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Things have been getting pretty bad worldwide for about 17 years. Some would say that it really started as far back as the 1980's, and has only gained speed since then. I initially started this post with a huge bullet list of everything that's gone wrong in the past 40 years, and especially the past ten, lost it in a browser crash and goddamn it's just too much  to type again. Shits hosed. You know it, I know it, lets talk about how it's going to play out. So far we're tracking the Roman Republic pretty good, but we've got a lot more crazy technology this time around and our Caesar is a demented oompa-loompa. Imagine that this is the climate change thread, except rather than moaning about how we're all very much going to die, we're moaning about how the fabric of our entire society is unraveling at the seams. Good topics: -> Rise of Authoritarianism in the west. -> Decline and Vilification of Social Welfare. -> Formation of international ultra-wealthy elite class with absolutely no geopolitical allegiances. ->Corporate conglomerates with no geopolitical allegiances. -> Potential Balkanization of the USA & UK along ideological lines, and ramifications thereof. I'll add more if anyone has suggestions. Rime fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Aug 13, 2017 |
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Aug 13, 2017 02:17
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Eh, the parallels to Caesar are there as well: Populist pretty boy who rose to power in the republic by bribery and spectacle, and undermined the foundation of the entire system once he'd gained office.
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Aug 13, 2017 03:07
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Yeah, the point of this thread was definitely not to be America centric or to get caught up in comparisons to Rome (my bad). While discussing America seems unavoidable, as it's currently declining significantly faster than other western nations and its multi-decade stranglehold over the world makes that a big issue, there's plenty of meat to be had in the EU or peripherals such as Canada. Poland is swinging hard to the right, seven years after the assassination of most of their executive branch. The UK may very well disintegrate post-brexit. Canada is drowning in debt, and buckling under the corrosive influence of all that geopolitically-unaligned capital. Crop failures are becoming more of a thing, as are extreme weather events. We've got a lot of threads for independent nations, or independent trends which may or may not result in major crises (climate change, global economic collapse 2.0, rise of authoritarianism, etc). I envisioned this as a place to bring those different threads together, discuss how they impact each other, and weave from them the potential tapestry of our demise. 
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Aug 13, 2017 19:32
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Pembroke Fuse posted:Please stop peddling conspiracy theories here. I think the majority of Poles, except for the hardest right-wingers in PiS, agree that this was an accident. Unlike say the shooting down of the MH-17 (in which it is clearly complicit), Russia basically allowed Poland and the international organizations to investigate the scene and all flight recorders. All bodies, including Polish investigators, reached the same conclusion. Meh. The country has gone to hell since that event, and is currently attempting to strip the judiciary of independence. This follows having cracked down on the media, limited public gatherings, and the usual list of bullshit you associate with authoritarian eastern european failed states. The decline in internal affairs can't be hand waved away.
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Aug 13, 2017 20:37
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The Canadian welfare system has been in a shambles for decades and is slowly being dismantled, varying from province to province. Here in BC, welfare has been frozen at $610/month since 1999. It's now been increased to $710/month, however the previous government slashed millions in accessory programs in the years before leaving office. The (now ousted governments) response to criticism of this situation was, verbatim: How long do you think you could survive in a developed nation like Canada on $610/month, goons? But that malaise is spreading far and wide. We can look at the ongoing efforts to dismantle the NHS in the UK, the crippling of subsidized post-secondary across nations where it's been affordable for generations, etc. I don't see a GMI in our future, I see the neoconservative powers in the west doing everything they can to gut our existing social welfare systems until they are gone entirely. Rime fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Aug 14, 2017 |
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Aug 14, 2017 04:47
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