Sublimation

I read somewhere recently a prediction that I would have sympathized with if not downright agreed with but only a few months ago. They said the state would 'sublime'--changing phase straight from a solid fact to a gaseous ghost without ever liquefying. To be sure, I think this would be a great thing--solving plenty of the "foreign policy" problems that we have come to accept as natural--and I was hoping *our* generation might make progress toward.

As usual, the gaping exception that everyone knows about but likes to ignore is China. Evan Osnos wrote a great article following the Olympic torch fiasco about the "angry youth" and explosion of Chinese nationalist anger. If taken alone, this is evidence enough that nationalism, and it's obnoxious cousin, the state, are nowhere near dead, or even gaseous.

But recent experiences on politics.hu have served to emphasize how premature the "post-state world" may have been birthed. The site is an english-language news aggregator about Hungarian politics, and one of the few forums in the world (at least in english) where people still frequently discuss the Trianon partitions. But the fact that there remains a loyal, and significantly-sized subset of Europeans dedicated to the reestablishment of at least the Hungarian side of the empire means we should perhaps look in our own backyard before shouting across the street.

Oh yeah, and I bought a pre-Trianon map of Hungary for the wall. They sell them everywhere.