To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret

by Jedidiah Jenkins

“It’s just the truth. The U.S. runs the world through coercion, through fake news stories, through control. Everyone knows this that’s outside of the U.S. They keep Americans arguing over guns and black people so they won’t look outside the country and see that the U.S. is an empire.” “Wow. That may be some level of true. Thank God I made it out, right?” I held my beer up, and she leaned back in to cheers me. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to visit the U.S.,” she said, somewhat reassuringly. “I want to do a road trip across it. It’s so famous, to do the U.S. road trip. One day I will. I want to see the empire before it falls.” “It is a beautiful empire,” I said.