Who Are You?
“Hello, I’m America.”
“As in Captain, or the band, or what?”
“No, just America.”
“Oh. Hi, Just America. I’m someone you tortured.”
“Cool.”
“Right. So listen, I was thinking of limping off into the sunset, watching my back for floaters and talking heads, and then I had this fleeting glimmer of hope in humanity. Or maybe it was a floater - I’m not sure. Anyway, I was wondering: are you going to hold yourself accountable for systematically breaking domestic and international laws?”
“Gee, I don’t know. If I were a lawful society in any meaningful sense beyond luck and path dependency, then I would probably enforce my laws and agreements to the best of my abilities. But if I were a frontier society with some nice bling, a strategically ignorant hegemon, or a shamelessly hubristic empire watching unipolarity slowly collapse as a result of my inability to regulate the fundamentals of the global economic system I dominate, then I would probably say, screw it. Who am I again? Just America, or just America?”
“I’m a little confused myself. Who are you?”