Being a history major (and now graduate) I often wondered how the common people felt at the times of change. How did the farmers in China react when there wasn’t an emperor, but a local warlord instead? How did everyone in the western Roman Empire react when they realized that Rome couldn’t even help itself anymore and they were now left behind in a crumbling infrastructure with everyone a potential enemy?
These questions make me stop and think often, considering we’re now looking at a similar point in history.
Forgive me for sounding pessimistic, but crack open a history book, and you’ll have seen this before. Different names, different places, different situations, but it’s happened before. This large cycle of human empire making, maintaining, and crumbling — it’s all there in several books. Everyone loves to shudder at history. Names, dates, places, with dry, crusty teachers reading aloud from a textbook and expecting you to memorize all of the above three things so you can parrot it back faithfully on a test and them immediately delete it from your memory to make room for present matters. But to those of us who study it, it’s a living, breathing dragon that’s willing to offer either knowledge or death by fire to those that come near it.
The US is no different than any other empire that ever existed or will exist. This one was founded pretty much in the same way — kill everyone who ever existed in what someone decided was their new homeland and erase as much of their existence as possible. It’s happened before. The Romans and Etruscans lived in the same area, but guess who we remember more of? Romans wanted to be from a city/empire that had mythological foundings… not as a sort of throw away town from a larger neighbor. The Minoan civilization, from what we’ve been able to find, had all the makings of a great empire, or a federation of city-states. No one really knows. So much of Minoan history (or proto history) is just… gone. One artifact site (Knossos) is all that anyone knows of much of Minoan history, because so much of it is gone. Why? No one really knows, but it seems that the Minoans were a matriarchal society, or they had a plentiful amount of female goddesses that were depicted, much more than gods. The higher number of depictions usually indicates higher status, so it’s a reasonable assumption that goddess worship was held in high regard. The Grecian city-states… yeah, not so much. After Santorini blew and Grecian city-states, then the Roman Empire took over, funny how we don’t hear so much about the Minoans other than the Labyrinth story with a Minotaur. History is written and erased by the winners. The US did much the same with most, if not all, Native American and Polynesian peoples. Create your own history. The US is as much of an empire as Rome or the confederation of Greek city-states were, we just use a different name for things. But it’s still essentially the same thing all over again.
As with all empires, there must be the decline. Nothing lasts forever. Even in China, there’s a colloquial saying of after union, there will be disunion and after disunion, there will be union. The Chinese pretty much have the whole empire thing down pat and perfected, so I’d honestly say that they know what they’re talking about. (The CCP is as much a dynasty as anything else beforehand, they just use different names and like to pretend they’re not just like the US likes to.) The decline has been going on for a while, but the Trump whatever-you-like-to-call-it thing is kind of similar to the latter times of the Roman Empire. The wealthy land owners of the Roman empire wielded increasing authority over the Senate, the Emperor, and over their villas, lands, and the people found therein. The US doesn’t have the wealthy land owners, we have the wealthy business people (not that big of a difference). Those that have the wealth have the power in our increasingly localized places. Look at the mental divisions already in place — rural/urban, Northeast, South, Midwest, PacWest, Hawaii, Alaska, the two remaining colonies of Guam and Puerto Rico, etc. (I’m not getting into the occupation of Hawaii, as this isn’t the diary for that barrel of worms.)
The US as we know it is doomed. It has been doomed from the day it was started. There will be the inevitable fracturing, most likely to start on either coast. One domino falls, the rest go in a predictable line. The US ain’t that special. Nothing and no one avoids the downfall. It’s like gravity. We’re in the downfall now. Obama, as I saw him, was the final step — he was like the Guangxu Emperor during the Qing Dynasty. Saw all of the problems of the empire and tried to make moves to reform and change things, but both were abruptly stopped in their tracks, either by Empress Dowager Cixi or the Republican House and Senate because they threatened the status quo. The dominoes are falling, but what comes next?
That I don’t know. Bartering will be a much bigger thing until currency stabilizes again, most likely. The only real ‘invasion’ threat will mostly be from those who will fulfill the local warlord role. (Mostly white supremacists I’d say — they’re the ones trying to compensate for something and want power at any cost so they can impose their own vision of the world on everyone else. Putin is busy trying to be Peter the Great, and China still has its hands full with Hong Kong and can’t even take over Taiwan.) As usual, the common folk get plowed over by those with delusions of grandeur, the wartime casualties.
The fall of Rome is coming again, if it’s not already here. History’s spiral staircase keeps going, we can look down to see where we were, but the names dates and places are different this time, and the end result will be different as well. So the question of ‘what’s next?’ is still to be answered. All we can do is really keep ourselves safe, and keep our pens (and smartphones thankfully) ready to record what we see.
Edit: Since a lot of people have misunderstood, I am not referencing the fires of Rome in 64 CE (Nero fiddling while Rome burned and all that — which he wasn’t even in Rome… ANYWAY) I’m referencing the Goths burning the city behind them in 410 CE. Also — omg I… did not expect this much attention from what I thought was going to be a diary that was swiftly buried, maybe seen by a few people and shrugged at.)