Have you ever noticed that no one who compares anything to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire ever seems to know anything about actual "late" Roman history?
"Look at how decadent we've become! It's just like the Roman Empire. Mark my words, soon the barbarians will be at the gates and we're going to
-almost completely collapse
-almost completely recover but with a more authoritarian political system
-split the country between four different Presidents who will then fight in a civil war tournament bracket to see who gets to unite it again
-move the capital to Kansas City
-adopt Scientology as our official state religion
-have some more civil wars and also fight the Mexicans every so often
-fuck up our border policy so bad that the Canadians invade and sack DC
-then everything east of the Mississippi will be governed by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for 50 years until one day the Canadians just sort of slide in and take it over
-but everything west of the Mississippi will be more or less OK all things considered and they'll just kind of let the Canadians govern the East, until one day there's a real go-getter in the Western Presidency and he conquers pretty much the whole East again for a bit
-lose like half our population in a plague
-have a gigantic three decade long war with Mexico that we narrowly win
-get almost entirely conquered out of nowhere by a militant new religious movement that suddenly comes out of the Sonoran Desert
-hang on for 700 years behind the powerful walls of New Kansas City, periodically regaining enough strength to reconquer the whole Midwest, and occasionally inviting in the Canadians to give us a hand and/or screw us over because they subscribe to a somewhat different flavor of Scientology, before finally getting put out of our misery by the successor empire to the successor empire to the successor empire to the original new religious movement that fucked us up so bad earlier
unless we ban avocado toast, reintroduce school prayer, and put WASPs in charge of everything again"
Waiting for the Barbarians
(By C. P. Cavafy
Translation: Edmund Keeley)
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
He’s even got a scroll to give him,
loaded with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven't come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.