When I was young, I was fascinated by ancient Rome.
I have read a lot, a lot of the great historians of this civilization.
If we do not go into details, the causes of the fall of Rome are fairly consensual: corruption of the elites, rise of competing powers, military hyperextension, financial problems, decline of traditional values, etc.
Signs
Now look at the United States.
The parallel with the fall of Rome and other great empires of old is easy and irresistible.
When the greatest power in the world must choose between a deceiver like Trump and someone as inconspicuous as Mme Harris, it’s not going well at all.
In The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), the great historian Paul Kennedy examines the causes of the fall of each of the powers that have dominated the world since 1500.
These causes are multiple, but one outweighs the others, he says: repeated deficits, especially caused by the military spending required for a presence in the four corners of the world.
Over the past 50 years, the U.S. government has recorded only four surpluses, the last in 2001.
Washington’s total debt? Some 32 trillion US$, or 32,000 billion.
Emmanuel Todd also notes that the heavy economic burden of having to maintain a global military presence had once accelerated the fall of the USSR.
Corruption of political elites?
Trump has filed for bankruptcy six times, been accused of sexual harassment, assault or rape 26 times, still faces scores of other charges, and remains the only president to have been convicted in a court of law.
See also the extraordinarily high age of the ruling political class in Washington.
The parallel with the Soviet gerontocracy of the Brezhnev era is striking.
Corruption of American intellectual elites?
See the devastation on campuses and, by extension, in the media, public service and private enterprise of this cultural Marxism that is Wokism.
In the American working classes, the ignorant were once a little ashamed.
Today, he takes aggressive pride in it.
The angry attacks on reason are open and uninhibited.
The words of many Trump supporters leave us speechless.
Life expectancy is stagnating or even declining for certain categories of the American population.
Wealth gaps, after narrowing for decades, are starting to rise again.
Risque
Of course, lots of authors say these parallels are amusing, but they hardly stand up to careful analysis.
They also note that the predicted decline of the United States has been a constant theme for decades, systematically contradicted by reality.
Perhaps, but the fact remains that, under this much criticized American leadership, Western civilization of the last 100 years has been, despite its faults, the most prosperous, the most free, the least violent, the most educated and the healthiest of the history of humanity.
It is when we are at risk of losing something that we realize its full value.
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