There’s no real comparison between the Byzantines and America as far as our geopolitical situation. The Byzantines were a fragmentary state with an insecure geographical position to begin with. So when they suffered other problems, such as economic or demographic decline, there was nothing to stop them from being overwhelmed.
At least in our case, we are still just about 100% secure from any real invading force. I know everyone talks about the Mexicans as “invaders”, but they have no capacity to harm us militarily, and if they ever decided to act as a staging ground for enemies that could, we could eliminate that threat with the push of a button. And there is still no nation on the planet that could launch a successful naval invasion of the USA. If we collapse, we need to worry about internal conflicts, not an external invasion.
True, very true. We fall not to foreign armies but foreign ideas, our own greedy upper classes who no longer see themselves as Americans but “Citizens of the World” a new sort of human being, a superior breed—an educated aristocracy destined by their philosophy and breeding to rule the unwashed lower classes, The deplorable lower intelligence rabble. The masses swayed by treacherous class member Donald Trump —who betrayed, mysteriously, his own kind due to madness. He sides with workers and peasants, how despicable! The fool really believes that foolishness about people really being equal! He must be insane.
“I know everyone talks about the Mexicans as “invaders”, but they have no capacity to harm us militarily, and if they ever decided to act as a staging ground for enemies that could, we could eliminate that threat with the push of a button.”
Who says they have to use a military to take over? Demographics work even better.
How do you think we came into taking California and most of the southwest from Mexico?
Or “America” from the Indians.
True and in general I’m wary of using analogies with past empires to determine America’s trajectory. It’s too easy to pick and choose the details so that the analogy simply reflects your preconceptions. People like to analogize the United States to the Roman empire. Well, how about if we analogize to China instead. Their civilization has persisted for thousands of years with plenty of ups and downs along the way. We need better criteria for distinguishing between hitting a rough patch and going terminal.
The last opportunity was during world war 2. As speculated in the Man in the High Castle, the only way to have made the USA bend the knee was if they Nazis beat America to the atomic bomb.