Sadly, the America of new frontiers and bright mornings was long ago. Today we live in Hospice America, where caretakers with first-class temperaments and sharply creased trousers make us comfortable in the face of inevitable decline… and forward the bills for our end-of-greatness care to our children, who will go bankrupt paying them.

Ouch. He gets sharper-tongued as he builds momentum through the following paragraphs. I've been reading Luttwak's Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire. It will soon be important to know and advocate those stratagems which have proven themselves over the long run for the weakened and enfeebled hegemon which has lost her strategic depth and has little muscle left to confront threats directly. We operate according to the maxims of Western modernity, of vigour and direct confrontation - the time may soon be coming where our bankruptcy will require we learn the vicious arts of diversion, conspiracy, discord, and careful, parsimonious bribery.

h/t