At a time of plague and brutal wars, when decline was the general condition, handbooks spread across Europe for how a person can make the best of death, through the example and guidance of Christ. And from such remembering comes ars moriendi, the art of dying. This lesson is the social version of that medieval reminder, memento mori-remember that you will die. What if our political culture were to ask not just how we will cling to some version of greatness but how this country will enter its eventual post-great future? Rather than bringing the troubled Roman Empire renewed glory, Christianity helped usher in its collapse. Recall the most shocking political lesson that Jesus taught his Jewish followers, who craved liberation from foreign rule: Rather than being a revolutionary leader, he died on a cross. Every period of alleged greatness is also a precursor to decline. Every empire comes and goes, even fabulously wealthy ones with armies stationed all over the world, even ones whose language and pop culture has become a universal tongue, that hold such dominion and then demand of themselves even more greatness. This is a very un-American question, but it is a reasonable one. Are we ready for our crises to finally catch up to us? Crippling polarization, climate catastrophe, military overreach, moral degeneracy-these and other threats to the American juggernaut are real. The condition of crisis has become so familiar in our politics, we forget what crisis really is and what it can do to us.
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