Thoughts about if Harris became the next US president

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I think it could honestly be like a parallel to when Cleopatra ruled over Egypt as the last pharoah. I don't really have anything against Harris, but I feel that if she did become our first female president she would not only get roasted for being of mixed racial ancestry and a woman, but like Cleopatra she would inherit power over a country that could be doomed to fall before another empire that grows more powerful by the day and basically nothing she can do will prevent the inevitable from happening, then once it happens history will smear her name through the mud for centuries just like it had done Cleopatra by portraying her as being essentially a Jezebel (that bibilical story is as racist and misogynistic as it gets in terms of warning about the evils of allowing "foreign women" to gain power ).

Basically I would equate the rise of China's influence to the rise of the Roman empire. Just like in the case with the Egypt I'm sure Harris would do all she can to keep her country stable and not allow it to get invaded and swallowed up eventually, but I just have a feeling that's how it could most likely play out...

Maybe. But based on what we've seen in the last decade, faced with a president both black and female, America might be more likely to tear itself apart from within than suffer any external threat. An outsiders view.

Not a good comparison.

Be aware that Cleopatra was herself a foreign ruler of Egypt, and not actually an "Egyptian Pharoah", nor even a real Egyptian.

She was a Greek Egyptian. Egypt, along with the whole rest of the Middle East had been ruled by the Persian Empire for centuries (the actual native Pharoahs were long gone by her time). Then a little before 300 BC Alexander the Great led the Greeks eastward, and destroyed the Persian empire, and replaced it with his own Greek Empire. But unlike the Persians before him, or the Romans after him, he failed to create one stable centralized empire run from his homeland. His generals just carved the civilized world up and ruled it locally. Ptolomey ruled Egypt. And Cleopatra was Ptolomey's descendent, and was part of the culturally hybridized Greco-Egyptian elite that ruled Egypt at the time of the rise of the Roman Republic in the western Mediterranean. She was not really a direct successor to the original Egyptian pharaohs (fun fact: the Pyramids of Giza were more ancient in Cleopatra's time than Cleopatra herself is now).

Militarily the US is far more powerful than China. China cannot project power across the Pacific to threaten the US homeland. And experts say that China has so many domestic problems, and problems with its military, that it can barely follow through on its saber rattling threats to its smaller close by Asian Pacific neighbors. Its not a sure thing that Beijing could even tackle little Taiwan. So it cant turn the US into a "Roman Province" of China the way Augustus did with Egypt. Not yet anyway.

So the situations are not comparable.

As DHB said above the US is more threatened by its own polarization right now than by China.

Hmm perhaps you are right about all that...

Still I see a pattern repeating here. Almost every woman who inherits power at the wrong time throughout history ends up being written off as a 'Jezebel' of sorts.

I'm sure she'll be fine.

I'm not. Even Democrats can't really stand her.

Did Cleopatra sleep her way to the top?

What dah fuq does THAT have to do with anything???

Strictly sarcastically, if she would be just as absent it won't be such a bad thing.

Maybe she would wind up being our first and only female US president just like China's first and only female emperor Wu Zetian?

Harris would have a very awkward time as president. She's not very popular, even among the Democrats. Those who are farther left typically distrust her for having been a prosecutor (I don't personally share this opinion, but it is one that I've seen before).

While China is a very real threat, I do not think that they can actually replace the US in its current role. A lot of this is due to geography. China's only coast is highly contested (the US, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and others all have stakes in the western and southern Pacific Ocean). Unless they can secure loyalty and cooperation from all of these countries, which would be quite difficult to do since many of them despise or distrust China, it'll always be difficult for China to project power.

The US has two mostly uncontested coastlines. This makes it easy for the US Navy to go pretty much anywhere in the world. Even if China did somehow secure its coastline, it'd have great difficulty in reaching the Atlantic Ocean, meaning that it would face great difficulty in being more than a regional power.

This is not getting into the various problems that China faces. China, much like Japan, lacks sufficient birth rate to replace its aging population. Young people in China face many of the same difficulties as their counterparts in the US, like homes being far too expensive for most people to afford (and this also clashes with the cultural expectation of owning a home in order to get married). There's also the fact that many families only have one child. This means that military losses could have pretty serious domestic repercussions.

This is not to say that China is weak, but to point out that they do suffer from some pretty serious limitations and internal problems. If China attempts to unseat US influence in the Pacific, they may very well succeed. It's not certain that the US will defend Taiwan, as the US is not actually obligated to. A war between China and the US risks escalating to the point of going nuclear, which will devastate both countries, as well as many others. However, China actually supplanting the US is quite unlikely for the simple fact of geography. Even if the US suffers some sort of serious internal issue (Yellowstone supervolcano, major economic downturn, etc), China cannot actually take the US's place.

Then the US will more likely collapse eternally.

I don't really understand why you're so worried about Harris, honestly. The US has some pretty serious problems regardless of who becomes president in '24, and it seems kind of weird to focus on her. She is in an awkward position, but I'm not sure there's any politician who has broad acceptance from the entire population.

Honestly it's because it would really disappoint me to see a woman of color who has the potential honor of becoming my country's first female president get dragged through the mud and be paraded around as an example of why anyone other than an old white man is not fit to run this country.

It's not that I particularly like Harris or don't like her. I just worry about what it means for women in this country who dream of becoming the first female president.

Do you mean "internally"?

Guh, darn autocorrect.