/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18900340]

Are there any historical literary accounts of a world super power fading into obscurity because of incompetence and the fall out as their previous subjects slowly begin to realise this?

[Anonymous No.18900346]

>>18900340
13%

[Anonymous No.18900401]

>>18900340
Based Norway.

Best timeline if we have Gustavus Adolphus revival.

[Anonymous No.18900411]

>>18900340
this is actually based in that free healthcare allows the expansion of the underclass well beyond what is acceptable

[Anonymous No.18900467]

>>18900340
Desu, I wish I worked in infrastructure planning and implementation. Watching stuff like the Flint water crisis makes my blood boil, they need competent people working on these things and no one is. But I'm a software guy, what can I do, y'know.

[Anonymous No.18900472]

t. roman empire

[Anonymous No.18900499]

>>18900340
As an American who has spent some time in Norway I can see why they would think this. Even their prisoners lead better lives than most of our working class.

[Anonymous No.18900514]

>>18900340
world superpowers don't just fade into obscurity. they're punished/conquered and usually remain a large entity in global trade.

[Anonymous No.18900546]

>>18900514
>World superpowers don't just fade into obscurit-

[Anonymous No.18900560]

>>18900546
Looks like Greenland is the darkhorse for 3000 AD supremacy.

[Anonymous No.18900565]

>>18900514
>and usually remain a large entity in global trade.
....and then fade into obscurity

[Anonymous No.18900568]

>>18900546
'just' as in quickly.

[Anonymous No.18900569]

>>18900560
It's all but confirmed

[Anonymous No.18900576]

>>18900569
where do you get those signs/planets from

[Anonymous No.18900589]

>>18900546
none of those were 'world superpowers' like the US or the Axis Powers.

[Anonymous No.18900609]

>>18900546
So, uh, who was the dominant civilization between 400 and 1700?

[Anonymous No.18900626]

>>18900340
America is a third world country

[Anonymous No.18900629]

>>18900609
Pre-enlightenment Europe.

[Anonymous No.18900635]

>>18900569
Next golden age starting in the Azores Islands confirmed! Brazilians of /lit/, how do I learn your language?

[Anonymous No.18900641]

>>18900569
But it moves backwards to the middle east during the Islamic golden age.

[Anonymous No.18900647]

>>18900411
The underclass already has free healthcare in the US

[Anonymous No.18900657]

>>18900635
Atlantis will rise from the sea!

[Anonymous No.18900658]

>>18900340
>USA is underdeveloped
Das rite. Eurocucks, send aid

[Anonymous No.18900659]

>>18900647
Member of the American underclass here. No we don't.

[Anonymous No.18900667]

>>18900340
First the Afghanistan disaster, and now Norway is sneering. I'm so happy that I'll see the fall of America in my lifetime. Yo burgahs, take China, Israel, and Saudi with you please.

[Anonymous No.18900679]

>>18900659
>American
There’s your problem. Get a tan and jump the fence

[Anonymous No.18900689]

>>18900679

[Anonymous No.18900694]

I remember when I was a kid I used to actually respect Americans and want to travel there.

[Anonymous No.18900697]

>>18900658
maybe just direct the aid you send to israel to yourselves

[Anonymous No.18900787]

>>18900340
Time for us to get gibs from the EU

[Anonymous No.18900800]

>>18900697
Reported to the ADL. Expect your Paypal account to be suspended.

[Anonymous No.18900810]

>>18900694
If you have money and are okay with driving a lot then there's still plenty of cool places to visit, it's just a bad place to live if you're poor or lower middle class.

[Anonymous No.18900821]

>>18900467
The Flint water crisis has been resolved.

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/01/marc-edwards-is-a-sad-microcosm-of-our-modern-political-era/

Though of course, it wasn't good that it happened.

That said, I don't think you need to become an expert to make an impact on that matter. Something else is wrong.

Chernobyl, for example, was not simply a problem of sloppy nuclear engineering: the entire system of the Soviet Union was responsible. Same with the Challenger disaster, with Deepwater Horizon, the Beirut explosion, etc. Not all disasters indicate a deeper, non-technical dysfunction, but many do.

Infrastructure, in particular, is a clearly political problem. There isn't a lack of expertise there.

[Anonymous No.18900831]

>>18900821
But how do I make an impact?

>Become a Marxist/fascist/socialist/islamist lmao
no

[Anonymous No.18900845]

>>18900641
It's not that it moved backward. They were just still riding their wave, but the energies that provoqued it had already moved.

[Anonymous No.18900857]

>>18900810
There's cooler third world countries to visit.

[Anonymous No.18900868]

>>18900340
The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

[Anonymous No.18900885]

>>18900514
USSR says hello.

[Anonymous No.18900887]

>>18900821
The problem is the lack of a proper notification system with people assigned to tasks when notified. Too often in bureaucracy (and life in general) it is assumed that someone else is taking care of the matter.

[Anonymous No.18900890]

>>18900885
Russia is still a large, powerful country. >>18900565
Germany, Japan, and Italy are doing fine.

[Anonymous No.18900907]

>>18900831
Dunno man. I don't think there are formulas there. You just gotta decide if you really care about this, and if you do, start walking and roll with the punches.

[Anonymous No.18900955]

>>18900887
That's a feature of working safety systems, but it's not the whole story. For the Challenger, NASA got an explicit no-go the night before the launch, on account of the O-rings, but decided to twist the relevant consultant's arm to make them take it back. The Beirut issue was repeatedly notified: to whom did it need to be escalated?

I've been reading a book called Engineering a Safer World, because I'm very worried about something I see as an incipient Chernobyl: AI. It seems like the methods recommended there work, but how do you get the relevant leaders to give a damn about safety and implement them? And also, can they work in the context of ensuring scientific research (of any kind, not just AI) doesn't wind up killing us?

Can we stop pic related?

[Anonymous No.18900968]

>>18900857
That's subjective.

[Anonymous No.18900971]

>>18900890
Yes but the USSR itself was a superpower that fell into obscurity for a long time before collapsing. Putin has clawed back Russia to some power on the world stage, controlling most of the world's major gas pipelines gives significant power by default, however its economy is still only about the size of Italy. The superpowers now are the US, the EU (or maybe Germany) and China, while I would say Russia still qualifies as "obscurity" on the world stage, and who knows what will happen after Putin.

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY3cHnRY No.18901117]

UNITEDSTATIAN PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE IS STUCK IN THE LATE NINETEEN HUNDRED NINETIES.

[Anonymous No.18901136]

>>18901117
wow so a whole two centuries ahead of the favela shithole country you come from?

[࿇ C Œ M G E N V S ࿇ !KNDY3cHnRY No.18901161]

>>18901136


?

[Anonymous No.18901164]

>>18901136
>we're still better than brazil!

[Anonymous No.18901167]

>>18900868
Ironically, Gibbon depicts the "decline" of the Empire as lasting for almost 1400 years longer after he begins to chronicle it. Gibbon gives a surprisingly detailed and accurate account of what happens to Rome, both in the West and in the East.

And he actually proves the other Anon's point that empires often fall through outside forces. The Eastern Empire might still be around to this day in some form if not for the Ottomans conquering it.

[Anonymous No.18901179]

>>18900569
>goes west to America
>then finally circles the globe and comes back to China
fucking pottery.

[Anonymous No.18901203]

>>18901179
>China
>Ever ruling the planet

Imagine being this retarded

[Anonymous No.18901217]

>>18901203
>he thinks there is going to be a "planet ruler" and not a new multi-polar universalist system
pleb tier arborescence. No civilizations ever really ruled the planet, that was always a delusion. Did Rome stretch across the entire globe? Did Britain? Did America even? Not for a second. The Chinese future is not a world empire but a true universal pluralism, and you're a pleb if you can't see it.

[Anonymous No.18901238]

>>18900659
Yes you do, Obama care still exists, the mandatory insurance was dropped but it was ultimately just a way to bankroll the program and get it going. Go get cheap insurance through the program and write off what little you pay on your taxes. What did you think that whole health insurance bit on the new tax forms was for?

[Anonymous No.18901273]

>>18901217
>

[Anonymous No.18901287]

>>18901273
oh no.. it's a chudcel. You will never have sex and your country is doomed to slide into poverty and chaos, try not to have a fascist temper tantrum on the way down you'll just hurt yourself :P

[Anonymous No.18901310]

>>18901217
>>18901287
The oldest living civilisation in the history of mankind, the highest population, yet not more than a handful of texts worth reading and almost no inventions beyond the big 4 (which they love to constantly reference). There's singular European and West Asian cities that have contributed more to history than the entirety of Chinese history. You will find on a single shelf in Mediterranean libraries more influential literary works than in the entire corpus of Chinese literature. You could combine the achievements of the 100 most influential Chinese people of all time and the totality of their efforts would still pale in comparison to the contributions of a single Greek philosopher or Enlightenment physicist. A country who's entire economy is founded on taking pieces of technology white men invented and pumping them out for as cheap a price as is possible. China will never rule the world as long their population is furnished with the Chinese. If you can't see this it is because you are Chinese yourself.

[Anonymous No.18901311]

>>18901167
More like: if not for the Italian sack of Constantinople during the 4th Crusade.

[Anonymous No.18901313]

Worth pointing out that France never really stopped being a great power even if they're not quite a superpower any more. They kept a lot more of their global influence than Britain and their military is still pretty formidable. France is probably the closest thing Europe has to a superpower at this point, I'd even pit them against Russia. So that's another former hegemon still prowling around the world stage.

[Anonymous No.18901330]

>>18900346

[Anonymous No.18901375]

>>18900340
I think the important thing to remeber about currrent world super powers is that they fact they are around when he are alive make them seem a lot more important then they are. Loads of superpowers have come and gone throughout human history. The only thing that might suggest that things like borders will stay pretty much the same for much of the remainder of humanities time is we are lot less fighty than we have been because of improved techology making it easier for us to communicate. Who knows though, there have been oeriods of relative oeace before too.

[Anonymous No.18901379]

>>18901375
Is that the fact that they are around when we*

[Anonymous No.18901381]

>>18901313
All EU states are German vassals, so this means Germany is the superpower

[Anonymous No.18901422]

>>18900821
>he used a jew link

[Anonymous No.18901451]

>>18901313
yeah your overrun with foreign invaders

[Anonymous No.18901461]

>>18900641
Never existed. Islam was indeed the end of the middle east.

[Anonymous No.18901470]

>>18901381
Germany is irrelevant. The EU is just the peace-side of NATO.

[Anonymous No.18901477]

>>18901470
This.

Quite frankly, the EU can bitch at us when it can field a military that rivals ours. There was a time when the United States used to fear Great Britain as a superpower. There were contingency plans in the Department of Defense for if Britain decided to invade the United States across the Canadian border. Now? There is no European nation that inspires fear.

[Anonymous No.18901486]

>>18901238
In Norway we pay like $20 per month for health insurance by our taxes and it covers everything. Americans pay a lot more because you have millions of insurance workers to fill their pockets. Here it all goes to doctors and medicine.

[Anonymous No.18901493]

>>18901477
>Quite frankly, the EU can bitch at us when it can field a military that rivals ours
Your military is much like your citizens. Big, overly-fed, and completely useless. If the Taliban's and Viet Cong's victories has not made this clear, I don't know what will. You guys are a joke. An excess of equipment and firearms, with no competence to back it up.

[Anonymous No.18901499]

>>18901477
Very cocky from a country that has already seen its best days. I can practically guarantee that we will see EU taking the role USA has played within our lifetimes. I'm expecting it to happen within the next two decades.

[Anonymous No.18901500]

>>18901493
>If the Taliban's and Viet Cong's victories
Neither of them has beaten the US military. They beated respectively the Afghan army and the south vietnam army.
America failing at state building is a whole different story that pretending the US military is or even can be beaten.

[Anonymous No.18901509]

>>18900609
this faggot >>18900629
it was the Umayyad dynasty, and China

[Anonymous No.18901516]

>>18901499
That requires Europeans to assume hard power again, you're not going to see that with the generation that grew in the immediate afterwar. All in all they're fine with the fact they're protected by the US.

[Anonymous No.18901529]

>>18900546
well, according to that arrow (since the USA is gone) next one to own the World is Russia
I wonder what Ace in the sleeve Putin has... his final shot

[Anonymous No.18901534]

>>18900635
read "Turma da Mônica", funny easy to read comic that has the correct Portuguese

[Anonymous No.18901537]

>>18901516
They wont have any choice but to step up and take control when your country descends into sociocultural decay and eventually civil war. A process that is already observably underway.

[Anonymous No.18901552]

>>18901537
>"America will collapse any day now"
If it didn't happen in the 1970s, it's not happening now. This period of instability is nothing compared to what stagflation and the various militant movements of that time were. America will find itself one power among many, but Civil War 2.0 isn't going to happen. I have to ask, who do you think will be fighting?

[Anonymous No.18901554]

>>18900955
With all the radio waves we've been sending since the 60s ? kek
if there are really aliens out there (for fucks sake how many UFOs do you need) they either are good or don't care much for us

[Anonymous No.18901556]

>>18900955
Maybe warnings need to come with actual visual threat models of what could go wrong if ignored. After hitting a certain threshold, these models are released to the public. Nothing is really failsafe, unfortunately, as long as humans are involved.

[Anonymous No.18901570]

>>18901552
Extreme delusion.

[Anonymous No.18901579]

>>18901493
>>18901499
Trust me, our embarrassment on the worldstage is all part of the plan...

[Anonymous No.18901581]

>>18901570
Just tell me who you think will be fighting in this supposedly imminent American civil war. It's not a hard question.

[Anonymous No.18901612]

>>18901581
Why don't you describe how your country plans to reconcile a brown majority with double digit IQ that thinks affirmative action is the future and is actively encouraged by your own academia to dismantle pre existing power structures, the only mechanism that has kept your abomination of a country afloat for this long. The writing is on the wall, you are the new Brazilians. It's not even just observable cracks anymore, the walls are literally falling down before our eyes. The rest of the world welcomes it, we wont shed a single tear.

[Anonymous No.18901614]

>>18901477
>the EU can bitch at us when it can field a military that rivals ours
40 000 goat herders in Afghanistan can field a military that rivals yours.

[Anonymous No.18901617]

>>18901486
In America my insurance cost me $62 a month, all of which was written off on my taxes, after that write off and the standard deduction my 2020 income tax was $48, so almost every penny I paid in for the year was refunded to me which completely covers health insurance for 2021 with a healthy chunk left over.

Honest question that perhaps the anonymous format here will bring an actual answer, have quite a few friends in Norway and spent some time there, why does everyone in Norway think they understand exactly how America works? I have tried to talk to my Norwegian friends about this but they just double down and tell me I don't know anything about the country I have lived in for 36 years and most of them have never even visited. I should probably ask a Swede but never thought of it.

[Anonymous No.18901620]

>>18901614
And you think the French military or the German military can do better?

[Anonymous No.18901629]

There's actually a 0% chance America still has an average IQ of 100. They are less than 60% white and their definition of "white" is divergent from the rest of the civilised world, if you can even call America a part of the civilised world anymore.

[Anonymous No.18901642]

>>18901612
Oh, you're one of those lmao. Don't worry anon, /pol/ likes to exaggerate the reach of our academia (and you'll notice they don't touch the power structures which actually matter). America is fine,. As for the brown majority, the Hispanics are not the first brown group to be totally assimilated and they won't be the last. The Latino separatist movements are total memes, I don't see them threatening the integrity of the USA, ever.

[Anonymous No.18901649]

>>18901642
So extreme delusion it is then.

[Anonymous No.18901673]

>>18900626
Only the cities. The small towns are comfy.

[Anonymous No.18901706]

>>18900340
>Are there any historical literary accounts of a world super power fading into obscurity because of incompetence
Don Quixote

[Anonymous No.18901718]

>>18901617
maybe the smug bastards are looking at the averages

[Anonymous No.18901728]

>>18900411
It has a lot of strings attached though. Free helthcare and a social security net even provide a constant and very considerable drain on your funds. If the US has exorbitant medical and university fees to keep its underclass in check, countries like Norway have a ton of obligatory payments and exorbitant taxes preventing you from "expanding".

[Anonymous No.18901731]

>>18901649
>extreme delusion
I'm not the one predicting civil war in the USA lmao. All you have are memes about IQ and the American academia. Maybe it makes you happier to think we are crumbling, but America is not going anywhere.

[Anonymous No.18901739]

>>18901477
Bro if you guys can't seriously take on the Viet Cong and the Taliban your military is shit STFU

[Anonymous No.18901743]

>>18901731
Yeah civil war in the US, what a totally absurd proposition, something like that could never happen.

[Anonymous No.18901745]

>>18901552
Holy fuck are you retarded

[Anonymous No.18901749]

>>18901745
>American is retarded
Yes, and the sky is blue.

[Anonymous No.18901754]

>>18901743
You still can't say who is going to be fighting.

>>18901745
What? Don't tell me the BLM riots seemed as big to you as any of the disturbances of the 1970s.

[Anonymous No.18901766]

>>18901728
And yet these countries are leading the way in terms of social mobility. They are, however, far behind the US when it comes to mobility scooters.

[Anonymous No.18901769]

>>18901754
Bro you keep referencing the 70's please stop, you fucking Americans don't even have THE FUCKING INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE SEVENTIES RIGHT NOW YOU DUMB AMERICAN FUCK

[Anonymous No.18901777]

>>18901754
BLM is a way bigger deal than the meme panthers.

[Anonymous No.18901785]

>>18901718
Doesn't work in this case, they have literally explained to me why my health care is so expensive, as in me personally not America in general and I pay less than they do. Norwegians will explain to you any social/political issue in the world even if they have no clue, like being in a country populated by my parents. Good people for the most part, just need to learn to keep them off of politics.

[Anonymous No.18901787]

>>18901769
multi-trillion dollar infrastructure bill on the way lad. Again, you seem like you get all your news about America from very odd sources.

>>18901777
>BLM: backed by government, corporations, integrated into Democratic party
>Panthers: dissident group, promoted Marxist ideals, had militant factions
BLM poses no threat to the internal stability of the USA, the Panthers did.

[Anonymous No.18901791]

Americas diminishing IQ is on clear display ITT. How may decades do we have left before it's considered racially insensitive to make fun of Americans? I estimate 2-3 maximum.

[Anonymous No.18901805]

>>18901766
Well, obviously, over the general population more people are moving upwards when there is a bottom line far from rock bottom through security nets. On the other hand the ceiling is pretty low aswell though.
It comes down to what you prefer really. If you are someone who does not need daddy state to hold your hand and have big aspirations, I think that the US is a preferable alternative for an individual.
In general it certainly is a shithole in many places, no argument there.

[Anonymous No.18901806]

>>18901787
The Panthers were a bunch of crackheads that got so mindfucked by spooks that they would blow each other away at meetings.
BLM is an international phenomenon that is in the process of completely reshaping American society.

[Anonymous No.18901808]

>>18901787
BLM poses a significantly larger risk BECAUSE it is backed by the government

[Anonymous No.18901818]

american prisoners get free healthcare but the citizens don't

[Anonymous No.18901835]

>>18900340
You know these bundle of faggots were pissed off since they wrote in English and not the native tongue.

[Anonymous No.18901841]

>>18901818
>free is GOOD
biggest misconception of humanity
>>18901614
both of those countries were literally in that war kek. Germany sent 150,000 troops

[Anonymous No.18901844]

>>18901739
>seriously take on
Check the battles, retard.

[Anonymous No.18901846]

So at what point is the rest of the world going to stop being obsessed over us?

[Anonymous No.18901852]

>>18901844
>total strategic defeat
>BUT WE KILLED A LOT OF PEOPLE DURRRR
>THOSE KIDS WE NAPALMED AINT SO TOUGH NOW
>*thumps chest*

[Anonymous No.18901858]

>>18901846
eurollahs haven't stopped being obsessed since 1776. They can't even remember their countries fought in Afghanistan. But they're obsessed with America this America that. Just a bunch of future drone targets, thankfully.

[Anonymous No.18901862]

>>18901852
>US military is bad
>wins all the battles
Which is it, towelhead?

[Anonymous No.18901867]

>>18901862
>wins all the battles but loses the war
impressive

[Anonymous No.18901868]

>>18901852
>>total strategic defeat
>what is paris peace accords of 1973
If you're going to try to shift from blatant anti-american memes to actual history, at least know history. North Vietnam invaded 2 years after we left, before that it was just like a NK/SK scenario, and a cucked congress let it happen.

[Anonymous No.18901872]

>>18901451
are you from 2016?

[Anonymous No.18901874]

>>18901867
Yes, actually. Hence why NATO won practically every engagement in Afghanistan and this happened.

[Anonymous No.18901877]

>>18901872
Are you from morocco?

[Anonymous No.18901896]

>>18901868
>muh nobel prize winning peace accords
>North Vietnam invaded 2 years after we left,
almost as though this outcome was imminent and totally foreseeable and the peace accords were yet another brazen sham foisted upon the international community by phony, fast-talking American hucksters.

[Anonymous No.18901920]

The US still has a phenomenal military. Its failures in Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are entirely due to politics. It has shit civilian leadership and has for a quarter-century now at least.

Basically I think we need a good old fashioned coup in the United States. Someone who knows what they're doing needs to usurp the current political order and get things back on track. God I wish the January 6th fuckery had actually led to some notable result. Trump wasn't perfect but he was a fuckton better than Biden, and I would hardly have minded if he'd clung on to power illegally.

[Anonymous No.18901952]

>>18901785
>Norwegians will explain to you any social/political issue in the world even if they have no clue

so exactly like americans then?

[Anonymous No.18901957]

>>18901920
Our military exists to control resources and posturing (for Israel's sake). There is no "war" to win. The "war on terrorism" is just a shitty excuse to kill brown people. We don't need better leadership to win wars that no one cares about. The only way we can """win""" a war in the middle east is literally to kill everyone who lives there, and no one wants that besides /pol/