Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

[Lostinthestates]

[Lostinthestates]

[Mandy]

[DavidGig]

I think Lostinthestates may be taking the idea of a country's "fall" too literally. It's not likely to be a single event where you can say, "THAT was the day the U.S. fell."

It's more like a process, marked by things like a gradual fall in the currency, increasing difficulty in getting the international community to follow its wishes (think of China's ability to thumb its nose at us), slowly eroding internal living standards.

No politician is ever going to seriously worry about it, because it's outside his career time-horizon. But I don't think any expert disagrees with the problems identified in the GAO assessment. Maybe they can be solved, or maybe not.

But changes in the world order definitely happen. Think of the fall of the British Empire: full recognition that its days were indeed over didn't really sink into the national consciousness until sometime around the 1950s. (It came as a shock to be forced out of Egypt--perhaps like the shock now being experienced in America at being fought to a standoff by an impoverished third-world country.) At the beginning of the century Britain ruled the world.

[major.tom]

I'm joining this thread pretty late (you've all been busy!), but I'll add a few words of agreement with DavidGig's last post. The fall of an empire is gradual and creeping (not unlike a glacier). It's big, and cold, with all kinds of ugly bits stuck inside until one day revealed by its melting.

A major milestone in this process, I think, is the discarding of the rule of law and receding of civil liberties.

The 3rd Reich is an exception. It peaked and fell at a rather alarming rate (roughly 2 decades), eclipsed only by the carnage left in its wake.

[Lostinthestates]

[DavidGig]

[Mandy]

[Lostinthestates]

[Mandy]