Are there any consistent patterns we can take away from history?
Everybody says "learn from history", but what is there we can really say?
If history has taught us anything, it's that you can kill anyone.
>humans abuse power
>things are guaranteed to change over time
>pretty much everything the Anglo countries and Northwestern Europe in general do is the objectively correct way to do things
>large masses of intelligent people are capable of getting things spectacularly wrong
>as a state grows older, the amount of rent-seeking among the upper echelons of power increases, leading to a cyclical rise and fall
I can probably think of more.
The Greeks were the best
>>561801
>large masses of intelligent people
Examples? Sounds like an oxymoron.
Anglos are scum.
>>561781
Things are not going to happen as you plan.
>>561818
Armies of diplomats, generals, spies and statesmen managed to get Europe to sleepwalk into war, failed utterly to stop Germany from going from the 100,000 man army under the treaty of Versailles to conquering France.
That one always sticks out to me. If, in 1930, you said that there would be German soldiers parading under the Arc de Triomphe, they would have put you in an institution.
Similar foreign policy establishments, informed by the best intellectuals of the time, led America into Vietnam, the Soviets into Afghanistan, utterly failed to stop Al Qaeda despite ten years of warnings, and underestimated the difficulty of occupying Iraq to the point where the US invasion resembled a coup in some banana republic.
None of the people responsible for these things were stupid, they just fell into groupthink, confirmation bias, and an unwillingness to contemplate the worst case scenario.
>>561835
>there would be German soldiers parading under the Arc de Triomphe in ten years
There is no God, or he hates us.
>>561781
Infrastructure helps nations and empires mantian supremacy, as soon as that shit starts falling apart nations fall.
>>561818
The Soviet state most Bolsheviks had PhDs
>>561847
Also, pretty much every major financial crisis is "Economists failed to notice X, which seems massive and obvious in retrospect."
>>561781
>Are there any consistent patterns we can take away from history?
Learn to fight.
>But what is there we can really say?
You can find a historical precedent for any political subject today. Absolutely any. Looking for broad patterns wont tell you much; even if you find them you still wont know why they happen. Which is why you have to deal with things on a case by case basis. Its the little things that matter in history. Someone might say that a broad pattern in America is that Americans are Xenophobic, but that doesnt help us much because it doesnt tell us the problems with xenophobia or how to stop them (or likewise the good things about xenophobia).
all societies decay if they don't expand
>>561781
'Learn from history'
The message is that you learn from their fuckups and never do it again, but most of the time politicians use it to fool people
>>561801
>>pretty much everything the Anglo countries and Northwestern Europe in general do is the objectively correct way to do things
>Anglo "irrevocably fuck up African and middle Eastern politics for my own benefit" Saxons
>doing anything the correct way
