The echo of empires: reflections on Rome and the waning of American dominance

“Empires are not brought down by external forces but by the decay within.” — Will Durant

If you are alive today — and you are, if your eyes are tracing these words — you can feel it too. It’s subtle yet undeniable, like the distant tremors of an approaching storm. The air is heavy with the weight of change. The world is shifting, shedding its bipolar skin, slipping into something more fragmented, more unpredictable. Multipolarity.

For those of us from the world’s “margins” like myself — someone from the small villages tucked in the folds of the Caribbean, or the forgotten corners of the global South — this shift feels visceral. Once, the American Dream was the compass by which many of us navigated life and ideals of success. Now, our YouTube feeds are flooded with voices lamenting life in America, and by extension other places like Canada, France and the UK. The West, once a lodestar of prosperity and freedom, increasingly appears worn thin by the relentless gnaw of capitalism’s excesses and the rot of moral and political decay.