The Empire That Could Still Become Wise

I. I Criticize Because I LoveI know I criticize America a lot.I criticize the empire. I criticize the oligarchs. I criticize the lobbies, the media, the little factories of outrage, the algorithms that have learned to chew through the human nervous system with the efficiency of a military contractor. I criticize weak liberalism when it becomes moral theater without courage. I criticize shallow wokeism when it mistakes vocabulary for virtue. I criticize the nationalist right when it turns grief into cruelty and calls it strength. I criticize the Islamic Republic of Iran. I criticize ethnic enclaves in Britain. I criticize cowardice, spectacle, propaganda, spiritual laziness, and the strange modern habit of confusing being constantly informed with being wise.So yes, I criticize.But criticism is not the opposite of love. Indifference is.I did not come to America because I believed every myth America told about itself. I did not come here because I thought history had selected one country, placed a halo on its forehead, and asked the rest of humanity to clap forever. I came here because I loved something real beneath the myth.There is a pragmatism here I love. A sense that things can be built, fixed, tested, rebuilt, argued over, improved, broken again, and then rebuilt with a slightly better user interface and a worse subscription model. There is a creative permission here. A widening of the horizon. A kind of spaciousness, not only in the land but in the imagination. America allows strange people to become themselves in public. That is no small thing.I love the knowledge here. I love the universities, the engineers, the scientists, the comedians, the historians, the weird obsessives, the local librarians, the sober people in church basements telling the truth about themselves with more dignity than most presidents. I love the fact that in this country, a person can arrive from somewhere else, wounded and suspicious and full of impossible sentences, and still feel that perhaps there is room to speak.So when I criticize America, I am not standing outside it laughing at its pain.I am inside it because I have not given up on the Americans who can still hear the truth.II. Everybody Is Sad in Their Own PodcastOne of the clearest signs of decline is that everybody looks sad now.Not just the people one expects to be sad. Everybody.Tucker Carlson looks sad. He has the face of a man who has seen something break and cannot decide whether to pray, laugh, or blame a university. Piers Morgan looks sad, which is difficult because Piers Morgan also often looks like he is about to interrupt a weather event. The people at The Bulwark are sad. The people at Pod Save America are sad. Heather Cox Richardson is sad in the way historians are sad, which is to say she has the sadness of someone who has read the minutes of the last five collapses and recognizes the handwriting. Ezra Klein is sad in the way intelligent liberals become sad when the spreadsheet remains accurate but the republic refuses to update. Tim Dillon is sad too, though his sadness comes dressed as a gold-plated joke delivered from the passenger seat of a collapsing civilization.Everyone has a different explanation. The right grieves lost order. Liberals grieve lost norms. Centrists grieve lost consensus. Comedians grieve lost absurdity because reality has become too competitive. Historians grieve memory. Podcasters grieve weekly, with sponsors.But beneath the ideological costumes, the mood is unmistakable.Everyone is sad because decline is sad.Decline is not merely a political condition. It is an atmosphere. It enters the face. It changes the tone of public speech. It makes people nostalgic, suspicious, grandiose, frantic, sentimental, cruel, and occasionally very interested in supplements. A society in decline does not only lose power. It loses confidence in its own story.And when a country loses confidence in its story, people begin reaching for replacement myths. Some reach for revolution. Some reach for nationalism. Some reach for conspiracy. Some reach for managerial language. Some reach for the past. Some reach for apocalypse, because apocalypse at least gives decline a plot.But sadness is not wisdom. Sadness is not analysis. Sadness does not automatically make a person brave or truthful. Sadness can soften the heart, but it can also harden it.The question is not whether Americans are sad. They are.The question is what their sadness will become.Will it become cruelty, nostalgia, panic, and scapegoating?Or will it become humility?III. Rome Still Has RestaurantsThis is why I write about decline, but I have very little patience for apocalypse.Apocalypse is too easy. It flatters the frightened mind. It says: we are not merely living through historical change; we are living through the final episode. The sky is falling. The credits are coming. Someone cue the orchestra and find a horseman.But decline is not apocalypse.Decline is not the asteroid. Decline is not the end of the world. Decline is what happens when a power that once organized the world becomes less able to organize it. A hegemon becomes less hegemonic. Other powers rise. Old arrangements weaken. Military dominance becomes more expensive. Financial privilege becomes more contested. Institutions built for one age stagger into another. The country does not vanish. It changes position.Rome declined. Rome still exists. In fact, Rome is beautiful. People go there on vacation, eat pasta, take photographs in linen, and say things like “the light is different here,” which is annoying but also often true.Britain declined. London still exists. It is still alive, still beautiful, still impossible, still full of museums, bankers, immigrants, ghosts, bad rental listings, and excellent Indian food.Persia declined. There is still an Iran. The empires fell, dynasties vanished, invaders came and went, kings were buried, clerics rose, poets remained. The Persian language did not ask anyone’s permission to survive.Greece declined. Alexander the Great conquered toward India, died in Persia, and left behind a story so large that men with podcasts are still trying to borrow his jawline. But Greece still exists. People live there. They argue, eat, work, fall in love, pay bills, bury parents, raise children, watch the sea.Empire ends. People remain.This is the part Americans need to understand. The choice is not between ruling the world and disappearing from history. That is imperial narcissism disguised as patriotism. America may become less dominant and still remain powerful, creative, wealthy, beautiful, and free. It may become less central to the world and more capable of living in it.A declining empire does not have to become a failed country.It can become a humbler one.It can learn that not every geopolitical setback is humiliation. Not every rival is proof of national death. Not every shift in power requires a sermon, a sanctions package, a cable news panel, and a retired general explaining the soul of civilization between pharmaceutical ads.America does not need to remain the center of history in order to matter.No country does.IV. A Country Is Not a Failed EmpireThere is a strange cruelty in telling a country that it must dominate or die.It is the kind of story empires tell themselves when they are too afraid to become adult. Either we are chosen, or we are nothing. Either we lead the world, or the world has ended. Either our flag is everywhere, or our children have no future.But perhaps the cure for decline is not restoration.Perhaps the cure for decline is maturity.America could become stronger after hegemony, but not stronger in the childish sense. Not more muscular. Not louder. Not more armed. Not more determined to confuse aircraft carriers with wisdom. Stronger as in wiser. Stronger as in less frantic. Stronger as in able to distinguish national dignity from global obedience.There is still so much here.There is creativity here that I have not seen anywhere else in quite the same form. There is a willingness to experiment, to invent, to fail publicly, to start again. There is an openness to the future that survives even beneath all the fear. There are people here who actually know things. Deep things. Practical things. Technical things. Historical things. Spiritual things. There are scientists, engineers, nurses, writers, teachers, organizers, comedians, parents, immigrants, recovering addicts, and ordinary citizens who wake up every day and keep the country more alive than its ruling class deserves.America’s greatness, at its best, was never only domination. It was curiosity. It was scale. It was the university, the lab, the garage, the library, the road trip, the courtroom, the jazz club, the moonshot, the immigrant neighborhood, the twelve-step meeting, the stubborn local volunteer, the engineer who actually reads the documentation.That America still exists.It is buried under spectacle, money, fear, and stupidity, but it exists.A country is not a failed empire. A country is a place where people live. That sounds obvious, but empires forget it. They begin to imagine that their people exist to maintain the myth of power, rather than power existing to protect the life of the people.America may not be able to command the twenty-first century the way it commanded the twentieth.But perhaps it can do something better.It can become a republic that no longer needs the whole earth to confirm its worth.V. The Missile, the Drone, and the UniversityTake, for example, the wars and war-scares around Iran.There is one word that explains much of what is changing: technology.Not morality. Not destiny. Not the secret superiority of one civilization over another. Technology.A missile is not just a missile anymore. A drone is not just a flying object with a camera and an attitude problem. These are guided systems. They are sensors, software, signals, computation, targeting, feedback loops, automation, and increasingly artificial intelligence. They are the children of mathematics and physics, raised by engineers and delivered into the hands of states and non-state actors with very different budgets.Technology is leveling the field.Not equally. Not magically. America remains one of the strongest countries on earth. Its military, economy, universities, geography, technology sector, and alliances still give it extraordinary power. But extraordinary power is not the same as uncontested power. And the technological basis of power is changing.AI levels writing. We see that already. A person with a laptop can now produce, translate, summarize, imitate, and distribute language at a scale that once required institutions.AI levels software engineering. Not perfectly, not without human judgment, but enough to change who can build.AI levels propaganda. A small actor can now produce images, narratives, bots, videos, and emotional contagion with tools that once required media infrastructure.AI levels war. Drones, missiles, cyber systems, autonomous targeting, cheap sensors, satellite data, and machine learning all reduce the cost of disruption. They allow smaller powers to impose costs that once required far greater industrial capacity.The lesson is not that America has failed.The lesson is that science matters.Technology matters. Universities matter. Research matters. Mathematics matters. Physics matters. Computer science matters. Biology matters. Climate science matters. Space matters. Engineering matters. The quiet disciplines matter. The boring work matters. The people who spent decades thinking about computation before computation became a product category mattered more than half the men currently explaining civilization into microphones.Where did artificial intelligence come from? It did not fall from the sky into a venture capitalist’s Patagonia vest. It came from universities, from mathematics, from wartime codebreaking, from Alan Turing and others, from computer science departments, from public funding, from basic research, from generations of people pursuing questions before the questions had an obvious business model.This is what America should remember.The source of power is not merely the weapon. It is the civilization capable of producing the knowledge behind the weapon.And here lies one of the great absurdities of our age: a civilization that once turned science toward the moon now turns some of its most sophisticated intelligence toward better click-through rates. We built machines that can model language, predict structure, detect patterns, simulate proteins, accelerate discovery, and perhaps help us understand the climate, the body, the brain, the cosmos.And then we asked many of them to optimize engagement.This is not a technological failure. It is a moral and institutional failure.If America wants to become wise, it must remember that science is not only a market input. Knowledge is not only a product feature. Universities are not luxury brands for credentialed children. They are civilizational infrastructure.The future will not be won by the country that yells loudest about strength.It will be shaped by the societies that still know how to learn.VI. The Billionaire Also Has to Live SomewhereA word, then, to the oligarchs.I know. Nobody likes being addressed as an oligarch. It lacks warmth. It does not look good on a conference badge. “Founder” is nicer. “Investor” is cleaner. “Builder” sounds noble. “Visionary” has better lighting.But we know what we mean.There are people in America with so much money, platform power, political influence, and institutional leverage that pretending they are simply private citizens with unusually ambitious calendars is an insult to language.And I do not think the best solution is revenge.I do not dream of guillotines. I do not want a revolution of rage in which one class’s cruelty is replaced by another class’s intoxication. Bloodlust is not justice. It is often only resentment wearing historical clothing.The better outcome would be conversion.The better outcome would be for the wealthy to understand that a more balanced society is better even for them. A society with less desperation, less humiliation, less medical terror, less educational stratification, less loneliness, less rage, and less spiritual ugliness is not only better for the poor and the middle class. It is better for the rich too.Because the billionaire also has to live somewhere.He may live behind gates, yes. He may fly private. He may buy distance, silence, security, influence, insulation. He may remove himself from the consequences of the country that enriched him. But that removal is also a kind of exile.To exit the commons is not freedom. It is banishment with better furniture.A society of extreme inequality does not produce happy rulers. It produces paranoid winners. It produces people who must hide from the anger generated by the very systems that made them rich. It produces private schools, private jets, private doctors, private realities, private islands, private truths. Eventually the wealthy no longer live in a country. They live above one.But no one can live above a country forever.The air still circulates. The rage still rises. The institutions still decay. The climate still changes. The children still inherit whatever their parents refused to repair.So stewardship is not charity. It is sanity.If you have been given enormous power, become worthy of it. Do not strip-mine the country and call it innovation. Do not turn attention into a slaughterhouse and call it connection. Do not fund the destruction of public trust and then complain that the public is unstable.America does not need its wealthiest people to cosplay humility.It needs them to accept obligation.VII. We Are Dumb, But Not That DumbNow, I do not want to exaggerate human wisdom.We are mammals with phones. This is not an ideal combination.We can be manipulated by red circles, breaking news banners, flattering lies, artificial scarcity, sexual suggestion, tribal panic, and headlines written as if a raccoon got into the moral philosophy department. We click things we know are bad for us. We argue with strangers whose profile pictures may not even correspond to a mammal. We refresh feeds that make us miserable and then call it being informed.So yes, we are dumb.But we are not that dumb.Something has changed. More and more people know the trick now. They know what rage bait is. They know what clickbait is. They know when a platform is farming their nervous system. They know when a story has been packaged not to inform them but to possess them. They know when outrage is being fed to them like cheap sugar.Do they still click? Of course. So do I. I am not writing this from a monastery on a mountain. I am writing as a fellow idiot with Wi-Fi.But naming the spell weakens it.The algorithm is no longer invisible. That matters. The machinery has become part of ordinary speech. People say, “This is bait.” They say, “The algorithm wants me angry.” They say, “This app is making me insane.” They say, “I need to log off.” These are not small statements. They are tiny acts of spiritual diagnosis.The way out will not arrive as mass enlightenment. Humanity is not about to become a species of calm philosophers drinking tea under trees and checking primary sources before reacting. Let us not become ridiculous.The way out may be much smaller.A little less clicking. A little less sharing. A little less contempt. A little less panic. A little more walking away. A little more boredom. A little more dinner. A little more sleep. A little more asking whether the thing demanding our attention deserves our life.Civilization is not only saved by grand programs. Sometimes it is protected by ordinary restraint.By people choosing not to become worse just because a machine offered them the opportunity.VIII. Life Is a Lost Cause, So Stand TallWe worry about the next two hundred years of civilization.This is understandable. It is also slightly funny, because none of us gets two hundred years.We get a few decades if we are lucky. Some get less. Even the long life is short. Childhood vanishes. Youth becomes memory. The body begins negotiating. The face changes. People we love die. We become people who say things like “ten years ago” and then realize we mean twenty. Time, which seemed theoretical when we were young, becomes very literal.In the end, every human life is a lost cause.Not morally. Not spiritually. Not meaninglessly. But biologically. We lose everything. We lose our strength, our certainty, our belongings, our status, our arguments, our enemies, our favorite restaurants, our passwords, our names as living sounds in other people’s mouths. We go into the ground, or into fire, or into whatever mystery waits beyond the reach of language.So fear is a strange religion.If we are going to lose everything anyway, why spend our brief lives bowing to cowardice? Why let politicians, algorithms, bosses, mobs, pundits, or billionaires frighten us out of our dignity? Why become small in the little time we have?This does not mean we need to scream from rooftops. It does not mean shoving our opinions down other people’s throats. It does not mean confusing courage with volume. Many loud people are cowards with microphones.There is another way.Peaceful resistance. Firm speech. Calm refusal. The willingness to say what is true without needing to dominate the room. The discipline to stand tall without becoming theatrical. The courage to resist without hatred. The humility to know that we may be wrong about many things and still be responsible for the things we can see.Do not be scared.Life is already taking everything.That is not despair. It is freedom.If the ending is guaranteed, then the question is not whether we can keep everything. We cannot.The question is whether we can live the losing honestly.IX. To the Americans I LoveSo this is my letter to the Americans I love.Not to the empire. Not to the lobby. Not to the algorithm. Not to the oligarchy. Not to the think tank with the suspiciously clean font. Not to the politicians performing concern while checking donor weather.To the Americans.To the historians who keep memory alive when the country wants anesthesia. To the comedians who still know that laughter can reveal what official language hides. To the teachers, nurses, engineers, scientists, librarians, parents, builders, recovering addicts, immigrants, students, workers, and ordinary citizens who still believe reality matters.To the people who are sad because they still love something.You are right to be sad. Decline is sad. It is sad to watch institutions rot. It is sad to watch language become propaganda. It is sad to watch wealth detach from obligation. It is sad to watch cruelty market itself as strength and cowardice market itself as prudence. It is sad to feel that the country you love is being eaten by forces that do not love it back.But sadness is not the end.America may not remain what it was. That may be painful. It may also be merciful.It may become less imperial and more humane. Less dominant and more wise. Less addicted to spectacle and more devoted to reality. Less obsessed with ruling history and more capable of living inside it.This country does not need to become young again.It needs to become adult.It needs to remember the university, the laboratory, the library, the clinic, the workshop, the public school, the honest court, the repaired bridge, the clean water, the peaceful transfer of power, the neighbor, the stranger, the child, the future.It needs to remember that power without stewardship becomes loneliness.It needs to remember that knowledge is sacred because reality is not optional.And it needs to remember that a country can lose the fantasy of being chosen and still discover the dignity of being responsible.That is why I criticize.Not because I hate America.Because I can still imagine an America that becomes wise.—Elias WinterAuthor of Language Matters, a space for reflection on language, power, and decline This is a public episode. 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