In three weeks, Donald Trump has imploded whatever positive image the United States might have had internationally.

  • @skibidi
    link
    732 days ago

    It’s a rather complex topic, but the short answer isn’t barbarian invasion.

    The simplest correct answer is the Roman elite became less interest in preserving the Roman state and more interested in increasing their own personal wealth and influence.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      7
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      What’s wild is that “being Roman” persisted a lot longer than the tax system and patronage networks that had collapsed. It wasn’t until a large portion of the people who thought of themselves as “Roman” were invaded by the Eastern Roman Empire that the Roman identity was broken up, to be replaced by the regional identities that people rallied around to defend themselves.

      I feel like if the ERE’s leaders had taken a different approach, they could have stitched the Western Empire back together, but they broke it.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        1
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        define “enough kids” for me please.

        do you mean enough kids that their parents can’t feed them off their own little farm, and the kids had to be sent to the cities as slave / poor workers, so that the machines can keep churning for the sake of profit?

        edit: sorry but i’m pissed and angry now. “not enough kids” like what? not enough kids to make sausage of them? not enough kids to burn them in the kettle of capitalism? not enough kids to flood the labor market with undervalued workers?

        i tell you what, it’s capitalist propaganda that “people should have more kids”, because they think it makes the wages fall. what it actually does is create poverty, mass unemployment, working poor, and civil unrest. may the empire be intoxicated by its own poison. may the corporations fall due to the civil unrest that they helped create.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          222 hours ago

          Like the birth rate was too low overall.

          Of course more people makes wages fall. That’s why immigration is so popular in western world.

      • @AA5B
        link
        11 day ago

        That’s potentially a global problem. It’s not specific to the US as long as we keep making ourselves an attractive destination for immigrants and keep welcoming them ………… crap