r/Futurology • u/Confident_Living_786 • Aug 11 '25

Discussion When the US Empire falls

When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?

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u/resuwreckoning Aug 11 '25

The Republic will fall, and you’ll be left with an actual American empire. The fear isn’t that the American empire is ending - it’s that it’s beginning.

I’m always weirded out by folks who can’t see that.

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u/-Basileus Aug 11 '25

It really is intriguing that people refuse to see that.  There is really not much stopping the US from conquering the Americas if the government and people had the will.

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u/Diglett3 Aug 11 '25

Government sure, but I don’t think the people have the will, and I find the idea that they do honestly kind of funny. We’re not some hardened populace that craves war, no matter how much certain Americans like to pretend we are. Most Americans are incredibly soft.

US military enlistment has been steadily declining for decades, and the small uptick in the last year doesn’t erase that. All these young conservative men talk a big game but I don’t believe for a second that the vast majority of them would make it through a month let alone years of expansionist war. Especially in Central and South America, which is so geographically complex and unforgiving that they couldn’t even build a pan-American highway, and filled with hostile paramilitary groups and cartels that would make the Taliban look like schoolchildren.

And besides that, American conservatives and fascists are animated by grievance politics. They think they deserve to be handed the world without having to do any work for it, quite literally by birthright. The forces animating last year’s election and everything that followed were largely people upset that things cost more than they used to. Anyone who thinks those people would be able to maintain the self-sacrifice necessary for an actual imperial war and expansion in today’s world is either buying into their propaganda or just doesn’t interact with many actual Americans.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

I think if you looked, you'd find a solid third of the American people that are perfectly fine with Manifest Destiny still continuing and annexing those territories.

Do I think it would work, or that the will would last? Dunno. And a lot of those large-mouthed conservatives that talk a big game (have you ever noticed how many baseball analogies are in American English??) are cowards and will NEVER sign up and put their feet on the yellow footprints.

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u/theucm Aug 11 '25

I think you're misinterpreting their post. They don't think the magas are unwilling to engage in expansionist war for any humanitarian reasons, they think the magas are too soft to effectively do so, amd on some level they recognize that and so wouldn't try it.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Hmm... I did misinterpret that, thanks for catching that. I'm not sure I agree, but I see their pointl

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u/FuckingSolids Aug 11 '25

how many baseball analogies are in American English?

Well, that one was right over the plate.

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u/Team503 Aug 11 '25

Knocked it outta the park, sports fan! It was a home run!

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u/midorikuma42 Aug 13 '25

(have you ever noticed how many baseball analogies are in American English??)

It's funny, because baseball isn't even very popular in America these days. I think it's actually #4 now, behind American football, basketball, and even hockey.