Arnold Toynbee noted in A Study of History several modes of Roman decline that parallel that of the US. After the early federal era, the declining “creative minority” idolized democratic institutions and promoted compromise, but with the decline of external threats lost the will for cooperation between regions, resulting in the Civil War. The political class that replaced the founders failed by “idolization of the …institution,” by the “intoxication of victory” (WWII and the collapse of the USSR), and by bouts of ignorant and selfish militarism (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, et al). It also failed to prevent the dominance of democratic institutions and mass media by economic power, so that these came to be controlled by business bullies who equate virtue with wealth, however ill gotten, and actively promote the moral decay that finally causes collapse.
Like Rome, a dominant minority of the wealthy and their adherents faces a growing proletariat and “external proletariats” among the Islamic states, China, South America, and Africa which in future stages will exceed its military and economic power.
Arnold Toynbee noted in A Study of History several modes of Roman decline that parallel that of the US. After the early federal era, the declining “creative minority” idolized democratic institutions and promoted compromise, but with the decline of external threats lost the will for cooperation between regions, resulting in the Civil War. The political class that replaced the founders failed by “idolization of the …institution,” by the “intoxication of victory” (WWII and the collapse of the USSR), and by bouts of ignorant and selfish militarism (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, et al). It also failed to prevent the dominance of democratic institutions and mass media by economic power, so that these came to be controlled by business bullies who equate virtue with wealth, however ill gotten, and actively promote the moral decay that finally causes collapse.
Like Rome, a dominant minority of the wealthy and their adherents faces a growing proletariat and “external proletariats” among the Islamic states, China, South America, and Africa which in future stages will exceed its military and economic power.