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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Rome took some unexpected Ls against the barbarians too. Didn’t change the trajectory of the empire.

The failure to integrate the barbarian Goth refugees is generally marked as the beginning of the fall - and absolutely changed the trajectory of the empire.

“Failure to integrate” is one way to describe the Goths sacking Rome. But I agree the barbarians did them in at the end. My point was that the Iran fiasco is more like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where Rome backed off after taking a beating. That didn’t mark a transition away from Empire, simply a retreat after a military loss.

And my point, is the current administration is closer to Caligula and Nero, than they are to Varus. You see this as nothing more than another blip in a long history. I see unstable and dangerous individuals getting standing ovations for failure.

"I don't care if they respect me so long as they fear me." - Caligula.

The Iran fiasco is Suez Canal 2.0

Did you mean the 1956 Suez Crisis?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

>is one way to describe the Goths sacking Rome

To be fair they had been in the empire for a good amount of years at that time if i remember well. ...so when comparing to other previous influxes that did get integrated and/or assimilated it does seem apt.

Teutoburg wasn't a battle but an ambush, and Rome killed almost everyone involved in the next years. This didn't represent a retreat: Germans weren't conquered because they had nothing to conquer.

Rather, hopefully, Iran will be to the US what Turks were to Byzantium.

> Rather, hopefully, Iran will be to the US what Turks were to Byzantium

The Turks conquered Byzantium (and India, etc)?

> Rather, hopefully, Iran will be to the US what Turks were to Byzantium.

An invading force that settles within it and ultimately destroys it before launching expansionist invasions to all of its neighbors?

Haha I was only thinking on the level of "the people who ended the empire", but agree that the analogy is not perfect.

Today's world is different. US just lost a lot of credibility in a very important region of the world. They were not able to keep the strait of hormuz open unilateral, nullifying most of their leverage in that region.

Gulf States will now strategically look out for other partners. Just like Europe / EU and Canada.

Trump tried to leverage a lot of influence in the most stupid way and failed over and over. Does the US even have relevant allies left at that point? Pretty sure they took notes.

Who were the barbarians, really? Caesar’s conquest of Gaul was basically a massive human trafficking organization that functioned as a pyramid scheme, and Rome only went downhill (in terms of basic human decency) from there.

this is a dense comment (there's a lot here to unpack). it sounds like you're saying:

once it became clear that conquest with an explicit intended return of large numbers of enslaved people would allow caesar to pay debts and fund further expansion, the pyramid was capped and required exponential expansion to perpetuate its economic aims. and this was the beginning of the end. a model which required autocratic steering to operate.

The "trajectory of the empire" is that it became the Roman Catholic Church. Rome still rules a sizable portion of the world's population.

I wonder if the USA is going the same way. Democratic Church of America?

Homelander approves.

Rules? Membership of an organisation is nothing like being a subject of an empire. Its purely voluntary. It has less power over its members than employers do. It cannot tax, only ask for donations. Its not even Rome - its run by people from all over the world. It controls only a tiny bit of territory.

question - do the representatives and elected members of a democracy rule?

Rule, under the definition of control or dominion, is "The exercise of authority over a region or people, or the duration of a monarch's reign (e.g., colonial rule)", the word rule is often applied to mean what the leaders of a democracy do, but in most cases rule seems too strict if taking the normative definition, thus there is an informal usage that applies to democratic leadership.

The President is often referred to as a ruler, corporate elites are often referred to as rulers; in these informal groups of rulers I think it is reasonable to place the Catholic Church.

I am agreeable to say they do not rule, but then we must admit they exert a great influence, in many places and ways greater than the governments that officially hold power.

Every single human living in Europe for around a thousand years went to a priest once a week and told them their innermost darkest secrets.

There has been no more totalitarian rule ever implemented, anywhere. The North Koreans aspire to what the Catholic Church had.

Not to wade too far into weeds, but the spiritual and temporal authority of Rome (ie what is now called Church and State) were considered separate entities. When the temporal authority collapsed, the spiritual authority preserved its content and form and then simply waited for conditions to improve.

Τhus the various attempts to re-manifest a Holy Roman Empire in Europe across the subsequent centuries.

American Jesus is a thing, and there are a lot of homegrown flavors that do a ton of work proselyting elsewhere, the largest being LDS

The best part is that the show you’re referencing is on Jeff Bezos’ TV network.

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