The Xenophobia in America is a walk in the park compared to any European country. Still the best place for immigrants. Income inequality is bad but povery has improved a lot and so has crime compared to previous decades. I mean, the great depression was literally before WW2 which is obviously a worse time than now (ask any black person or non-european immigrant how unequal or xenophobic America was back then!) after which there was a great economic boom.
Perhaps the past is easier to measure than the present?
A lot of the political norm that is being erased now is for 20th century norms. I would say Andrew Jackson shooting people on the whitehouse lawn was a norm. Congress attending Church every sunday at the Capitol was also a norm and it was erased.
I think a lot of people correlate without articulating causation to sound smart.
I ask because it seems like we have mostly the same politicians (McConnell, Pelosi, Biden, even Trump ran as an independent) as we did then.
This certainly predates social media (tabloids, tabloid television), but social media definitely took things to a new level.
Hating the political opposition is the norm, not the exception.
Not in a healthy democracy, but I guess that is the exception as well.
The senate had a well established history of turning against its greatest generals by Caesar’s time. You mention the defeat of Carthage, but who defeated Carthage, and what happened to them afterwards? Scipio Africanus did at the Battle of Zama, and he was promptly exiled from Rome afterwards by his political rivals (and was lucky to avoid execution really). It is absolutely no surprise that the Roman republic eventually fell to an extremely competent general leading an extremely loyal army, after having the senate try to take him down a peg.
Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times, and consistently failed any time they were tested during conflict. It’s like how people say Athens never had the position of “dictator”, yet for every significant crisis Athens got into, it found itself ruled by a dictator.
A roman dictator on the other hand was anointed by the Senate to "get shit done" until the scourge was over or 6 months, whichever comes first. Normally in Roman times, they tended to shy away from single authority. Even the military was divided between two consuls so that if one got any funny ideas, the other could effectively repel their attack. During a dictatorship though, the anointed would have supreme authority over all things Roman. They could wield armies and the state coffers at their disclosure. This rarely happened and the senate really tried to only anoint people that were worthy of it.
Cincinatti, the capital of Ohio, is actually named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus who famously saved Rome twice. He was farming when he was anointed dictator and was very reluctant to stay in politics unless needed. It's a fantastic story.
> Those checks and balances were simply not needed during peaceful times
There weren't any peaceful times. Almost literally. Rome was at war for all but 6 years of the entire Republic.
The Roman Republic, as a political entity, was able to muster enormous resources relative to its size, and in the midst of calamitious circumstances too. The best example is the Republic raising legion after legion with which to challenge Carthage, and maintaining the loyalty of all of the cities allied to it, after Hannibal's army had defeated it in a string of battles, and finally, killed a significant fraction of its male population at the battle of Cannae.
I assume it was the construction of the Roman government, with its elected leaders, and the political culture of the Roman polity, that viewed the people as the source of all power (as exemplified by SPQR), that inspired this cohesion and loyalty, and it was these qualities that were the primary and ultimate source of its power.
Roman generals in later centuries frequently seized power to become emperors, and this in turn undermined the basis of Roman power, which was a large subsection of the population and fraction of power centers being integrated into the political establishment through elected positions, and consequently having a stake in the success of the state. So the suspicion the elected leaders had towards generals may have been well-founded, and been the reason the elected government maintained power for as long as it did.
It’s also a mistake to say that Rome inspired significant cohesion and loyalty. The only groups that remained loyal to Rome during the second Punic war were the northern Latin cities. Many cities in the south defected to Hannibal, a lot of the Gallic tribes that had peaceful arrangements with Rome took the opportunity to restart aggressions, Macedonia and many Greek states also took the opportunity to start various conflicts with Rome.
The characteristic of the senate that you could credit to some extent was that they would simply never surrender. That seems to be a very strong Roman cultural value during that period. Rome lost every battle it fought in Italy during the second war. After Cannae they had almost no army, and Hannibal took his army to Rome, and Rome refused to surrender, and Hannibal… left. Because he didn’t have the resources to besiege Rome, and Carthage hadn’t managed (and never did manage) to reinforce him. So he spent a around a decade in control of large areas in southern Italy, unable to fully defeat Rome, and Rome unable to evict him from the peninsula, and with no realistic prospect of ever being able to.
And they never did. Scipio Africanus removed Hannibal from Italy by first conquering Carthaginian Iberia, and then launching a campaign in Africa. This caused Carthage to recall Hannibal home, where he was subsequently defeated by Scipio, ending the war.
It’s also worth noting that Scipio’s campaign in Africa was not properly funded by Rome. His army had a large contingent of volunteers, and the campaign was mostly funded by his private supporters.
The fractious nature of Senate politics was a consequence of a culture and set of institutions that encouraged and allowed domestic conflicts to be settled within the confines of established political processes, so that the Senate as an institution, while often beset by bitter internal political strife, did not face challenges from external centers of power within Roman society. The power and resiliency that this gave the Senate allowed it to maintain control even when Rome was under extreme stress, like it was in its depopulated state during the Second Punic War when it managed to raise two dozen legions.
>>The only groups that remained loyal to Rome during the second Punic war were the northern Latin cities.
You're correct that there was a lot of defection, but most cities in the Italian peninsula remained loyal to Rome.
During the second Punic war nearly half of the republic defected, and almost all Roman allies turned on them. Including a pro-Carthaginian uprising in Sardinia, and and outright defection of Syracuse to Carthage.
I guess you’re free to interpret things however you want, but “cohesive and loyal” is such an incredibly creative interpretation of the Roman republic during Hannibal’s invasion.
I believe you are incorrect about the defections as well. One source supporting this notion is Adrian Goldsworthy's "The Fall of Carthage: The Punic Wars 265–146 BC", which, by way of Wikipedia, claims:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Punic_War#Hannibal_cros...
However, the majority of Rome's allies remained loyal, including many in southern Italy.
> Several of the city states in southern Italy allied themselves with Hannibal, or were captured when pro-Carthaginian factions betrayed their defences. These included the large city of Capua and the major port city of Tarentum (modern Taranto). Two of the major Samnite tribes also joined the Carthaginian cause. By 214 BC the bulk of southern Italy had turned against Rome.
What really does seem to be the sad, sad reality is that America needs external enemies or else it feeds on itself. Since the fall of the USSR politics have gotten steadily nastier, but all the sudden people are finding lots of common ground in solitary against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But will that solidarity last more than a few news cycles?
I hear people say that our response to 9/11 shows that the terrorists won. I think actually bin Laden did a huge favor to the military industrial complex - they won.
IMO the entire narrative that Americans are so divided is largely an illusion. People are highly divided over wedge issues in online arguments.
If you turn off the internet, the phone and FOX/CNN/MSNBC people are pretty much the same.
Sporting events are a good example of reality. If the media narratives were true getting a 100k people in a sports stadium would result in utter chaos.
We are certainly not as divided as in the 60s. That is so apparent if you read any history from that time.
Actually, if we suffer from anything it is exactly represented by Dalio. Conflating extreme wealth accumulation with extreme intelligence and wisdom. The ideas of billionaires are given far too much weight. Not based on the ideas themselves but on the size of their net worth.
IMO if Feynman or Einstein were alive today no one would listen to them, "If you are so smart why don't you have a billion dollars???"
The useful lesson from the "falling Empire stages" is to gracefully cede influence without entering into counterproductive wars with new rising powers, as you mention with China.
On the other hand the narrative that America is going the way of Rome has been an ongoing thing since at least the 1950s, in different decades the thing that the person crafting the narrative felt was really bad became the cause of Rome's fall. I suppose it is a favorite to write about because Rome was a Republic once, and America is a Republic, and Rome fell and it was a big, big deal. So people can get really worked up over this idea.
Many of the 'causes' of the coming downfall have been bad morals in one way or another; narrative is that Rome fell because of its weakening moral fiber, so in the '50s this weakening was caused by miscegenation, in the 60s debauchery and emasculation of the younger generations, 70s the same and maybe just being tired out by the discipline required for maintaining empire, 80s homosexuality, I think 90s was emasculation of younger generations again although I think there was still quite a bit of gay panic then too.
So nowadays hmm, "ambitious people started looking inward to gain power instead of outward" oh yeah, putting personal ambition ahead of social duty, that's a recurring one, I think it was a common complaint in the 50s as well.
I mean I sure do think things are not that great, but not sure if I buy that there are any more actually relevant similarities between the fall of Rome and U.S than there are between the Kennedy and Lincoln assassinations.
https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Revolution-Oxford-Paperbacks-No...
(Also posted as a top level comment.)