Had reason to post this in another thread, so I'm going to post the OCR text while I'm at it:
Imagine if aliens came to earth who're hundreds of years more advanced than us. In fact. they're so advanced that just 5 of their ships can wreck the entirety of the United States' air and naval forces while suffering minimal casualties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of Cochin_(1504) And of course. while they can do whatever shit they like to earth we have absolutely no hope of reaching their home planets. They're more or less completely untouchable. Fortunately they're not here to exterminate us: they just want to trade for our natural resources. But there are a lot of alien factions and they spend a lot of time squabbling amongst themselves, and this tends to drag in Earth's different nations. Finally one of them just outright annexes us - and the USA and Europe help them, because China has aligned itself with one of the other factions and Russia with another. Then there's a big. planet-wide rebellion. but that gets crushed (with the help of the USA and Europe, who still hate the Chinese and the Russians more than the aliens. who in fact have been pretty helpful to them). And that's it - the world is ruled by these aliens. Most parts are ruled directly. but a lot of the countries that sided with them early on remain more or less autonomous (albeit with alien 'advisers' in their governments to make sure things keep running smoothly).
Imagine you're a human born 100 years after the conquest, and you're walking through the streets when you see one of the aliens. He's about a head taller than you with a strong physique that makes you look a bit mediocre (their medical science. far more advanced than ours, has given them greater height, muscle mass and longevity). His clothes shimmer in the sunlight, made from space-age fabrics: all alien clothes are always immaculately tailored and cleaned. He is working on some sort of hand held computer or something - you have no idea, because the technology contained in it is well beyond anything human. In fact. it probably is to a computer what a computer is to a pencil and paper, but you have no other frame of reference. He's walking straight towards you and you realise you're standing in front of the teleporter terminal. Thanks to this technology you can be anywhere on the planet in a few minutes: there are separate terminals for aliens and humans of course - after all. no alien would want to come out of a teleporter immediately after a human (they don't like the smell). It doesn't occur to you to complain about this because
1. that's how things are and
2. it's a fucking teleporter!
Ifs just this side of magic as far as you're concerned and complaining about the decor in your terminal when it can shave approximately 100% of the time off your journey would be fucking ridiculous. The alien realises you're in his way and does the alien equivalent of raising an eyebrow. They're usually polite and courteous. but they expect a certain amount of deference. You immediately step aside. because not stepping aside would be the social equivalent of dropping your trousers and taking a big, steaming shit in the middle of the street. You notice some weird gadget or something has fallen out of one of the alien's pockets and you pick it up and call after him. You return his gadget and he drops a handful of brightly coloured tetrahedrons in your hand.
This one must be new on Earthside, or he wouldn't have just tipped you the equivalent of 6 months wages. This is probably one of few times in your life you've actually interacted with one of the aliens. The other times including: when you had to go down to the government offices and the alien supervisor was able to solve in ten minutes an issue that would have taken you a whole afternoon of form filling (in triplicate) with a human bureaucrat. Or the time your apartment block was having a dispute with the owner over rent and an alien was called in to mediate - he listened to the parties and their lawyers bicker back and forth for 15 minutes before he visibly lost patience and ordered the owner to cancel all outstanding debts. He never bothered actually listening to the cases because they assumed both lawyers would just say whatever would win their clients the case (they had other ideas about how jurisprudence worked), so unless there was a human involved he particularly trusted he just came down on the side of the poorer plaintiff. The landlords of course never dared to go against an alien, and just tried to get cases resolved by human judges as much as possible. We pre-alien people ask 'why aren't you rebelling against your snooty alien overlords'. But how would it ever occur to you to rebel? And if the thought ever did enter your head, why bother? The aliens are far from perfect but by and large they are markedly less shitty than your fellow humans. and they're introducing more and more of their technology all the time. You have nothing to gain and besides: when you get right down to it they're just better than you. The thought of you beating people who have journeyed across the whole galaxy is about as absurd as the idea of you sprouting wings and flying across the galaxy yourself.
So, hypothetically speaking. how does a system like this fall apart? Well, say you're this person born 100 years after the conquest. You actually end up quite wealthy, and you have a family so you do what every parent aspires to do: you send your son off-planet to get an education. It wouldn't really have been an option when you were young, but the ever generous aliens have started opening up positions in their own universities for a select few humans. Your son goes to their world - you get pictures back every so often that show him wearing their clothes, sifting amongst his alien classmates. He is inducted with much of the unbelievably vast array of knowledge the aliens have to offer. But. according to his messages home. although many of the aliens are very friendly and courteous towards him most still treat him - well, like a human. It grates on him, because he is as educated as any of them now.
Your son doesn't in fact come back to Earth when he graduates. but sets up his business on another planet in the alien hegemony. This one is something of a backwater - it attracts the more brutish type of alien and the most brutish type of human labourer. And again, your son is incensed that the aliens treat him more or less like the other humans. who are merely labourers! Except these aliens aren't like the ones at the university or even the ones you're used to on earth, so instead of raising a polite eyebrow when your son steps in their path they raise an electro-stick. This troubles you. since you're not used to aliens behaving this way, but your son has a habit of getting himself into trouble so you don't judge all aliens too harshly for this.
But after a couple of years of this treatment your son's attitudes harden and he starts speaking against all aliens. He stops wearing alien clothes and starts wearing human clothes exclusively: in fact he wears overtly human clothes - styles that were popular before the aliens came to earth. Then he comes back to earth and starts an anti-alien movement. calling for the aliens to get off Earth altogether. Oh, there were always a few calling for more political power for humans, but you'd never really paid them any attention. Nobody did - the people in the self-government movement were mostly the uber-wealthy. and a few ivory tower academics, both of whom were probably closer to the aliens than they were to you. Their opinions didn't really speak to anyone except a narrow elite. But now your son comes along. and starts agitating for independence. He dresses and acts as if he was the most human person to ever walk the earth, when really you gave him as privileged and alien-enriched upbringing as possible. But the people listen to him, and while they still don't trust any of the other rich snobs in the home-rule movement, they'll follow your son anywhere. Not that this means anything: the aliens are still unbeatable after all. Well, more or less - your confidence in this fact has taken a couple of knocks over the years. There have been several large interstellar wars over the previous decade or two, and although the fighting didn't actually reach Earth it was clear that the alien faction in control of Earth came close to annihilation. But they were victorious in the end, so no difference, right? Except unknown to you the political situation on the far away alien homeworld has shifted against keeping client planets. They have no appetite for further wars and if there's the possibility of an insurrection starting on Earth then they'd just as soon be rid of it before it drags in more of their military resources.
Just when you're starting to worry that within your lifetime, maybe in 20 years, you might see the end of alien rule, they announce that they'll be leaving next year. And just like that, its over. They're gone. Of course. there's a war almost immediately. Your son had had high ideals of a free, united earth, but everybody else still remembered the old national borders perfectly well, and there was no way in hell the any of the minority groups were going to let themselves be ruled by the Chinese. In the end, Earth didn't quite fracture into the old nation states - instead it was East (China. Russia, etc) vs. West (USA, Canada, Europe. etc). There was a lot of blood spilled when the borders went up, and now the two power blocks sit staring at their rival over a heavily fortified frontier, a whole lot of nukes pointed at each other.
Your son was assassinated by one of the neo-nationalists. And although he had managed to convince humanity to believe otherwise, the post-independent governments were in fact dominated by rich snobs who didn't give a shit about ordinary humans after all. You still have the pictures of your son wearing alien clothes.