Professionally i often deal with the stuff from the Ancient Roman collapse. The thing that I often go back thinking about is that it was relatively peaceful in our region, since the romanized Germanic tribes in the West and the "barbaric" ones in the East were sort of used to each other and often related. It was much more bloody in the Eastern regions, especially if you look at the Battle of Adrianople from which the Romans never recovered (but numerous attempts were made). Why do I often think about this? Because it was actually the Barbarians who wanted to negotiate while the Romans refused although it was all written on the wall for centuries. So now in our time our Nazis, often enough from Eastern Germany of all places, compare Muslim refugees to the Germanic Barbarians from the East.
During the Roman empire's history it recruited more and more soldiers from the recently occupied territories and then send them far away to another province, so they weren't likely to take part in a rebellion (it's not that different from what the UN or NATO do, actually, and I mean that in a neutral way). And for a very long time, that system worked, until the empire became too big to manage.
Heh, why did the Roman Empire fall? They didn't have internet.
I honestly just get frustrated at people talking about societal collapse like it's some huge apocalypse. I'm not saying it's a walk in the park or anything, but there's definitely a whole spectrum here ranging from Czechoslovakia's mostly peaceful breakup to the civil war in Yugoslavia. The US had their own without losing the federal government (the American Civil War).
I realize you can argue that in both Czechoslovakia and the US, there wasn't a "societal collapse". But there was definitely anarchy in a lot of places, and that seems like it should count. Lots of death and famine and everything (In the US for sure, don't know about czechoslovakia), but the period of actual collapse is pretty short.
Be the devil's own, Lucifer's my name.
- Iron Maiden
Well, I get most of my information about the US from the internet/CNN/CBS/NBC and what Congress/Trump keep doing seems dangerous enough to me. I don't think the media should in any way take part in causing a civil war and do everything to de-escalate right now, but the underlying problem is that you reach an audience if you give a megaphone to the most polarizing and controversial opinions out there, and that has happened for far too long.
I don't think there will be a total societal collapse, but as long as Trump and Putin are still alive, there's a lot of chaos in store for us. And all this without even getting into climate change and religious fights. As for Russia, I've read some of Navalny's utterances on Ukraine and the guy basically thought Ukraine belongs to Russia as well, so I'm not even sure anymore why he's celebrated like a martyr or what exactly his opposition to Putin is defined by other than being a little more democratic about it.
And we don't even really know right now what Xi-Jin-Ping-China is up to. In Europe we used to have mostly functioning wellfare-states, but a lot of that has eroded over the last few decades thanks to neoliberal policies, and now all these alliances that were taken for granted are called into question, and with them, so is peace. Which is dangerous in itself when so many countries have nuclear bombs and a power-hungry head of state. Also, immigration. People feel insecure and vote far-right. Sure, I guess it's ok that we Germans pay our dues and spend 10% of our GDP on military expenses, but let's not forget the Putin-loving Nazis in the parliament who, if they ever come to power, will try to use that army and militarized police like in a shitty sci-fi movie.
