Comment by prmph
6 hours ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted. What you are saying has a lot of truth to it. It is directly observable in the history of nations.
Germany has to be forced to accept that, although it was advanced, it could not have the European empire it thought it deserved. Japan had to learn a similar lesson. The speed and horror of the reset was in direct proportion to the potential for advancement and high society in these nations.
Ghana, where I come form, for example, has not has to experience any massive upheaval even from its pre-colonial and colonial days up till now. Our society is laid-back, and moves slowly. Even many other African countries have had to have their national reckoning in the form of civil wars and other huge upheavals in order to settle into a viable way of existing and advancing.
And, like you said, this is iterative. Given the nature of people in a nation and its fundamental geopolitical position, the same question will need to be answered after every N generations. Germany is central to Europe, and already a generation that is far removed from the world wars are starting to rethink why it shouldn't assert itself more strongly. Same in Japan.
THe way to analyze the iterations of the US is to understand that the primary threats are from within. It may not implode complete, but civil war and the civil rights era show that the potential is there for massive unrest and violence.
[I am getting downvoted all the time because the combination of German directness with autistic directness and lack of empathy combined with dark humor is not exactly compatible with societies where it is seen as offensive, rude or even aggressive not to sugar coat your messages. If one side treats this as a data exchange, and the other side processes the data but including emotions it will obviously have compatibility issues. But that's my "problem", so I accepted that typically if I post stuff, I first get upvoted massively, and after a day downvoted to hell. And that's OK. Again, my problem to be incompatible with a standard.]
And yes, it is interesting to see that on Polymarket people are betting involving a lot of emotions. No, you will not bet on getting killed by masked militia. Nobody is going to say "Hey, I'll bet $1000 that I will get cancer soon!".
But if you leave aside all the emotions, and just look at the data: No, there is no realistic scenario the US could magically recover from all checks and balances and rules and laws and regulations and decency having been destroyed. Competence, leadership and shared knowledge had been erased in all areas of society - Science, Development, Capitalism, Arts. How are you going to rebuild all of this, especially if the best case is that 60% of the people will agree to rebuild, while 40% insist they need to keep destroying stuff?
This is not a scenario looking at historical data any prior "high culture" (or whatever to call this) had been able to recover from.
Elsewhere in this thread is was mentioned that Germany still had all the Nazis in place everywhere because else the country would not have worked. But that is not the point. The reset was:
a) All is destroyed and MUST be rebuild because else we will freeze and starve to death.
b) Your Nazi neighbor is still there, but it has been made VERY clear who is the new sheriff in town: First the allies, but then pretty much the USA. Germany is still paying for having US solders in the country, providing valuable expensive land for free, and paying for most of the supply chain that is not staffed with US soldiers. And that is the accepted normal.
c) What was left on industry was physically taken as reoperations. Especially the soviets, but also the French did dismantle hole factories and machinery, moving that to their own countries (rightfully so.)
From what I know from school, reading and talking to grandparents: Germany before WW2 doesn't have much relation to pre-WW2 Germany. Suddenly it was normal that women can to "men's jobs" (due to those being more on the dead side). McDonalds. Hollywood. etc
It really makes sense to have a look at a couple of pictures of what was left of Germany after WW2. It's just someone slapping an existing brand name onto a new product. And in this case, personally I would have regarded the brand as damaged and would have picked a different name.