Witnessing The End Of An Empire
I don’t think empires end the way we imagine them to. Not with collapse or spectacle, but with a kind of quiet confusion. It is not one event but a series of them, moments that feel important on their own but indistinct when placed side by side. An election that does not feel like an outlier but a signal. Wars that do not conclude only extend. Invasions were justified, then complicated, then forgotten. Laws passed, rolled back, rewritten, a constant state of internal negotiation. Nothing definitive. Just enough to make you pause. America was not just a country; it was a reference point. For culture, for success, for power. It was the center of things, or at least, it felt that way. The music, the films, and the language of the internet all carried a certain authority. To participate globally was, in some way, to pass through it. Economically, it offered a story. That there was a place where effort translated, where ambition had structure, and where “making it” was not abstract. P...
