What are Veeky Forums thoughts on historical recurrence?

romes actually different id say to most empires. it was the dominant major power without any real significant competitors for alot of its history. it only fell coz bunch of little ones fucked it over and it fucked itself internally. the only real big one i can think of would be persia? but i feel like for most of romes history it wasnt massive was it?

Couldn't you say the same for Persia in its prime?

What great Empire did the Persians have to contend with?

I'm actually engaged. Don't believe any of that shit.

Just wanted to make that silly joke.

It just repeated itself. Pic related, dumbfuck rednecks got conned again.

That quote is a meme. "parallels" between the present and the past are generally made by people poorly informed on the topic and do not stand to closer scrutiny,

That being said, without history and its analysis, social sciences would be completely impossible (historic perspective and historic parallels are essential to them), as would be the analysis of philosophy (philosophical "jargon" significantly differed based on time and place - it is impossible to read the Greeks, for example, without understanding the full meaning of terms such as logos, eudaimonia etc., and you can trace philosophical influences by the way concepts and meanings were spread, which is also very important in determining full meaning of philosophical terms), art (literature and architecture in particular), religion (pretty much in the same way as philosophy) etc. The point is that, used properly, history is absolutely essential to all other humanistic disciplines, and they are just as essential to it.

>everything is a spook
>except for class which is totally physical and tangible

Leftist retard thinking in a nutshell

i was going to say the ones that brought it down but i dont think thats a good answer

Well, what's worse, picking the liar who at acknowledges you, or the one who doesn't say anything about you at all?

That's not the justification people used during the election.

Macedon was far from a rival Empire. It was very young, and very unstable. So unstable that it immediately fell apart, and may have still, had Alexander lived to be 100 years old.

>Trump cannot understand poor people because he's rich
>Hillary Clinton will be the best for poor people, blacks, immigrants and homosexuals, because she's rich, white, native born and straight

Well, that's what turned WI, MI, and PA red

OH too.

i guess rome was just a better empire.

Roman society as a whole is alien to the Ancient World, and operated much more like the modern one than its contemporaries

Not really.

Egypt existed on and off for around 3000 years. The Persians existed for a real fucking long time. The Ottomans lasted pretty long

Remember, the Empire itself only existed 480 years. That's impressive for the size, but still far from being excessively long.

That's literally true you fucking moron. Stirner understood this.

yeah but i expect you're defining empire as emperor and not land occupied and not including eastern rome.

Persia existed in like 5 different configurations, with the longest stretches not being by Persians at all.

Also, the Roman Republic was an Empire since after the Second Punic War, just not ruled by an Emperor.

Not to mention China, which is close to 4000 years

what about ethiopia as well. i swear thats like one of the only places out of europe which has had a continuous unconquered nation?

Well we're seeing what may be the rise of demagoguery, where tyrants appeal to the masses as their power base, and use it to bypass the established ruling class. Trump may not be a true tyrant, but he may be a sign of things to come. He's not Julius Caesar, but he may be Sulla. Or Cleon of Athens. The beginning of the end.

Western governments are so cyclical. Oligarchies give way to tyrannies, and tyrannies to democracies, and democracies to oligarchies. The American republic is remarkable not in that it has broken out of that cycle, but because it has undergone the cycle a few times, all under the same constitution. Lincoln, perhaps, was one tyrant; Roosevelt another.

Traditionally, only a tyrant (in the classical sense, with none of its modern connotations; a populist leader empowered by the masses with singular power) could break the back of the oligarchs and aristocrats. America has for some time labored under the lash of the oligarchs. They focus ever greater power and wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and are extremely reluctant to address the crises and problems that plague the common folk and the country at large. They will ignore problems as long as they can, and go about their business, the concentration of ever greater wealth and influence in their hands.

But the people require redress of their problems, and under a system with democratic elements they will eventually empower a charismatic leader to make quick, efficient change. This can actually be a good thing, at times. It can also be very bad, if the tyrant refuses to lay down his power and hands it down to a chosen successor or an offspring. This is where monarchies come from.

Republicanism and democracy has always been an experiment and remains so, and is always even now vastly outnumbered by autocracies of various kinds. It remains to be seen if this experiment can persist. The few centuries we've had is already quite an accomplishment.

oligarchs and tyrants are of the times those names were created. trump is something else.

China is different in a different way from Rome.

After its initial inflation, it never really had another expansionary period until the Tang dynasty, then it just kind of stayed the same for a long time.

Probably because it was so isolated by the sea and the Gobi.

In my mind, there are really 3 big, great Empires that aren't run of the mill: Egypt, Rome, and China.

The rest kind of fall into the same kind of formula where a group of literally whos rise up and fade away later.

no trump different. there are always people that look too closeely and see too many commonalities between now and then. its not necessarily like that. similarities yes. but does that represent the dynamics of a tyrant or oligarch or whatever? no. are there cycles? maybe, but not necessarily in the way you think. human greed is always there though. so there are comes and goes.

If anything, Trump is more like a Crassus, a rich guy who has all the money and wants some of the Glory.

That or he actually cares, or was tired of being a joke.
Watching how people treated him during the election made part of me so happy when he won.

i think all these had in common is their lack of competition right?

Tsk. There's nothing new under the sun. The requirements of government do not change. It ossifies, and the rising pressures of circumstance begin to require swift action. If the government is unable to achieve consensus because it is too compromised and complacent, the appeal of a charismatic leader with supreme power who can take decisive action will increase until he takes his place.

In America, a military coup is extremely unlikely; however we can vote people in, if we're motivated enough, and that means someone with charisma who says all the right things, at a time of crisis, can take his place as tyrant...

Why do you keep saying this, Rome overcame all the competition to become the Empire it was.

It wasn't an easy road through Italy, Hannibal, the Gauls, and Mithradates.

And a man like Crassus might have been a tyrant, had his expedition to the Orient gone differently. For the Romans, military glory and political power were essentially synonymous.

Under the American system, wealth and success as a capitalist replace military glory. Season that with an appeal to racism aimed at the majority or the "glories of the old days" and you will find an eager audience, if things have gotten bad enough. If the established powers have failed to address the problems of the country, as indeed they have. The elected representatives, here, cannot accomplish even a provision for the common health without vitriolic resistance. We suffer the same problem the late Roman republic did: the powers that be would rather problems never got solved, than see them solved by an opponent would would gain the credit for it.

A useful reminder for all those who predict the destruction of America. Rome came through a cataclysmic civil war to build an Empire that persisted for 5 centuries. 15, if you count the Byzantines.