Comment on RIP America

Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Maybe Pol Pot murdering intellectuals and people who wear glasses?

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  • Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But was Cambodia really an empire?

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    • Kornblumenratte@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yes. Just a couple of centuries earlier, so your point still stands.

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• 6nk06@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Maybe theocracies like Afghanistan. Even North Korea likes scientists.

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• match@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Probably all empires seed their own demise, I would guess

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  • aim_at_me@lemmy.nz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    But so deliberately? In what world does a half intelligent person believe this to be a good long term strategy?

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    • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      There’s always parts of the population that believe in this.

      …The remarkable issue here is the elites/rules we handed the reigns now drink their own kool-aid. The very top of most authoritarian regimes are at least cognisant of some hypocrisy, even if ideology eats them some.

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      • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        No, most of the US does not believe in this. This admin got less than half of the people who even voted in the election. Which is only like half the voting population anyway. You’re looking at less than a quarter who chose this, and many of those didn’t even understand what they were voting for.

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    • peteyestee@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s called a coup. The same thing we did to other countries.

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• wizzor@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Maybe Cambodia and Khmer Rouge? But not many.

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• RunawayFixer@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Yes, many times. Historically, it seems like the very strong empires first defeated themselves and once they were sufficiently weakened for outside forces to be able to threaten them … they still kept being self sabotaged by their own elite who prioritized maneuvering against each other for temporary power/wealth grabs over working together to face the outside threats.

  The late Roman empire has a bunch of good examples: blatant corruption, over taxation of the poor, many assassinations, sabotaging their peers that were trying to improve the situation, constant civil war, the battle that destroyed the military backbone of the western Roman empire was fought between romans, … And all that while the empire was being torn apart by outside invasions.

  Or a more recent example: the polish Lithuanian commonwealth had a paralyzed government thanks to corrupt elites with veto powers in their parliament of nobles (sejm) and only once the nation was mostly destroyed and the nation on the cusp of final destruction, did the sejm introduce some sensible new laws, but it was too late.

  With smaller regional powers you can have cases like “they were in a golden age and had never been as powerful, but then the mongols appeared”, but with hegemon empires the failure of their inner workings is always going to be instrumental in their own demise.

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