as     there     are                                                                                                                    apartments      in    our                                                                                                                     own       minds     that

we     never    enter                                                                                                                  without    apology  —

we should respect                                                                                                                 the seals of                                                                                                                        others

 

emily dickinson                                                                                                                  the gorgeous nothings

 

I think what’s happened is that the United States essentially smashed one of the largest and most capable nation-states in a pivotal part of the region. And the reverberations of that are far-reaching and unpredictable and very messy in all sorts of ways.

When you say the United States, what do you mean?

I mean, there’s so many ways one can describe it, but I think of it primarily as you know, a settler republic, settler colony, that has taken on a kind of global hegemonic and imperial power.

Now, of course, it might be in decline now for various reasons, right? So we’re in an interesting moment in world politics. In many ways, I feel like this book is sort of shaping up to be an epitaph of a particular period of American hegemony that may very well be fading into irrelevance, for all we know.

~jeremy scahill interviewing darryl li