{"id":54101,"date":"2020-07-11T11:59:59","date_gmt":"2020-07-11T16:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54101"},"modified":"2020-07-11T13:35:58","modified_gmt":"2020-07-11T18:35:58","slug":"why-america-wont-be-great-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54101","title":{"rendered":"Why America Won\u2019t Be \u2018Great\u2019 Again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/economicsfromthetopdown.com\/2020\/07\/11\/why-america-wont-be-great-again\/\">Why America Won\u2019t Be \u2018Great\u2019 Again<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>They called him the&nbsp;<em>\u2018Little Emperor\u2019<\/em>. Romulus Augustus \u2014 better known as Romulus \u2018Augustulus\u2019 (\u2018Little Augustus\u2019) \u2014 was the last Western Roman Emperor. He assumed the throne at the age of 16 during a period of unprecedented strife. There had been 8 emperors in the previous 20 years. Like his predecessors, the Little Emperor\u2019s reign was short. It lasted less than a year. In 476 CE, Augustus was deposed and the Western Roman Empire came to an end.<a href=\"https:\/\/economicsfromthetopdown.com\/2020\/07\/11\/why-america-wont-be-great-again\/#fn1\"><sup>1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One wonders what Augustus said to his followers during his reign. As little more than a proxy for his military-general father, Augustus left no monuments and made no decisions. But what might he have said in private? Perhaps he promised to&nbsp;<em>\u2018make Rome great again\u2019<\/em>. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2739 \u2739 \u2739<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are perennially fascinated with the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Why? Likely because its collapse cast such a long shadow on Western Europe. Once the center of civilization, the Roman collapse sent Western Europe into a dark age. It would take a millennia to recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Interestingly, the Roman elite seemed to be the last to recognize the empire\u2019s decline. True, during Augustus\u2019 reign the elite probably knew that the empire was a shadow of its former self. But elites were too busy squabbling over power to care much for the long arc of history. In their eyes, a return to Roman \u2018greatness\u2019 was probably forever on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps the best characterization of this elite attitude comes not from history, but from science fiction. In his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Foundation_series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Foundation<\/em><\/a>&nbsp;trilogy, Isaac Asimov imagines a galactic empire that sits on the verge of collapse. Scientist Harry Seldon sees the writing on the wall. But the leaders of the galactic empire do not. They\u2019re too busy squabbling amongst themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why America Won\u2019t Be \u2018Great\u2019 Again They called him the&nbsp;\u2018Little Emperor\u2019. Romulus Augustus \u2014 better known as Romulus \u2018Augustulus\u2019 (\u2018Little Augustus\u2019) \u2014 was the last Western Roman Emperor. He assumed the throne at the age of 16 during a period of unprecedented strife. There had been 8 emperors in the previous 20 years. Like his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[29938,150,29907,4091,10956],"class_list":["post-54101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-blair-fix","tag-collapse","tag-economics-from-the-top-down","tag-elites","tag-imperial-collapse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54102,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54101\/revisions\/54102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}