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Comment by datsci_est_2015 | Hacker News Reader

datsci_est_2015

I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard. Look at Brexit, for example. Or Black Wednesday, from which the US’s esteemed Treasury Secretary profited handsomely.

The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way.

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> I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing, though historians can correct me. I think it’s much more death by a thousand cuts, and the UK is a great analogue in that regard.

Didn't the UK's empire notably collapse quite rapidly?

Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex. Go back much further than that, though, and the argument starts leaking into whether the US was ever great to begin with (assuming “great” = “empire”, loosely).

But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? More of a cultural hegemon / terrorist petrostate.

> Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex.

That's pretty fast, historically.

> But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no?

Sure it was/is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_imperialism

Not to get weighed down in pedantry, but the Wikipedia article is “American imperialism”, not “the American empire”. Taking imperialist actions is a low bar for determining what is or what is not an empire. I wouldn’t call Yugoslavia an empire, as an example. Even the USSR is tough to call an empire, for some reason. Maybe because it collapsed so quickly.

Now that I peruse a bit, I guess scholars use the term “imperial power” to get away from the colloquial baggage of the term “empire”.

How is USSR, a direct continuation of the Russian Empire, not an empire?

Yes, and the Hormuz crisis looks to be for the US what the Suez crisis was for the British. I agree with the earlier comment - the US isn't coming back from this. We've all seen it now. The emperor has no clothes.

Turns out the US has just been a bully all along with no real ability to project power sufficiently to actually wage a war where it matters. China and Russia have both had front row seats to this embarrassment and have surely come to their own conclusions.

After all that post cold war hubris and 'end of history' nonsense. To think that the West's the old communist foes might come out on top. I have a strong feeling that we aren't just witnessing the decline of US imperialism, but liberal democracy itself (or at least the neoliberal flavour of it). This is the decline of the Western empire - led by the US. And self-inflicted to boot.

Yes, this is just my opinion.

> The UK’s decline has taken centuries, though, and there are many events that one can point to. I think I agree with the grandparent’s comment about grandparents, about the arrogance of how things will continue to be a certain way.

I don't think that's accurate. I'd put the peak of the British Empire at just before WW1 and the obvious end of it somewhere between independence for India, Wind of Change, and Suez.

You could point to errors made before then, and IMO the Potato Famine was so egregious it was probably a contributing factor to the invention of literal Communism, but I'd say the actual collapse began with the Pyrrhic victory of WW1.

> I think the whole “empire collapsing” is a bit of a dramatized phrasing

Ragnarok is an existential issue mainly for the ruling class. Collapse is a change in the social order more than everything just suddenly being on fire.

E.g. We developed a nice little niche during the dotcom boom, and the subsequent bust was a goldmine for us. From my perspective the sole effect of that "collapse" were cheap Ducatis and Herman Millers on Craigslist.

What do you think the collapse of rome looked like to a farmer or blacksmith in some remote hamlet?

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