At The Request Of @fierifreak, Here Is A Chart I Originally Posted On Twitter That Inexplicably Did Numbers

Rome in its Republican period was undoubtedly the predominant military force of its time. Something about its religious and military practices, combined with its republican form of government, made the Romans do war unlike anyone else. For this post, the most important point I want to make is that Rome conquered most of its territory as a republic. In its imperial period, Roman territory did grow some, but ultimately the Empire was unstable and fractured into multiple autocratic states.

In 1789 the Estates General met in France. Called by the king and then elected by the people of France, this body rejected their monarchical mandate to address the state deficit and instead wrote a new constitution for France, establishing a democratic order on the European continent. The kingdoms around France reacted to this affront to monarchical power by bringing troops to French borders. Fired by nationalism and democratic enfranchisement, the new French state mustered an army exponentially larger than any of its neighbors. The wars that dominated the next twenty(ish) years of European history would see the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte and a large expansion of French territory.

During World War II the United States mobilized to an enormous degree to fight European fascist states and the empire of Japan. Huge numbers of young men were conscripted to fight, entire industries were devoted to military production, and all over the nation families rationed food in order to support the war effort. This just twenty years after women were granted the right to vote. At this point the United States was the oldest democratically elected national government in the world, invoking its national fervor for the cause of mass violence. In the half century after and then some, the United States dominated the world economically and militarily.

All this to say that for a very long time democracy and military power have been bound together. The most democratic nations have been the ones able to muster the largest armies, engage the most industrial production, demand the most sacrifice from their populations. On a geopolitical scale, democracy has meant power.

But here's the twist, and what terrifies me about the current moment: with the rise of machines and machine learning, and the consolidation of server ownership into the hands of just a few oligarchs, it's unclear whether that power dynamic still holds. Drones and other remote, even autonomous, technology have made both factories and battlefields less human. The human crowds that filled Roman or Parisian plazas can be atomized and identified by automated surveillance networks. Mao says that political power flows from the barrel of a gun. What happens when the guns aren't in human hands?

There are 100-200 feral hogs loose in the state of New Hampshire. They are considered to be "Running at large", and are escapees from the Blue Mountain Forest association. They mainly reside in forests in the Connetecut river valley, where they wait, amassing their numbers, waiting for a chance to strike. The South and California have already fallen. We are next.

What are the ethics of advocating violence against machines?

Eyes on the future, the past is fuel

Dig deeper, burn hotter, run faster

Don't think about what was here yesterday

Don't think about what won't be here tomorrow

Honestly, at this point, I'd support Taylor Swift for president

The Texan Federation's first military act was to push the hogs out of their territory. Beginning in a line from the coast, the army drove every pig northward. They devastated the landscape, using grenades and mortars whenever they caught a herd on open ground. A few soldiers, unsuspecting and inattentive, were knocked down by a big male and trampled by hundreds of hooves. A few more were lost to equipment failure, or their own mistakes, or the mistakes of fellow soldiers. Eventually, at the cost of a few dozen people and a few thousand hogs, the herds were driven north of the Red River and west out of the Arkansas area, into Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Cherokee territories. The Texans placed landmines across long stretches to mark a northern border and block the hogs' return. For several decades the Texan military would maintain this defensive line, blocking both pigs and refugees from the north.

The US government, hollowed out, has all but collapsed. The east coast states down to Georgia have mostly held together and still recognize the authority of Washington DC. California, Oregon, and Washington have formed an independent coalition on the west coast. Texas' influence captures the whole coast of the Gulf of Mexico, now called the Gulf of Texas by several hundred million people. The Great Lakes states have merged with Canada. And the Great Plains in the middle of the continent are overrun by feral hogs, and war.

The earliest depiction of Christ was a shitpost

In 1971 Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Jimmy Carter assumed office during some of the economic and geopolitical turmoil that followed. Reagan took office, radically changed tax policy to benefit wealthy people, and ushered in a boom era in the economy. He handed off power to his vice president Bush, then Clinton took over during the Internet boom of the 1990s. Bush 2 started the Iraq War, ushering in an era of heavy US military involvement in the Middle East. All US administrations from Truman onward involved themselves in affairs of that part of the world. Obama inherited and continued that era, his main domestic accomplishment being a health insurance for all system that expanded and subsidized the private health insurance market.

Trump came to power and held it until the Covid-19 pandemic. His administration lowered taxes on rich people, disrupted US international agreements, and appointed a large number of judges. The murder by police of George Floyd sparked a wave of protests that occupied major cities for months leading up to the 2020 election. Joe Biden won with a tenuous legislative majority and governed the country during four years of adaptation and recovery from the pandemic and the nation's response to it. The democrats lost control of the House in the 2022 elections.

Donald Trump won the election of 2024 with a majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He invited Elon Musk into the White House and cabinet meetings, and gave Musk unprecedented access to data systems across the federal government through the newly created DOGE. DOGE began directing the firings of masses of government workers, actions that were challenged in the court system.