Yes. It was bad for slaves as well. The post-Roman polities maintained slavery, so it’s not “The slaves are now free”, it’s “The slaves are now under a system with a poorer quality of life for everyone, from top to bottom”.

What about those on the periphery, with minimal protection from the state both before and after the fall? For them, the only real difference was the tax collector stopped showing up.

Tax collector never stopped showing up - tax collector was just working for someone different after the Empire fell.

As for those on the periphery, the only ones which would have fit the idea of those with minimal protection from the state would have been those literally outside of the borders of the Empire - the Early Empire pursued highly proactive anti-raiding strategies on the border, with large forces ready to respond to any incursion, while the Late Empire stationed many small garrisons along all the borders.

Furthermore, there is ample evidence that the benefits of the Empire reached into the periphery, including the benefits of long-distance trade, high-quality consumer goods for the working class and peasantry, architectural expertise, and resolution of legal disputes.

Please don’t take this as analogous to the modern day in any way. A modern village/town will break down rapidly without access to modern logistics, which was not the case then.

No, places broke down then as well. After the Roman presence in Britain left, Britain itself not exactly being in the heartland of the Empire, the resulting collapse into infighting and outside raiders was so total that even things as simple and universally needed as pottery suffered a horrific decline in both amount produced and used in domestic consumption and in the quality of the work, to the point where post-Roman British pottery is instantly identifiable compared to Roman British pottery. Some 200 years pass before pottery quality begins to recover. Aqueducts stop working in short order if not dissembled and cleaned, lower quality roads (via glareata and via terrena) fade without regular maintenance, brigands destroy all semblance of trade and free travel, even farming techniques decline with large-scale local mortality without the ability of skilled migrants to transfer location and then transfer their skills.

Civilization is fragile, in all cases.

“God I love rampant brigandry and not having clean water. Oh, if only trade routes would shut down and feudalism would grow from the ashes of our society! It’s really too bad that ethnic supremacist polities didn’t rule over my people sooner, I love being excluded from legal protections due to an insufficiently pure bloodline.”

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire was fucking horrible for normal people, and it’s bizarre to me that people think otherwise.

I apologize if this comes off as tetchy. I’m in an ill mood today.

Mood. Lest the doom become too strong, though, let me just note that Rome also survived a lot of insane incompetents at the helm.

Mandatory

Because they’re fascists with a thin coat of red paint.

Why not ask this on lemmy.ml, with which your instance is federated?

Because most .ml communities are run by mods who would Ban This Sick Filth™

Not what the article is actually talking about, though. It seems to be talking about a change in American foreign policy rather than domestic notions of uniqueness.

No ‘ha’ here from me. It’s just sad. And infuriating.

The whole premise of this being a news story, and a story that receives reliable engagement and gets injected into every story about Lebanon and Palestine is that these votes of these people have meaningfully caused the problems we’re all going to experience.

That’s a lot of reading in to a common post-election story of buyer’s remorse that’s all over the place, about multiple demographics, right now.

And be honest, we’re looking at like 5% more genocide than Biden.

Lord.

Fascist cunt doing fascist cunt things. Fuck him.

If there’s anything good that could come out of this, Europe becoming a more equal partner in response to American instability would be nice.

but despite being marginalized as small and unimportant for months are now being covered as the post facto cause of failure,

Where are they blamed for the failure of the campaign here, again?

without anyone even recognizing that this was being predicted by Democratic party members well in advance as the obvious result of just trying to ignore the genocide.

The obvious result was that a not-insignificant part of the country is stupid enough to vote for ‘more genocide’ instead of less?

“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” said Nazarko, adding, “it does look like our community has been played.”

You literally played yourself. No help from Trump. I can’t think of a single goddamn thing he’s said that was even vaguely pro-Palestine. Jesus Christ.

It’s so sad, but pointing this out as an obvious consequence would have been bullying. of course, and immediately shot down as such.

Voting alone won’t do it. But please remember, Pinochet was voted out.

We need to support local organization and action, because without that, the vote is powerless under a fascist regime. But the vote, combined with strong popular institutions, remains powerful in all but the most withered of fascist states.

Biden did, but a big controversy is that the moderates all dropped out around the same time to rally around Biden, while Warren, the other major progressive in the race, stayed in just long enough to fuck Bernie’s chances. There’s definitely some… ill feeling still there.

Turn it up to 11

… it felt SUPER forced in the cartoons of the 80s and 90s. It’s not really any different. Probably less ham-fisted now, if anything.

Damn, I need to up my opening line game if this is what I’m competing with, smh, sapphics OP, pls nerf

Engage with communities here. The politics and tech communities are lively enough, but niche communities are lacking. Give people a reason to come here who aren’t politics/tech junkies.