I was specifically talking about the ambiguity, it probably started before they noticed and ended before they officially called it. It’s interesting to think about but I get there is the official understanding of where it started and ended.
I didnt necessarily mean a single persons lifetime but a single person within a generation trying to guess where he is in the timeline.
Even then I don’t think so. It all took too long, so much so that a lot of people wouldn’t even say that it had happened. Like the modern world, people in Rome consistently said that it was in dire condition and was better in the past golden era. Like, for 500 years before it fell people were saying that they were on the brink. People are really quite bad at judging where they are in broad historical terms.
Personally, I doubt this is actually the fall of the US as a superpower/empire/whatever. Too much territory with too many resources with too many people who all identify as the same broad national identity.
How history views this time is anyone’s guess. Hoover, for all the damage he did, is largely mentioned because of how he pissed people off enough to elect FDR. It doesn’t seem likely at the moment, but it wouldn’t the first time an isolationist president has slapped dumb tarrifs on everything to blow-up an already concerning economic situation to try and protect american business while pissing off the world both economically and diplomatically, only to be followed by a president who significantly changed things and made the country better and stronger.
The process of change can be so slow on the historical scale that we still don’t know if FDR or trump is the weird one, and they’re separated by a long and full life.
However, I will say that if Germans sack DC and depose trump that out of historical consistency we’re obligated to declare the fall of the eastern American empire and send a symbolic vestige of power to California, which we will then refuse to call America.
I was specifically talking about the ambiguity, it probably started before they noticed and ended before they officially called it. It’s interesting to think about but I get there is the official understanding of where it started and ended.
I didnt necessarily mean a single persons lifetime but a single person within a generation trying to guess where he is in the timeline.
Even then I don’t think so. It all took too long, so much so that a lot of people wouldn’t even say that it had happened. Like the modern world, people in Rome consistently said that it was in dire condition and was better in the past golden era. Like, for 500 years before it fell people were saying that they were on the brink. People are really quite bad at judging where they are in broad historical terms.
Personally, I doubt this is actually the fall of the US as a superpower/empire/whatever. Too much territory with too many resources with too many people who all identify as the same broad national identity.
How history views this time is anyone’s guess. Hoover, for all the damage he did, is largely mentioned because of how he pissed people off enough to elect FDR. It doesn’t seem likely at the moment, but it wouldn’t the first time an isolationist president has slapped dumb tarrifs on everything to blow-up an already concerning economic situation to try and protect american business while pissing off the world both economically and diplomatically, only to be followed by a president who significantly changed things and made the country better and stronger.
The process of change can be so slow on the historical scale that we still don’t know if FDR or trump is the weird one, and they’re separated by a long and full life.
However, I will say that if Germans sack DC and depose trump that out of historical consistency we’re obligated to declare the fall of the eastern American empire and send a symbolic vestige of power to California, which we will then refuse to call America.
Honestly, this comment is gold! Informative and great fun. Absolutely brilliant, especially the last part! I literally laughed out loud 😅