{"id":12191,"date":"2023-10-12T02:17:08","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T06:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=12191"},"modified":"2023-10-12T02:17:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T06:17:08","slug":"the-lamps-are-going-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=12191","title":{"rendered":"The lamps are going out&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I watch the lamps of the post-WW2 world order go out, one tiny, flickering light at a time, I am compelled to remember something that happened more than a century ago: When Sir Edward Grey, Great Britain&#8217;s Foreign Secretary at the time, <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/lamps-going-europe\/\">remarked that<\/a> &#8220;the lamps are going out all over Europe&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/lamps-going-europe\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12192 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Blog-grey-quote-lamps.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"213\" srcset=\"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Blog-grey-quote-lamps.jpg 720w, https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Blog-grey-quote-lamps-300x89.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>We are not quite there yet. There is hope that sanity will prevail.<\/p>\n<p>Yet I feel that that hope is fading, that time is running out.<\/p>\n<p>In 1914, the point of no return, the trigger was Germany&#8217;s decision to attack neutral Belgium. It compelled Britain to declare war, and ultimately widened that war into the world&#8217;s first (or maybe second &#8212; I think the Napoleonic wars might qualify as World War 0) global conflict.<\/p>\n<p>What the trigger will be this time, I do not know. I am reacting in part to the announcement that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2023\/10\/11\/politics\/us-allies-warn-hezbollah\/index.html\">West warned Hezbollah<\/a> to stay out of Israel&#8217;s conflict with Hamas. But chances are it will be something else.<\/p>\n<p>But it is coming, of that I am near certain, even as I dearly hope that I am dead wrong, that my pessimism is unwarranted, my concerns grossly misplaced.<\/p>\n<fb:like href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=12191' send='true' layout='standard' show_faces='true' width='450' height='65' action='like' colorscheme='light' font='lucida grande'><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I watch the lamps of the post-WW2 world order go out, one tiny, flickering light at a time, I am compelled to remember something that happened more than a century ago: When Sir Edward Grey, Great Britain&#8217;s Foreign Secretary at the time, remarked that &#8220;the lamps are going out all over Europe&#8221;. We are <a href='https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/?p=12191' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-politics","category-25-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12193,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12191\/revisions\/12193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spinor.info\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}