Now there's a vivid image, CJ. It suggests that you view history according to Twain's Dictum: "History may not repeat itself, but it surely rhymes." America will collapse through the same stages as prior democracies, like Weimar Germany.

But maybe not a rhyme this time (he said ironically), but a cusp. I take some comfort in stepping back from the day-to-day hell of the loss of the will to self-government in America, to view the bigger picture, and wonder if perhaps we're not seeing the beginning of the end of the nation-state.

America was in on it at the beginning, and perhaps we're in the thick of the decommissioning of the idea.

Domestically, Tea Party sand in the machine is rendering America inconsequential, in the memorable words of Rick Perry. And in the rest of the world, American innovations like the Net and social media are giving people the tools to transcend the need for old-fashioned nation-states. Egypt and Tunisia this spring were an example of people using those tools to organize themselve and their actions across national boundaries.

Maybe we're stumbling toward a world in which physical infrastructure is maintained by government-like jurisdictions, much-reduced in power from today's nations; while the better part of human affairs is carried on globally by people who connect and freely associate in a high-bandwidth quasi-virtual world.

Which is a mouthful to write, let alone say. But a guy can dream, can't he?