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RIP USA
Why no amount of well-meaning activism can turn the tide of history
Imagine you’re sitting outside a café on a pleasant street in Roma in October 1922. Benito Mussolini has just seized power. Or you’re drinking in a bierkeller in München in late 1933. As a thoughtful and well-informed person you’re naturally disturbed by what you see around you, but as a decent person you also hope that what you’re seeing is a temporary aberration. Surely people will come to their senses? Surely the Great Leader won’t actually do what he’s been proclaiming for ages? Surely things will carry on much as they have always seemed to do?
Or imagine we’re back in Rome, only now it’s circa 238 CE and near year’s end you’re eating a roast leek and pondering the state of the Empire, which is under the rule of its sixth Caesar in the space of a single year. Over the last few hundred years there have been great achievements: an astonishing road system connecting nearly every part of the Empire, the granting of full citizenship to all, and a level of literacy and sanitation unprecedented in history. Yet wherever you look, you see it crumbling away: retreats from the borders, massive corruption among officials, one law for the rich and none for the poor, general cynicism, strange religious cults popping up all over the place and capturing the minds of many citizens, populist movements that are full of rage but missing any semblance…
