The Fall of Romerica: What were the causes?

[Philosoraptor]

Once mighty Rome ruled the world, then Rome fell. The historians have been explaining it and studying it for centuries, and the moral of the story is, nothing lasts forever.

What were the myriad circumstances that led to the fall of Romerica?

[NewJeffCT]

1. It was all due to gay marriage

of course!

just kidding.

too many reasons to come up with just one, though. Corruption, though, probably drove a lot of it.

[Philosoraptor]

2. Wheat bran.

That's what killed the dinosaurs.

I think America just got too big for it's britches.

[H2O Man]

3. Although his ideas

on domestic/social policy are consistently wrong, Patrick Buchanan has a good grasp of foreign policy. His book "A Republic, Not an Empire" provides an accurate and interesting analysis of how our foreign policy is leading our nation to a fate similar to that of Rome and the old British empire.

[KG]

4. all i know is, whatever happens, it's not Romerica's fault.

Romerica is a shining beacon of light and altruism unto the whole world, and i know this because the entire population of the planet is trying to move here. :eyes:

[H2O Man]

17. My favorite button!

I wore it two nights ago.

[radfringe]

5. elephants

it's the elephants....

[patrice]

11. lol . . .

Thanks!

[SpiralHawk]

6. Republicon Homelanderism

[depakid]

7. Diminishing marginal returns on complexity

To put it succintly.

[tom_paine]

8. One of many causes: The power of advertising, marketing, psychology and PR

combined with the power of the greatest propaganda delivery system ever know: television.

This literally put the power of the mental atomic bomb into the hands of the wealthy and the ruling class.

It was too tempting to resist, and even if there was no "smoky back room" where everything was decided (likely there wasn't, it was hundreds of separate smoky back rooms) it was simply a confluence of self-interest that flowed toward the path of least resistance.

Advertising, marketing, PR and propaganda became even more powerful when 500-channel cable TV came along, further shattering the American sense of community and giving birth to the possibilty that an enitirely False Reality Bubble could be woven being strict circular and self-referential.

Of all psychology's greatest gifts to tyrants (not that I am criticizing the science itself, it is just a tool and the morality lies in the hands of those who use it) was the ironclad rule that the larger the number of people in a given target group, the easier it is to manipulate them in ways which are increasingly predictable.

Get it? The LARGER group of people, the easier they are to manipulate.

But all of this is useless without a delivery system: television. Ironically, when we were all essentially captives of a mere three TV networks, this kind of propaganda was not utilized too often or too powerfully, if at all.

I think that was because we had just defeated Hitler and the Nazis. It was too soon and our collective memories were too strong against it. Yes, even the rich and powerful couldn't bring themselves to behave too close to the Nazis, which were perhaps the nakedest, most distilled form of evil the world has ever seen.

Now that we have put some distance between them and us, time-wise, people don't worry so much about not behaving like Nazis anymore. Anyway, much of their propaganda strategies were reborn in American fashion under the rubric of psychology, advertising, PR and marketing.

Again, these advanced sciences, combined with the media saturation of society, put the power of the mental nuclear bomb in the hands of our rulers. In the end, people are people, which is to say primates. Our very nature is for dominance and hierarchy, comfort and material acquisition. It is what evolution bred us to be.

I suspect that, if there are intelligent and successful species out there, they all realized that they had to get away from their evolutionary imperatives to advance to the next phase.

We humans, our technology, our progress all FEED our outmoded evolutionary imperatives. And THAT, I believe, is the recipe for an unsuccessful species, as ours is shaping up to be. Though I suppose anything is possible and that we will come out of coming Dark Ages and environmental collapse better and stronger and wiser than we are now.

But I wouldn't count on it.

Who can fail to look at the ease at which advertisers and marketers dupe millions using psychological, subconscious techniques. Why bother debating and reasoning and arguing when this potent tool is just laying around? Why bother treating the Subjects as human beings, when advertsiing and psychology teach that the Subjects are infantile and easily manipulated. The Foundign Fathers kicked Machiavelli out the front door of Liberty, so to speak, but he snuck in the back door of advertising and marketing.

Anyway, there are many reasons why the Old Republic fell, and this is just one of them.

[Angela Shelley]

9. The Power of Positive Thinking!

... which kept the masses distracted from the truth.

[patrice]

10. We are a nation of Blasphemers, lead by a Blasphemer in Chief. nt

[ixion]

12. Greed, Ignorance, Extremism... and bureaucracy

an unhealthy combination in any era.

[trusty elf]

13. Chimperor Dubious Seizer

certainly will be seen as having accelerated the decline.

[bdamomma]

16. and we all know what happened to Caesar right?

if only our senate had the same rationale.


A group of conspirators had been formed against Caesar because they felt that he had too much power and that if he became the king of Rome he would become corrupt and use his powers to create a bad society. The senate resented his actual position that was shown in the sixty member conspiracy which Marcus Brutus had organized to kill him. On the Ides of March , two days before he was due to leave Rome on his great eastern expedition, he was stabbed to death at a meeting of the senate in Pompey's new theater. He fell dead at the foot of Pompey's statue. Pompey was avenged, as well as Bibulus and Cato. After a provocative funeral oration by Mark Antony, Caesar's body was burned by the mob in the forum. When at the games in his honor the following July a comet appeared and it was regarded as evidence of his godhead and he was formally consecrated and "divus Julius," or divine Julius. Octavius, whose name became Caesar Octavianus after his adoption by Caesar's will, solved, by his creation of the Roman principate, the constitutional problem that Caesar failed to solve.

[Deja Q]

14. The media, so-called globalization that's eliminating Americans from having a future...

Many causes, probably.

Or if it's falling; change doesn't mean termination.

[Junkdrawer]

15. Empires are not built by the State...they are built by Private Companies for Profit...

The State is later enlisted when the Private Companies need military aid to maintain the colony.

See: The Honorable East India Company.

[Echo In Light]

18. Manufacturing Consent: it's a wonderful world of colonized minds