe) did foster a massive grudge, the brutality of which resulted almost directly in WWII. It’s the same concepts, is the idea. I mean, if we’re going to go over small exactitudes, the Romans didn’t have M-16s.
As for not having expanded much, we’re going essentially the same thing the Romans did; getting a whole bunch of territories and letting them run autonomously as long as their leaders are our puppets. We don’t call them part of our empire, but that’s silly modern politics getting in the way. As much as Roman vassals ruled in their home country distant to rome, we had and have puppets all over the earth.
If the U.S. always exhibited such a sense of humour they’d be in better standing with the rest of the world. That’s kind of wishful thinking for the world though (the Vandals surely didn’t care for Petronius).
Silhouette: If you were to look at a map of the world, with the stations of U.S. troops marked off in red ink, you would see that we have, in fact, expanded quite a bit.
Yeah, so who is gonna take her down? American Imperium I am talking about. Will it be those barbarians from the Middle East, the so-called holy warriors? The Persians? Or Doomsday will come from the Far East? The “made in China” labels on about half of everything manufactured on the planet could be more dangerous for the Empire than any barbarians.
Maybe the shit will hit the fan from the inside, and Empire Amerikka goes down the same way as the Roman Empire.
Thanks Seifer. I’m actually in a debate in another forum over the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, and that link came quite in handy.
Rigmarole: Well, I guess your links fall under “decline of morals” for the upcoming fall of the American empire…