Is just such a shock from being in China. Just got harassed and essentially threatened for being a socialist. They searched my bags and commented on my China flag and my little red books and my copy of Blackshirts and Reds. Fucking police state. The security in China is strict, but they don’t give a fuck about your thoughts, whereas this guy was very aggressive about “consequences” for being a socialist.
Empires take a lifetime to fall apart. At some point it will be just another country. Who knows how many wars we will put the rest of the world through on the way down, though.
They can take that long, even longer, but there is no law of empires that states collapse can’t happen extremely quickly either. The material circumstances on the global scale that we find ourselves in are different in significant ways from the way things were historically during the collapse of the other large hegemonic empires. One of these important differences is the speed of information. And the increasing rate that climate change is drastically altering the world helps ensure that geopolitical change will also unavoidably be seeing rapid changes as a result. Don’t forget what Lenin said about decades and weeks.