eOpicle

There are moments in life when you stumble across something that completely changes your understanding of how the world works. For some people, it’s seeing Earth from space. For others, it’s witnessing the birth of a child. For me, it was staring at a scale model being used to plan an America 250 celebration and realizing that the most powerful institution in the United States is not Congress, the military, or Wall Street. It is a tiny plastic replica sitting on a folding table. There it was. A miniature version of a future event. Tiny stages. Tiny roads. Tiny buildings. Tiny crowds represented by little dots that looked suspiciously like they had already accepted defeat. And surrounding it stood serious adults discussing it with the intensity normally reserved for hostage negotiations and heart surgery. I immediately understood that civilization is held together by people pointing at small objects and saying things like: "What if we move this three inches to the left...