We're witnessing the rise of corporate nation-hood. Corporations and their governing boards or tyrants are getting bigger than most nation states, and a lot of their workers are more loyal to the company/CEO than their country. They have personal security forces. We're definitely in a period of increasing acuteness and concentration, not a period of release and expansion. Hopefully the catharsis results in something better than the Pax Americana, which only produced a society of navel-gazing retards.