GOD BLESS AMERICA

It is, in fact, possible to fucking lose.

And when you initiate violence and lose, the consequences you will face will be a million times worse than the state you were in before you initiated violence.

I've seen that aggressively, abysmally, arrogantly stupid view (that our enemies are cowards who will fold like origami the second we pull our guns out) from both left and right. And they are ALL wrong. You don't know how your enemy will react when the balloon goes up. Hell, most people don't know how THEY will react when faced with violence.

All we know for sure is that violence is sudden, brutal, messy and scary as hell. And when it's not just two guys fighting, or a couple of street gangs duking it out, but anywhere between hundred and millions of citizens trying to murder one another, it's going to be horrific.

Yes, there are lots of people who are prepared (to various degrees of reality) for civil unrest. And they exist on both sides, and in the most surprising places. And one of the foremost principles in military theory is that "no plan survives contact with the enemy." You may think you know how a civil war will play out, but the enemy gets a vote, too, and he wants to win (and crush you, his enemy) just as much as you do.

The United States of America began as thirteen colonies struggling to survive on one coast of the north American continent.

The USA did not begin as anything resembling an empire.

The USA began as a true republic.

Rome was a republic for 482 years before it became an empire.

Even after it became an empire, Rome lasted for another 500 years in Western Europe and nearly 1,500 years in Eastern Europe (Byzantium).

The USA isn't dying. We're only getting started.

Also

Glubb adjusted the starting and ending dates of empires to force them into his 250 year window.

For example, Glubb dated the Roman Empire from 27 BC to 180 AD, to do this, he completely ignored the Western Roman Empire's continuation until 476 AD, and the Byzantine Empire, which lasted for over 1000 years.

He only counted the First Persian Empire, Achaemenid, completely cutting out the Parthian and Sasanian Persian empires which lasted nearly 500 and 400 years respectively.

He completely ignored major historically long live Empires like the Ottoman Empire, 600+ years, the Venetian Republic, 1100 years, and various Chinese Dynasties, like the Han and Tang, that breached his rule.

The reason this was so poorly put together is that Glubb was a British military officer, not a trained historian.

His essay The Fate of Empires was a short, 26 page treatise written in his retirement, rather than a peer reviewed academic study.

Academic critics have noted that his work is extremely light on actual historical data and heavy on broad, sweeping generalizations.

It feels like a blatant double standard, but I half expect the reason for this is that people just assume whatever kitbashed religion they grew up with was correctly taught and practiced Christianity, not a jumble of feel good affirmations and random bible verses slapped on a thin layer of generic “spirituality”.

Misplaced empathy leads to opening your borders to rapine beasts that ruin the future of your children.

While Musk said he believes in empathy and that “you should care about other people,” he also thinks it’s destroying society. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.” Empathy, he said, has been “weaponized.”

He's not saying empathy itself is wrong, he's saying people can abuse it. He also said it's complicated.

But I'm sorry — you need to be able to explain to the average Joe why you deserve a slice of his paycheck.