History Western Civilization, Rome and Cyclical History

[Skallagrim]

Somehow that's both better and worse. Imagine someone like Generalissimo Franco getting access to the German war machine. No Final Solution, but oh shit you've got someone who actually knows what he's doing in charge of Blitzkrieg.

Not a pleasant thought, considering how much of the German drive for "round two" was driven by the impulse of vengeance. Even without the particular derangements of the nazis, that drive in the hands of a capable and ruthless man would not be a good thing for any of the neighbours.

It depends to my mind. You can put the Universal Empire in a massive struggle like Macedon did, or you could be like the Germanic tribes, punch well above your weight, and the Empire concludes "fuck this, you're way too much trouble." You can't go against the tide, but swimming for the shore isn't out of the question.

That's true, although much depends on the vagaries of chance. Of Drusus hadn't fallen off his horse and died, Germania up the Elbe would have been secured for Rome. That's the part that held the vast majority of the population. The Germans would then have been Rmanised to a significant degree, and their subsequent history would be profoundly affected.

And going back to Hitler: imagine a world where Churchill has has a heart attack right after he becomes PM, and Halifax gets the job after all. He's not the villain that some pop-cultural references (...like certain recent films...) have imagined him to be, but there's a real chance that he'd agree to a negotiated settlement with Hitler in the hopes of preventing another war.

I don't think Hitler and his ilk could have succeeded in the long run, but such a scenario is still very ominous.


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So… what are the odds Neo-Caesar is the exact same type of guy, in your estimation?

I know I’ve brought that up ad nauseam, but at the same time, an End of Modernity in which the current order collapses and civil wars start raging still produces the conditions for such men to seize power. And while Hitler may have been unusually bad (even among the Major Leagues of Horrible Despots), the precedent he set for being way worse than Philippos V or Wu Qi makes me wonder whether Neo-Caesar could also prove way worse than his past counterparts ever were.

Odds are impossible to call, because as we both know, the particulars can't be predicted. When you compare such disparate figures as Hatshepsut, Ashurnasirpal II, Qin Shi Huangdi, Julius Caesar and Sammar Yuhar'ish, and then realise that they fulfilled the same role in their respective High Cultures, you conclude that the field's wide open. The bottom line is that a chaos period doesn't somehow conclude in the emergence of a nice, easy-going person.

Yet it also seems that the more venomous, back-stabbing-happy iterations of such a period don't automatically lead to the most murderous tyrants coming out on top at the end. So we might luck out. Or we might get the worst possible outcome. Or anything in between.

 

[Zyobot]

Quoting selectively, because there are specific points I want to focus on:

Not a pleasant thought, considering how much of the German drive for "round two" was driven by the impulse of vengeance. Even without the particular derangements of the nazis, that drive in the hands of a capable and ruthless man would not be a good thing for any of the neighbours.

So, more of a German Franco or Pinochet? Seems reasonable, as despite their inevitable thuggishness and brutality towards Communists, the lack of gratuitous and obsessive genocide (as well as more "vanilla" brand of anti-Semitism) would probably leave even an unsuccessful Germany better off in the aftermath than the state the Nazis left it in.

Concerning Hitler specifically, I've long wondered if he might be remembered as "America's Hannibal" more than as another Philippos V? Yes, the latter may technically be his macro-historical counterpart, and I know Germany was "Macedon" rather than "Carthage" in your outline.

At the same time, however, Hideki Tojo (and Japan as a whole, really) isn't as infamous as the German example in the American recollection, so a popular history in which Hitler is remembered as a less competent, but more deranged and still-formidable Hannibal — that is, a mortal enemy of America and its allies who wrecked colossal havoc and gave them a real kick in the face before going down — seems more likely than not to me. Hopefully, he's still reviled as a gangster and a piece of work by those who know anything about him by that time — even if the memories surrounding World War II don't carry as much weight anymore.

Odds are impossible to call, because as we both know, the particulars can't be predicted. When you compare such disparate figures as Hatshepsut, Ashurnasirpal II, Qin Shi Huangdi, Julius Caesar and Sammar Yuhar'ish, and then realise that they fulfilled the same role in their respective High Cultures, you conclude that the field's wide open. The bottom line is that a chaos period doesn't somehow conclude in the emergence of a nice, easy-going person.

Yet it also seems that the more venomous, back-stabbing-happy iterations of such a period don't automatically lead to the most murderous tyrants coming out on top at the end. So we might luck out. Or we might get the worst possible outcome. Or anything in between.

Jack Dammer waiting for his chance to seize power, colorized:

More seriously, while I certainly don't have a crystal ball in front of me, there are times when I wonder just what kind of man will rise to take the world by storm?

Sure, Neo-Caesar might not be that bad, but there's still the possibility of a mad Neo-Antony supplanting him and burning it all down when Neo-Caesar couldn't, if Hitler overshadowing Drexler or Stalin succeeding Lenin offers any "glimpses" as to what that could look like.

Either way, I think the leadership of deranged Neo-Populares will look to the Nazis and the Final Solution as a "blueprint" for how to deal with their enemies in much the same way as the Bolsheviks took cues from the Jacobins and their terror tactics. They may not emulate the Third Reich precisely or adopt Hitler's worldview wholesale, but the resemblance and similar levels of ruthlessness with which they carry out their vision won't be hard to spot at all — and may, in fact, result in even taller mountains of victims than what their inspirations racked up.

Personally, I'm banking on the Neo-Populares being less of a straight-up Fourth Reich, and more like either an ultra-reactionary Khmer Rouge or a Neo-Crusader ISIS with the entire Western Hemisphere to play with, neither of which mean good things for the world. Only time will tell, as the phrase goes.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

And going back to Hitler: imagine a world where Churchill has has a heart attack right after he becomes PM, and Halifax gets the job after all. He's not the villain that some pop-cultural references (...like certain recent films...) have imagined him to be, but there's a real chance that he'd agree to a negotiated settlement with Hitler in the hopes of preventing another war.

Halifax made the exact same mistake Chamberlain, indeed the entire British aristocracy, made with Hitler: they thought he was a rational actor like them.

Churchill meanwhile, and this is something often forgotten about him, was a historian. Indeed, he was one of the leading historians of his day and famous for his multi-volume epic biography of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough (this was actually his main profession in his wilderness years). So of course he was well versed in the world of the late 17th, early 18th century, therefore knew a great deal about the main antagonist of the era: Louis XIV.

In Louis was Europe's prime tyrant and tormentor of the time, and Churchill understood the fundamentals of tyranny as an obsession with domination within and without. With this framing in mind, Winston was able to determine exactly what kind of monster Hitler was quite quickly (not saying there's moral equivalence between the Sun King and the Fuhrer. Louis was many things, but wasn't that).

TL;DR, Churchill learned his fucking history and it helped him save the civilised world.

 

[Skallagrim]

Concerning Hitler specifically, I've long wondered if he might be remembered as "America's Hannibal" more than as another Philippos V? Yes, the latter may technically be his macro-historical counterpart, and I know Germany was "Macedon" rather than "Carthage" in your outline.

At the same time, however, Hideki Tojo (and Japan as a whole, really) isn't as infamous as the German example in the American recollection, so a popular history in which Hitler is remembered as a less competent, but more deranged and still-formidable Hannibal — that is, a mortal enemy of America and its allies who wrecked colossal havoc and gave them a real kick in the face before going down — seems more likely than not to me.

I think we've discussed this at one point (in this thread or elsewhere), but the gist of it is that one can't really equate things directly. None of the analogies are exact, but the same kinds of things keep happening, prompted by the same background pressures.

As I mentioned earlier, Hitler was a major player in the German attempt(s) to "re-take the initiative" and basically divert primacy away from the ascendant American/Atlantic power. This corresponds to what Philippos was trying to do from Macedon, versus Rome. (As you know, Chu took on the same role in trying to lead the "old, established states" of the East against the Western upstart Qin.)

Meanwhile, Japan collaborated with Germany in attacking America because of their own rivalry (in casu: control over the Pacific). Japan was a country outside the West (the High Culture encompassing both America and Europe), much as Carthage was outside the High Culture that encompassed both Rome and Greece. And like Japan in rivalry with America, Carthage vied with Rome for control over the Western Med, and in so doing, found common cause with Philippos V (in the concurrent Second Punic War and First Macedonian War).

That Germany looms larger in the cultural consciousness in 'our' case, and Carthage looms larger in the case of Rome, is hardly that relevant. That's the way these things can play out. Point is that we can discern the common nature of the events, as they occured in their respective contexts.

Personally, I'm banking on the Neo-Populares being less of a straight-up Fourth Reich, and more like either an ultra-reactionary Khmer Rouge or a Neo-Crusader ISIS with the entire Western Hemisphere to play with, neither of which mean good things for the world. Only time will tell, as the phrase goes.

Consider that Caesar was the culmination of the trend that began with the Gracchi. So look at the MAGA movement and its various key characteristics, and amp those up to eleven. No, beyond eleven.

That should give you a pretty clear image.

But keep in mind that America hasn't had its Marian phase yet. The ethnic issue is still to be resolved. Once the hand-outs really dry up, and the black and latino populations lose all reason to keep supporting the system, they can be absorbed into the ranks of the opposition. At that point, victory for the establishment becmes impossible, and civil war inevitable. So the "white identity" under-current in the MAGA movement must be ignored. In the American context, that's a dead end. When the American Marius makes TR's dream of the "unhyphenated American" a reality-- that's when the elites are doomed. You can't beat the masses once they're properly united.

There's also the fact that the atheist impulse is beyond its zenith (if such a thing might be described thusly) and we're heading for a religious revival (helped along by mounting social difficulties, which lways drives people towards the houses of worship). So I do expect "Caesarism" to have a distinct religious component, being fundamentally intwined with the next Great Awakening. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I expect this to have characteristics of (or much akin to) charismatic Christianity.


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Halifax made the exact same mistake Chamberlain, indeed the entire British aristocracy, made with Hitler: they thought he was a rational actor like them.

Churchill meanwhile, and this is something often forgotten about him, was a historian. Indeed, he was one of the leading historians of his day and famous for his multi-volume epic biography of his ancestor, the Duke of Marlborough (this was actually his main profession in his wilderness years). So of course he was well versed in the world of the late 17th, early 18th century, therefore knew a great deal about the main antagonist of the era: Louis XIV.

In Louis was Europe's prime tyrant and tormentor of the time, and Churchill understood the fundamentals of tyranny as an obsession with domination within and without. With this framing in mind, Winston was able to determine exactly what kind of monster Hitler was quite quickly (not saying there's moral equivalence between the Sun King and the Fuhrer. Louis was many things, but wasn't that).

TL;DR, Churchill learned his fucking history and it helped him save the civilised world.

"We have to be reasonable, surely we can---"

"No. This one's rabid and has to be put down."

 

[Lord Sovereign]

But keep in mind that America hasn't had its Marian phase yet. The ethnic issue is still to be resolved. Once the hand-outs really dry up, and the black and latino populations lose all reason to keep supporting the system, they can be absorbed into the ranks of the opposition. At that point, victory for the establishment becmes impossible, and civil war inevitable. So the "white identity" under-current in the MAGA movement must be ignored. In the American context, that's a dead end. When the American Marius makes TR's dream of the "unhyphenated American" a reality-- that's when the elites are doomed. You can't beat the masses once they're properly united.

There's also the fact that the atheist impulse is beyond its zenith (if such a thing might be described thusly) and we're heading for a religious revival (helped along by mounting social difficulties, which lways drives people towards the houses of worship). So I do expect "Caesarism" to have a distinct religious component, being fundamentally intwined with the next Great Awakening. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I expect this to have characteristics of (or much akin to) charismatic Christianity.

So in some respects, under this breed of populare, American identity transforms into an imperial identity? One that can absorb and unite peoples of any kind?

In that respect, given that I think every corner of the western world will get Caesarism of a variety, what do you think British Caesarism would look like? I can imagine it being pro-Christian and pro-Monarchy at the very least, but with an ethnic spin to it that America wouldn't have.

"We have to be reasonable, surely we can---"

"No. This one's rabid and has to be put down."

Sounds like something Big Winnie would say. I would advise all too look into this man's life, because good grief he is essentially a fat Giga-chad who chain smoked and drank himself into an early grave at ninety.

 

[Zyobot]

Not to keep hammering on this, but because I feel compelled to respond one last time before leaving it be:

Consider that Caesar was the culmination of the trend that began with the Gracchi. So look at the MAGA movement and its various key characteristics, and amp those up to eleven. No, beyond eleven.

That should give you a pretty clear image.

But keep in mind that America hasn't had its Marian phase yet. The ethnic issue is still to be resolved. Once the hand-outs really dry up, and the black and latino populations lose all reason to keep supporting the system, they can be absorbed into the ranks of the opposition. At that point, victory for the establishment becmes impossible, and civil war inevitable. So the "white identity" under-current in the MAGA movement must be ignored. In the American context, that's a dead end. When the American Marius makes TR's dream of the "unhyphenated American" a reality-- that's when the elites are doomed. You can't beat the masses once they're properly united.

There's also the fact that the atheist impulse is beyond its zenith (if such a thing might be described thusly) and we're heading for a religious revival (helped along by mounting social difficulties, which lways drives people towards the houses of worship). So I do expect "Caesarism" to have a distinct religious component, being fundamentally intwined with the next Great Awakening. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I expect this to have characteristics of (or much akin to) charismatic Christianity.

Okay... not seeing how that's mutually exclusive with the options I put forth.

If anything, I'd say those actually provide some of the key ingredients for at least Neo-Crusader ISIS, given the twin conceits of social conservatism and religious zeal that'll be all the rage by the time "Marius" comes along. Would also expect Christian-revivalist terrorists who take after Islamic extremists, too, with Neo-Crusader expies of Osama Bin Laden or Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi starting to crop up alongside genuine Charismatics. Certainly, they'll be no friends of Islam, but no one said you can't appropriate the tactics and mindset of those you purport to hate, if dictators as diametrically opposed as Hitler and Stalin drawing inspiration from one another has demonstrated anything.

Moreover, I'd say that while I agree that something akin to what you outline is entirely possible, the way in which you see it unfolding is a bit too "straight-line" and doesn't account for possible "zig-zagging" deviations from the norm every so often. For instance, the Neo-Populares becoming the post-racial faction, which is where things seem headed now and will probably be in time for "Marius" to rise up. Unfortunately... just because that's where the trajectory is headed doesn't mean things will 100 percent stay that way. After all, the Communists championed universal brotherhood, too — and yet, that didn't stop Stalin from implementing his own ethnic cleansings or Far Left apologists from twisting themselves into knots to justify their own atrocities while excoriating Hitler for his.

Extrapolating from that, I can easily envision a Neo-Caesar who, say, Holodomors “Jacobin France!” or exterminates “Swiss banker swines!” wholesale, despite initially promising to "only" wipe out Jews, Muslims, and Globalists five minutes prior. Plus, even if he's not white (which I'll concede is highly possible), there's also the option of him becoming another Lazar Kaganovich who gleefully mass-murders millions of his fellow minorities while curiously exempting himself and his cronies from the same purging and scourging. At the very least, I'd expect Neo-Caesar to employ a great many "Iron Lazars" himself, right alongside the assorted Heydrichs and Himmlers who'd also infest the ranks of the Neo-Populares.

In that respect, given that I think every corner of the western world will get Caesarism of a variety, what do you think British Caesarism would look like? I can imagine it being pro-Christian and pro-Monarchy at the very least, but with an ethnic spin to it that America wouldn't have.

In fact, I'd follow that up by asking @Skallagrim what he thinks a "Britain as the Universal Empire!" scenario might've looked like, had the stars aligned by enabling them to retain their pre-existing empire instead of contenting themselves with a loose Commonwealth and ceding that status to America. Not sure they'd be compared as much to Rome in ATL macro-historical context, though per Europe as "Greece", I suspect they'd be more of a "Triumphant Athens!" that outlasted (and probably absorbed) their neighbors — up to and including the US, which presumably wouldn't be the hegemonic superpower it grew into IOTL.

 

[Cherico]

And Hitler was the shit that wouldn't flush.

 

[Skallagrim]

So in some respects, under this breed of populare, American identity transforms into an imperial identity? One that can absorb and unite peoples of any kind?

I think every corner of the western world will get Caesarism of a variety

Yes, exactly. The reforms of Marius were a final transition in the internal "question of citizenship", and essentially formed the basis for the defeat of the entrenched patricians. Extending citizenship to the socii was certainly controversial, but ultimately the winning move. A generation later, Caesar used the resulting support base to establish his own dominance in politics.

But beyond even that, the Marian reforms laid the foundation for the absorbtion of vassal peoples into the body of the citizenry. It enabled Rome to turn clients into Romans. As we've discussed, this was the basis of the staggering success that followed, and it's what makes a universal empire different from a national empire. What was once a national identity becomes an imperial identity.

America is facing the same issue. The elite has divided the masses and fostered a great sense of alienation. So-called "minorities" (itself a senseless term) are being bombarded with messaging that aims to make them believe that they are marginalised victims, and not (treated as) true citizens. This keeps them in a shitty position, and keeps them dependent on the "help" of the Democratic Party. (And as long as the redistribution keeps flowing, and the inner city schools are entirely controlled by Democrat-aligned stooges, this keeps working.) Meanwhile, the white working class is told that the "minorities" are their enemy by default, and this drives them to the current of white nationalism (often in very moderate form, but still). Since that current exists within the emerging populist movement, said movement is handicapped. The masses are divided, and the elite is thus secure.

The money is running out. And alternative channels for information (and thus, self-education) are increasingly prevalent. The game is up, as they say. Or it will be soon. It takes a great man to bring the factions together, but that's a matter of time.

Once that happens, the populist movement becomes one of "American Identity"-- which is then a counterpart, exactly, to what was once Romanitas. By its very nature, it will be available to others who are assimilated.

Now look at Trump, and the way that "Trumpism", to an extent, was an international phenomenon already. Foreign politicians joined Trump on campaign, at his rallies. Trump became an icon to those sharing his ideas all over the West, not just in America. The struggle of populism against elite is civilisational, not national. The Populares, the Caesarists, will exist everywhere. And the comopolitan establishment, of course, is already trans-national. (Their 'capital' is in Davos!)

So we're looking at a civilisation-wide civil war between these factions. But it's evident that the leading position will be taken by America. Once "Neo-Caesar" triumphs (and he will), all his compatriots across the West will look to him for leadership. And after that, gradually but ever more so, "American" and "Western" will simply start to mean the same thing. The European world will be as the Hellenic world in antiquity: pulled into the empire. This is not to suggest that European countries will lose their identities or their languages, but they'll call themselves "American" for quite some time.

(And come, wouldn't it be amusing if around AD 2600 or so, the American Empire collapses in America itself, but a successor state survives in Europe and loudly insists that it's the "real American Empire, guys-- we're totally American!")


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In that respect, given that I think every corner of the western world will get Caesarism of a variety, what do you think British Caesarism would look like? I can imagine it being pro-Christian and pro-Monarchy at the very least, but with an ethnic spin to it that America wouldn't have.

In fact, I'd follow that up by asking @Skallagrim what he thinks a "Britain as the Universal Empire!" scenario might've looked like, had the stars aligned by enabling them to retain their pre-existing empire instead of contenting themselves with a loose Commonwealth and ceding that status to America. Not sure they'd be compared as much to Rome in ATL macro-historical context, though per Europe as "Greece", I suspect they'd be more of a "Triumphant Athens!" that outlasted (and probably absorbed) their neighbors — up to and including the US, which presumably wouldn't be the hegemonic superpower it grew into IOTL.

Well, as @Zyobot knows, I do have many ideas regarding a scenario where it transpires that Britain and Germany end up allied, and handily win the very brief equivalent to the Great War. There's way more to that scenario, but it involves Germany controlling basically all of continental Europe (including most of European Russia, and also Anatolia), while Britain basically gets "ALL the colonies". Meanwhile, America (which has swerved to the Bourbon Democrats earlier and more thoroughly) has rejected imperial ambitions and is turning into a fairly isolationist country, content to mind its own business and engage in lucrative trade with all.

This eventually leads to Britain divesting itself of its vast array of colonies (in a process mostly far better organised than what happened in OTL), and forming an Alt-Commonwealth instead, turning it into the world's largest economic bloc. But the core of the Empire is retained, in that England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada (now including Greenland and Iceland), Australia and New Zealand are all kingdoms united under the same King-Emperor. Who also happens to own Panama. And the Straits of Gibraltar (on both sides). And Malta. And the Suez canal & surroundings. And the other end of the Red Sea. (Plus some other islands here and there.)

Which is not a bad position to be in, and the scenario sees the British Empire and the German Reichsbund eying each other warily as we get further into the 21st century.

Many outcomes and variations are possible in such a context, but I'm heavily implying that Germany is stagnating, and that the challange it faces is restoring dynamism and vitality. We can easily imagine a version of this setting where that fails, and where Britain ends up dismantling the German Reichsbund entirely. This would turn Britain into an undisputed hegemon over much of the world.

As for what that would look like... the degree of "uninterrupted continuity" (with the 19th century) that is needed for this very premise to work ensures that in some ways, it feels like the 19th century is allowed to continue naturally, without the pre-war world being violently terminated in a water-shed of a crisis like the World Wars. I imagine it as the natural continuation of the world built by Gladstone. The business of the British Empire is business. With most of the world's ex-colonies far more stable (due to gradual, well-organised decolonisation) and on good economic terms with the West, there's far less migration of non-Westerners to Europe. With Britain still controlling a sizable empire with its own sizable working class, and with Germany controlling all of Eastern Europe (which can provide plenty of labour), there's no labour migration.

So, yes, unlike the American case (where a multi-ethnic set-up is simply a feature), the "European world" in this case remains almost entirely white. Any internal struggles to be resolved are social, not so much ethnic.

 

[King Arts]

You are projecting the schizophrenic principles of clown world post-empires onto empires of the past.
1. Empires whose armies become infamous for being cannon fodder aren't empires who are doing well, quite the opposite.
2. Roman middle class didn't compete with foreign slave labor. It owned the foreign slave labor literally.


Also free trade without clown world limits does not create many of the problems escalating now - internal restriction of business with various socialist and ideological limits, which foreign competition is not limited by is a large part of what makes free trade look bad. But it's not free trade that has this problem inherently, it's these schizo policies pricing domestic labor out of the market while also insisting on free competition with foreign lands not bound by these regulations or outright pointlessly stupid virtue signalling that is completely separate aka green policy.

3. Rebellions of slaves or other subjugated people were historically violently crushed with extreme prejudice. What you are alluding to is clown world schizo policy where foreign cheap labor can freely operate in the imperial homelands in some sort of blurred status between criminality, legality and outright special protections going beyond those of proper citizens, something unthinkable before the age of clown world. Meanwhile imperial countries that actually openly subjugate certain ethnic groups do not seem to have huge terrorism problems, nevermind wide low level violence problems like no-go zones in the clown world. Does China have Uyghur and Tibetan criminal underclass controlled no-go districts in Beijing? Absolutely not.

4. Again, clown world/commie leadership problem. Does Japan lose any sleep over its past imperial adventures? The lesson here is, don't let commies who hate your country and everything it stands for into your leadership, ever, whether you're a current empire, former empire or not an empire.

Most of what you said is correct but there is one thing that is wrong.

That the common Roman did not compete with slave labor. That is wrong, unless you are using a strange definition of middle class to mean above average wealth but not truly wealthy. I think of middle class as the majority of the population not rich, yet not in abject poverty and destitute. The early Roman Republic was made up of citizen soldiers/farmers. They did not have a professional army so when the state went to war just like the Greeks the citizens were called up and each was expected to arm themselves, the richer citizens those of the equestrian order acted as cavalry, while younger men who were not yet financially stable were the Hastatii, and then principes, and then the Triarii made up the heavy infantry that were older more stable and disciplined. But these men were farmers for the most part, so while the Punic wars were going on these small farms that were held by the soldiers were left fallow while those who were rich and had many slaves were able to keep their farms running, when the wars ended and Rome was dominant with a large influx of slaves from the deafeated the rich land owners were able to buy the land of the common citizen at a bargain. Then the common free citizen Roman went to the city and this was the start of the end of the Republic. Because the common man now had less of a stake and populists like Caesar were able to take control and the rest is history.

 

[Marduk]

Most of what you said is correct but there is one thing that is wrong.

That the common Roman did not compete with slave labor. That is wrong, unless you are using a strange definition of middle class to mean above average wealth but not truly wealthy. I think of middle class as the majority of the population not rich, yet not in abject poverty and destitute. The early Roman Republic was made up of citizen soldiers/farmers. They did not have a professional army so when the state went to war just like the Greeks the citizens were called up and each was expected to arm themselves, the richer citizens those of the equestrian order acted as cavalry, while younger men who were not yet financially stable were the Hastatii, and then principes, and then the Triarii made up the heavy infantry that were older more stable and disciplined. But these men were farmers for the most part, so while the Punic wars were going on these small farms that were held by the soldiers were left fallow while those who were rich and had many slaves were able to keep their farms running, when the wars ended and Rome was dominant with a large influx of slaves from the deafeated the rich land owners were able to buy the land of the common citizen at a bargain. Then the common free citizen Roman went to the city and this was the start of the end of the Republic. Because the common man now had less of a stake and populists like Caesar were able to take control and the rest is history.

I don't think i'm the one using a strange definition of middle class. Since when are free peasants (aka people who have to farm land with own hands and even supplemented with war wages will not be able to afford hired farm hands or slaves to do the farming for them) included? That's on the low end even for later soviet definitons of a kulak. The bolded quote for "A more modest Roman business owner, artisan or military veteran might own one or two slaves" is a far more reasonable example of middle class in Rome.

Also, as you put it, no wonder their economic fortunes fell in such a scenario - they went to fulfill what would later be considered a duty of nobility which would have certain economic privileges and its own serfs to farm their lands, while not paid enough to even hire a farm hand instead, which does seem like a raw deal.

That's quite the opposite of, say 2 largest empires built on the New World later, British and Spanish, in which quite many of the conquistadors, pioneers and the like, if they survived, would probably consider themselves more wealthy than any peers who remained in Europe as typical peasant subsistence farmers.

 

[stevep]

Will you not learn? Will you truly never learn?

I'm trying to explain to you that the mass-democracy that you defend is the mask of a highly elitist system. In reality, by defending this kind of thing, you are propping up the elite. Every single time that you fail to grasp this and keep whining about "the evil Tories!!!" that you imagine to be the most baddest of them all... every single time... you are perpetuating the very system that put them in power and keeps them in power. (Even if you rotate parties once in a while... Labour is just a different mask worn by the same elite.)

You serve the elite. I'm trying to break that elite, and I advocate for a system that will give the elite far less power than it enjoys today.




Yes, your refusal to engage with what others actually say is by now well-documented. Note that, as before, I have diligently answered every single point you raise. You, also as before, hypocritically refuse others the same courtesy, and answer only with straw-men 'arguments' and cherry-picking.

You'll have to be more intellectually honest, if you want your arguments to be in any way respectable.

However, as I said above: the core issue is that you are a servant of an elite without understanding it, and you simply cannot accept the truth of the situation because that would wipe away your whole world-view. It's pointless to argue further, if you're so bent on deceiving yourself.

But as before, I must request that you actually engage with what others say, if you insist on participating in a discussion. You clearly don't want to do that, so then please just go have some oher discussion elsewhere. Because at present, it's just an endless repetition of you straw-manning, others responding in detail, you explictly ignoring the response, and just deliberately straw-manning a bit more.

That's troll behaviour.

There';s only one troll here and its not me. The two points highlighted above are manifestly false.

a) You hope for a period of chaos and destruction in which a new elite will emerge. Its less sophisticated but definitely another self serving elite like the one you wish destroyed now. Your not doing anything to break the current elite other than encoraging its excesses in the hope that it will collapse earlier - leading to a period of devastation and a new dark age with much, much lower levels of both population and technology being available.

b) A couple of weeks back I made some factual comments that crossed with some of your sacred cows. In the following 'discussion' I tried to engage in a serious discussion with you until I finally lost patient with your idiotic rants and delusions. At no point in that discussion do you ever give any factual argument just relying on wild and in some cases openly idiotic assertions and false statements about me and what I actually think. That is the basic problem. Your so stuck in your own ego that you can't envisage that your desires could be faulty.

I'm not going anywhere - definitely not because a fool is scared of reality. Stop acting like a 4 year old having a temper tantum and try actually thinking about what you say.

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This is an issue common to modernity: it tries to ignore or even erase the past and its traditions and lessons. The modern mind-set is based on the self-absorbed premise the the world can be re-made by the hands of man. This kind of arrogance if typically mis-placed. (In fact, you achieve more when you recognise your limits. As Bacon phrased it: "Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.")


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That's any system as all have thought to control their environment and that will also occur in the new more arbitrary society you desire. There just won't be as many checks to it other than almost certainly their much weaker capacity to screw over the ecology. The fact that people on the coal face so to speak will have little/no influence will be a negative factor here.

 

[stevep]

I think part of the problem here is that a number of people are acting under two beliefs that I believe are badly off.
a) That the period of chaos and destruction they predict and in many cases hope for will be relatively short and limited in destruction. I.e. akin to a shorter version of the Roman internal conflict that ended the old republic and brought about the empire. Given that their assuming that its going to be a pretty much universal collapse - else areas not affected will simply take over the more valuable of the regions that have collapsed - and that the modern world is so interconnected things are going to be a lot, lot worse.

If you get your desired disaster then we're going to lose more than half the population of the world and probably be lucky if its only 75-80% fatality. If the resultant disaster completes an ecological collapse or two many idiots use WMD - I'm thinking of both nukes and bio-weapons - then it could be a lot worse. Your likely to get a pretty much total collapse of infrastructure and facilities as well so rebuilding pretty much from scratch, especially with the richest and most easily available resources already depleted is going to be a hell of a struggle and anything like early industrial age could take centuries to re-emerge.

b) That rather than being masochists or deciding your lives don't matter you have a belief that you will be among the new elite that will replace the current ones - whether you call them oligarchs, warlords, drug barons or whatever.

Extremely unlikely. By definition its going to be a small number of the survivors that will form this group and none of you seem to have any of the attributes - other than a general contempt for human life - that would enable you to claw your way up the very bloody pole. Some may come from the existing oligarchs because they will have existing power & lack of morals if they can realise in time to adjust to the new rules. Others might come from criminal elements. Other than of course if your wrong and people realise they need to stand together to protect themselves from such groups and the chaos. Which are unlikely, at least initially to be led to sociopaths.

 

[Skallagrim]

@stevep -- You consistently lie, and accuse others of doing what you are, in fact, doing yourself. You refuse to answer the actual points being discussed. You proudly declare that you're unwilling to read through answers that people write in direct response to your repeatedly lies. You constantly dismiss (the arguments of) others in all sorts of denigrating terms, while accusing others of supposedly not being fair. You consistenly and deliberately mis-represent everything others say, and continue to do so after they correct you on those points. You pretend to know better what others think and want than they do themselves.

There is no point in your continued activity here, because you don't actually partake in the conversation. You deliberately de-rail it with your own obsessions and pre-conceived assumptions.

Please. Do us all of favour, and go shit up another thread.

 

[Bassoe]

Counterargument: You've got a hypothetical situation going up against all of recorded human history.

We're monkeys and we like fighting each other.

All I can say is that I really hope you're wrong, but considering the evidence of the fermi paradox, suspect you probably aren't. Nuclear MAD deterrence works to prevent wars so long as everyone involved are rational actors who know how bad the consequences are and therefore never do anything to provoke their rivals, or at least which doesn't leave their rivals an obvious means of deescalating.

I know I’ve brought that up ad nauseam, but at the same time, an End of Modernity in which the current order collapses and civil wars start raging still produces the conditions for such men to seize power.

I'm confused, if only because as I see it, the Current Order are the only ones who want to rule the entire world, most of the ideologies rebelling against them just want to wall off their portions of it and govern them as they see fit.

Or in other words, the American Empire isn't in our future, it's been the status quo since 1991 and the collapse of the Soviet Union and is only now under serious threat as rivals with nuclear deterrents against getting Regime Changed™ threaten its resource/currency monopoly.

I imagine two ways the collapse of the Empire could play out;

1. Reenactment of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Empire bankrupts itself with foreign wars, discredits its own ideology to its own citizenry and is led by increasingly corrupt and incompetent geriatrics with no buy-in to their own country's well-being. Eventually it reaches the point where the rulers see more personal benefit in selling off the Empire's remaining assets than in remaining in control of it and it splinters into a bunch of successor states along preexisting fault lines. Possibly, a few decades later, an ex-glowie becomes ruler of one of the successor states and tries to reunify the empire through conquering all the others.
2. The Empire is caught in a thucydides trap facing the threat of a Chinese currency backed on Taiwanese microchips and/or a Russian currency backed on Ukrainian wheat rivaling the petrodollar. To prevent this, they'll do anything, inevitably escalating the proxy wars of China conquering Taiwan and/or Russia conquering Ukraine into direct conflict between superpowers and nuclear apocalypse.

 

[Marduk]

1. The Empire is caught in a thucydides trap facing the threat of a Chinese currency backed on Taiwanese microchips and/or a Russian currency backed on Ukrainian wheat rivaling the petrodollar. To prevent this, they'll do anything, inevitably escalating the proxy wars of China conquering Taiwan and/or Russia conquering Ukraine into direct conflict between superpowers and nuclear apocalypse.

Are you for real? China is not getting Taiwan's microchip industry without a war, and it won't survive a war.
Wheat based currency? Unless you plan to use it to give charity to starving countries in Africa, what's the fucking point, most countries don't care much about wheat imports as they don't need them or they are a tiny part of their economy.
PSA, importance of a given segment of economy is in no way proportional to the amount of attention it currently gets in any given mainstream or non-mainstream media.

 

[Bassoe]

it won't survive a war

Neither would we. We've both got The Bomb, therefore direct fighting between us automatically means we both lose. Conventional war is possible, but pointless since as soon as one side started losing, they'll pull their nuclear trump card.

 

[Marduk]

Neither would we. We've both got The Bomb, therefore direct fighting between us automatically means we both lose. Conventional war is possible, but pointless since as soon as one side started losing, they'll pull their nuclear trump card.

Did USA even make any kind of official statement to the point that Taiwan is under US nuclear umbrella, similarly to, say, Japan?
If not, then your logic here has a gaping hole in it.

 

[Bassoe]

Did USA even make any kind of official statement to the point that Taiwan is under US nuclear umbrella, similarly to, say, Japan?
If not, then your logic here has a gaping hole in it.

Will the US assist Taiwan in defending themselves if China attacks them; yes or no? If yes; what will be the US response when either China’s winning the conventional war such that our only chance at beating them is nukes or vice versa?

 

[Marduk]

Will the US assist Taiwan in defending themselves if China attacks them; yes or no? If yes; what will be the US response when either China’s winning the conventional war such that our only chance at beating them is nukes or vice versa?

Such a situation means that one side's naval assets are utterly crippled, and as such, they cannot take/reinforce Taiwan. As such, tactical nukes can't change anything anymore, if China turns Taiwan into a glowing rock because they can't take it they sure won't get a single microchip made there in decades, and if they do manage to take it by force, look at Ukraine to see how much damage urban combat does to far less delicate industries. Who's going to fire strategic salvos over it? Will anyone? Hard to say.
See: What happened after results of Vietnam and Korea came in.

 

[stevep]

@stevep -- You consistently lie, and accuse others of doing what you are, in fact, doing yourself. You refuse to answer the actual points being discussed. You proudly declare that you're unwilling to read through answers that people write in direct response to your repeatedly lies. You constantly dismiss (the arguments of) others in all sorts of denigrating terms, while accusing others of supposedly not being fair. You consistenly and deliberately mis-represent everything others say, and continue to do so after they correct you on those points. You pretend to know better what others think and want than they do themselves.

There is no point in your continued activity here, because you don't actually partake in the conversation. You deliberately de-rail it with your own obsessions and pre-conceived assumptions.

Please. Do us all of favour, and go shit up another thread.

Very funny Mr Pot.

You can channel you inner Putin as much as you like but you don't censor me just because you have no answer to what I say other than unreasoned ranting and moronic insults.