I think about what Neil Sheehan once wrote in A Bright Shining Lie, about the difference between British and American approaches to empire—that the former felt compelled to civilize those they considered savage, a personal calling of sorts, a point of pride. The latter, on the other hand, had no use for any such notion. A strange thing, to be here, in this place, this moment, watching both costumes of empire thrown on at once.
