(09-21-2016, 11:11 PM)Einzige Wrote: I certainly hope so. I find the prospect liberating.
Chaos is dangerous and destructive. It is not to be treated lightly, and it is to be avoided if at all possible.
Political chaos shows the incompetence and unresponsiveness of political leadership that led to the chaos. As for the speed in which late antiquity met its demise, such a historian as Arnold Toynbee suggested that the Roman Empire that lasted (in Rome and points west) little more than 500 years, the social order was corrupt and ultimately unsustainable even from late Republican times. Imperial Rome survived so long as it did by living off its rich resources.
We have a long way to go before the demise of the USA or its successor. We have too many resources for one bad leader to bring it down.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.