It has been the mission of empires and republics alike to unite the lands they have lost and flourish from a position of internal invulnerability. After all, once you are properly united you can never be broken down again. You’ll have a happy country forever.
Happy Life with the Habsburgs
One of the longest empires in human history was that of the Habsburgs which lasted 392 years. A cool 146 years longer the current United States setup. They ruled a large chunk of central and eastern Europe stretching as westward as Switzerland and Italy all the way over to Ukraine and Romania.
Nowadays the Habsburgs are more remembered for their insane amount of inbreeding. Before you make a jovial joke about you own local area, I want to make it clear to you, that you do not understand the sheer scale of the Habsburg inbreeding troubles.
To many it would have looked like the Sun would never set on the Habsburg dynasty, but it did on November 11th 1918 after their population lost complete faith in the leadership. Massive secessions crippled the Habsburg Empire. Governing with monumental stupidity tends to lead to that.
No serious attempt has been made to re-unite the Habsburg Empire despite their borders lasting for so long. Many people feel that the USA will remain united forever but their country appears to be full of disharmony. It couldn’t fail though because no country as powerful as the United States has ever failed. Right?
Mongolia Means the End
People forget Mongolia. It’s easy to do when they aren’t raiding everyone, everywhere. The Mongolian Empire defeated China, Japan, Korea, Syria, Turkey, Palestine, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, India and Vietnam. They probably killed more people than died in the entirety of World War 1 and they did it themselves. They killed so many people that they started to change the Earth’s climate.
Oh, they also defeated Russia in the winter. Then came back to beat Russia AGAIN. They could have sacked all of Europe but their mate, Ögödei, died and they wanted to pay their respects. Modern Europe exists in its current form because Ögödei couldn’t handle his liquor.
The Mongols rarely get a look in anymore but one day Mongolia will return to invade half the world again. Why? Because it will take 7.5 billion years for the Sun to swallow the Earth. That’s a lot of time for Mongolia to get its act together. Even after that, there is always the chance that an intergalactic golden horde will reign supreme. Time is on their side after all.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
Mark Twain
Dictators, Dickheads and Everything In-between
One thing dickheads and dictators love to misquote is that:
The ends justify the means.
It’s a feeble excuse to absolve themselves of the short-term consequences of their actions. The excuse is born of the deliciously, tempting idea that a lot of long-term good will come because of that dict-dicks omnipotent vision. The reality is that they are playing Draughts, with Chess pieces made of poo, whilst sitting in quick sand, in the eye of a hurricane.
When asking a dict-dick, “Why not just do good now?” you won’t get a solid answer. That’s because doing good on the macro level is difficult and slow. Being an asshole on the macro level is really quite easy.
The Leaders
Megalomania and ego-centrism are problems that many people deal with. It seems that the systems which decide who governs tend to place these troubled individuals in positions of power. It’s hard to filter slackers into planetary stewardship even though they’d probably do a better job or, at the very least, do less damage.
Whilst ego-centrism grants drive it also tends to fuel short-sightedness. Global leaders have a tendency to think that the changes they make will last forever particularly when it comes to borders. In the grand scheme of things, country borders are as fleeting as Ögödei’s liver or Charles Habsburg’s single blackened testicle.
Killing people for markers on a map is a stupid waste because everything that is united will be divided and everything that is divided will be united and ad absurdum.
