{"id":1162,"date":"2008-10-01T09:17:32","date_gmt":"2008-10-01T14:17:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1162"},"modified":"2008-09-30T23:00:20","modified_gmt":"2008-10-01T04:00:20","slug":"a-prophecy-in-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/?p=1162","title":{"rendered":"A Prophecy in the Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Gray, an author of big ideas with a focus on the apocalyptic and the grand sweep of history, has a must-read article in the Guardian<\/em>. He calls it “A shattering moment in America’s fall from power<\/a>.” He writes as if history is already written – and his examples are often petty and overblown. His piece reeks of self-importance and schaedenfraude<\/em>. His big ideas seem more glib than profound.<\/p>\n

And yet, his piece demonstrates two things.<\/p>\n

First, his view is, I think, broadly reflective of how much of the world sees what is happening – with regional and cultural factors leading to the emphasis of slightly different aspects of the story. The Chinese would focus on the lack of centralized government oversight of the economy; the Europeans would see the lack of regulation and welfare programs; the Arabs would see the decadance. But in every telling, the story is the same – an empire is felled by it’s arrogance; the forces that led it to worldwide domination came back to destroy it.<\/p>\n

That is what I found profoundly interesting about John Gray’s piece – that he was able to convey to me a sense of distance from the events taking place just a few blocks from where I work – a distance that allowed him to be smug and to “see” the future – a future that is very bleak.<\/p>\n

Second, his piece does accurately reflect one way we could go as a nation. It can serve as a warning. Not a warning like Warren Buffet who called mortgage-backed derivratives “financial weapons of mass destruction” five years ago – but a warning that, like any real prophecy, is a vague and distrubing vision. The details may be wrong – but the vision is powerful – and it is entirely plausible.<\/p>\n

It is a piece I would reccomend partisans of both the left and right read – and the muddled pragmatists in the middle too.<\/p>\n

The trends Gray sees are really there – even if he uses a bit of poetic license in describing them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Gray, an author of big ideas with a focus on the apocalyptic and the grand sweep of history, has a must-read article in the Guardian. He calls it “A shattering moment in America’s fall from power.” He writes as if history is already written – and his examples are often petty and overblown. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[544,22,3],"tags":[803,820,362],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-election-2008","category-foreign-policy","tag-bailout","tag-john-gray","tag-the-guardian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qcx-iK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1163,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions\/1163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2parse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}