European governments present defense spending as economic policy, yet economists show that every dollar yields only fifty cents of GDP growth. Political leaders promise prosperity through rearmament while pursuing spending patterns that systematically sacrifice higher-return investments in education and infrastructure.

The endurance of institutions rests on their ability to maintain independence from immediate political demand. They serve not only as mechanisms of policy but also as structures of continuity that span shifting administrations. Independence grants them credibility; credibility sustains trust; and trust enables stability in both national and international domains.

The American economy is defined not only by what it produces but by what it attracts. Foreign capital enters its markets, industries, and neighborhoods with a scale that is both sustaining and destabilizing.

The Guardian recently ran a feature titled “Can AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of the most unsettling questions of our times” (August 26, 2025). Reading it, one could mistake the story for a South Park script.

President Trump’s recent executive order directing the Defense Department to expand the National Guard’s role in law enforcement carries echoes that are hard to ignore. The New York Times reports that the order establishes specialized Guard units in all 50 states and in Washington, D.C., tasked with quelling “civil disturbances.”

Crises are often described as moments of rupture, when the ordinary patterns of life and governance are suspended. Yet beneath this surface, crises perform a deeper function. They accelerate long-term projects by suspending ordinary scrutiny and compressing political time. What appears as a temporary emergency becomes, in practice, a mechanism for transformation.

The advanced economies have lived for decades under an implicit bargain: crises could be met with public borrowing, and the debt incurred could be absorbed without destabilizing the larger system.

The present concern with stagflation in the United States arises from a contradiction at the centre of global finance: markets built to anticipate growth and stability continue to advance even when the conditions that support them appear to erode.

The striking feature is not only the scale of civilian loss but the way institutions classify and reclassify death. A figure—83% of those killed in Gaza identified as civilians—does not emerge from chaos.

In political life, the absence of action is rarely the absence of choice. What looks like hesitation or indecision is often the outcome of a structure that makes inaction appear natural, even necessary.

Spectacle has always revealed more than it entertains. The stadium, the parade ground, the ceremony — these are not only spaces of collective attention, but stages on which societies rehearse their futures.

Patterns are often easier to see from a distance. When I look at the arc leading to the Alaska meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, certain threads stand out. The first is the absence of leverage.

The hastily arranged summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the remote setting of Alaska represents a significant and jarring departure from the established rhythms of international diplomacy.

The news from Washington this week has the texture of something already known to history. A president invoking little-used legal provisions to take control of a city’s police. Federal agents and National Guard troops on urban streets.

The New York Times calls it “greatness.” Two cities burned, thousands killed—erased as incidental, remembered only for the method that made it possible.

Economic statistics appear neutral, offering precise figures whose authority rests on the belief they are consistently produced, free from political influence or short-term pressures.

A police state’s essence is not constant visible repression, but the slow normalization of extraordinary powers until they become routine tools of governance, accepted without question.

The stability of everyday life is often presented as the product of individual responsibility and personal management. Bills are paid, work is attended to, and obligations are met; security is framed as the natural outcome of diligence.

Capitalism defines fairness narrowly, equating it with uniform rule application, treating procedural equality as the primary measure of justice regardless of history or circumstance.

That day, we not only destroyed a city but entered a world where mass death drew no mourning—and was instead declared an act of peace.