{"id":39516,"date":"2018-10-22T06:09:04","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39516"},"modified":"2018-10-22T06:09:04","modified_gmt":"2018-10-22T11:09:04","slug":"the-united-states-of-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39516","title":{"rendered":"The United States of Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United States of Empire<\/a><\/h3>\n
\n

We\u2019re getting close to the end now. Can you feel it? \u00a0I do. \u00a0It\u2019s in the news, on the streets, and in your face every day. You can\u2019t tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to.<\/p>\n

Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we now have censorship<\/a>, monopoly<\/a>, screaming<\/a>, insults<\/a>, demonization<\/a>, and, finally, the use of force<\/a> to silence the opposition. There is no turning back now. The political extremes are going to war, and you will be dragged into it even if you consider yourself apolitical.<\/p>\n

There are great pivot points in history, and we\u2019ve arrived at one. The United States, ruptured by a thousand grievance groups<\/a>, torn by shadowy agencies drunk on a gross excess of power<\/a>, robbed blind by oligarchs<\/a> and their treasonous henchmen and decimated by frivolous wars<\/a> of choice, has finally come to a point where the end begins in earnest. The center isn\u2019t holding\u2026 indeed, finding a center is no longer even conceivable. We are the schizophrenic nation, bound by no societal norms, constrained by no religion, with no shared sense of history, myth, language, art, philosophy, music, or culture, rushing toward an uncertain future fueled by nothing more than easy money, hubris, and sheer momentum.<\/p>\n

There comes a time when hard choices must be made\u2026when it is no longer possible to remain aloof or amused, because the barbarians have arrived at the gate. Indeed, they are here now, and they often look a whole lot like deracinated, conflicted, yet bellicose fellow Americans, certain of only one thing, and that is that they possess \u201crights\u201d, even though they could scarcely form an intelligible sentence explaining exactly what those rights secure or how they came into being. But that isn\u2019t necessary, from their point of view, you see.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The United States of Empire We\u2019re getting close to the end now. Can you feel it? \u00a0I do. \u00a0It\u2019s in the news, on the streets, and in your face every day. You can\u2019t tune it out anymore, even if you wanted to. Where once there was civil debate in the court of public opinion, we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[120,3484,259,5664,22490,22489,827],"class_list":["post-39516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-censorship","tag-dissent","tag-empire","tag-monopoly","tag-political-extreme","tag-roads-less-travelled","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39517,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39516\/revisions\/39517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}