Yeah, no. Kids want to be cool and respected, making it clear billionaires are hated will do so much more to wake them up

And once a billionaire gives it all away to become just a normal person (with a few million in the bank as a safety net), we make them a hero

Yeah ok bro. These are totally the same things.

How about we say you win, since my goal was to be understood and we’re never getting there

Easy.

The Anglo-Saxons originated from a mix of tribes from northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, primarily the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They began settling in Britain around 410 AD, following the decline of Roman rule, and their culture significantly influenced the development of early medieval England.

Notice how they displaced the original population. The British are the resulting mix. They did not become Dutch or proto-German, but they did use Roman roads and still have Roman structures

It’s like you understand every era by the definition at the end of it. And soft power is soft because it can be denied - it’s just influence.

Let’s go back to the source then… Who had institutionalized assimilation before the Romans? I don’t just mean there was assimilation…I mean a group comes in and converts others into becoming them in a systematic fashion

The same Catholic Church whose dictates were repeatedly ignored by both the common people and the nobility?

Hard and soft power. You really don’t get it. Well, better than you just being a troll

I’ll try to be as literal as possible for you. Rome split. The pieces continued to act like Rome behaviorally. The remaining institution of Rome, the Roman Catholic church, had incredible power over many of these pieces, even growing power for a time, then later soft influence, over most of Europe known as the holy Roman empire. The soft power of the church faded with the rise of capitalism.

We still act like Rome. The behaviors never ended. That’s the through line

Jesus… They’re the same damn group! Yes the power of the Pope waxed and waned. The church and the nobility were intertwined! The Pope doesn’t matter, the institution does!

And every coronation was done by at least an arch bishop. Who were a compromise between the church and the king.

And do you have any idea how incestuous the royal families of all of Europe were? Not just individually, but between each other

Your don’t seem to understand the difference between hard and soft power. And my whole point is people in power flowed from Rome, to the church, to the aristocracy of Europe, to capitol

Ok? When did the English become Danish? And the French?

Nobility was totally interrelated in Europe. This is just a thing that happened, it’s not the machinery of empire

Bruh, where do you think fiction cames from? It’s like 99% shit that has already happened, exaggerated and twisted in new ways

We’re literally talking about “the West” right now… The whole damn conversation is euro-central

The HRE kept control over the aristocracy through marriage, ceremony, and through relatives in the clergy. They let the kings have their kingdom while controlling the secret little club of European royalty. They held the legitimacy of all of them in Rome.

Okay, this is just objectively how the holy Roman empire worked. That’s not even a slightly controversial statement

How do you think the Pope was able to dictate terms to royalty? They controlled coronations, marriages, and pacified the people. The nobility tolerated this because there was a give and take, their relatives were given high rank… It’s the origin of the term nepotism

This is also very basic European history.

A lot of this I can excuse as you being a too literal and uncharitable, but there’s no two interpretations on this one

I don’t know if you have a hard on for Rome or what, but I don’t think you’re being serious

… do… do you think pre-Roman peoples didn’t practice assimilation?

Yes! That’s my whole point. Not literally - you seem caught up on the word conquest too - but the kind of institutional pattern of expansion and assimilation is what was different about Rome

There was war, there were other empires. People intermingled and intermixed, sometimes under rule from another group. There was assimilation, but in an organic process

Rome industrialized the process. They turned it into a mechanical process that has never stopped. It didn’t stop when the empire split, it didn’t stop when power shifted to the aristocracy of Europe, it didn’t stop as America rose as the latest empire after WW2

I do think the HRE was more Rome than Germanic - what language did they speak? Not Greek, Aramaic, or any Germanic language - it was Latin. And in the East you had the Byzantine empire doing the same damn thing, spreading soft influence to Eastern Europe

Christianity became a tool of Rome under Constantine. Jesus said we don’t need temples or coin. Jesus was born in the summer. Jews keep the Sabbath on Saturday. Jesus was represented by a fish, and died on the cross so that he could not be used as a tool of control against his people

Sol Invictus was born on December 25, Constantine declared the day of the sun as the day of rest. Sol Invictus is associated with gold. The cross is a symbol of Roman order

Constantine rebranded the Roman religion under Jesus’s name, and carefully picked it’s practices to control the people

The HRE kept control over the aristocracy through marriage, ceremony, and through relatives in the clergy. They let the kings have their kingdom while controlling the secret little club of European royalty. They held the legitimacy of all of them in Rome.

They also controlled the people directly. They were a parallel power structure. They had a ton of direct power until the 19th century, when things started shifting to mercantilism then capitol

And even now, a few family lines always seem to be the ones in power. The meeting places and the titles change, but each rising and falling empire goes back to Rome

You’re describing what I said with more words

The difference between Vikings (or wherever else, they’re just an example) and Romans is the assimilation. That’s why there were so many more Romans, because they constantly expanded what it meant to be Roman. There were concentric circles of Roman-ness starting with just the city inhabitants down to the newly conquered territory at the fringes

Also, Rome was around for a long time. Their practices changed drastically during that time. It ranged from much worse than what I described to completely peaceful assimilation.

But my real problem wasn’t the violence, it’s the wealth extraction… That model lived on through the holy Roman empire, then “the West”. There’s so many horrible knock on effects to this, ones we’re living through now

No one really did conquering - they would take land, take slaves, occasionally take buildings

But Vikings were Vikings, even if they occupy a settlement, the people of the settlement do not become Vikings

When Rome conquered a place, they’d levy most of the men into the legion, and when they finished their service they became Roman

I think they were evil. They kind of invented the idea of conquering other civilizations, and were not cool about it at all

The world would probably be a much better place without them

Yeah, and a county could say “you can’t do business in our county anymore” and block them

A country can ban dildos, but they don’t get to tell a foreign factory they can’t make dildos. If an importer orders dildos anyways, that’s between the importer and customs. Which in this case the importer is the ISP

Because they don’t work as phones, at least not for practical use

No one has cracked it yet, some projects seem to be getting close, but the radio in a phone is a very complicated and poorly documented black box

And if you agree to their new terms of service (there’s only an accept button when you open the site), you agree it’s not discord’s fault!

Such innovation.