Trump’s Anti-Growth Agenda

In June 1897, Great Britain, at the apex of empire, organized an elaborate pageant celebrating Queen Victoria’s 60 years on the throne. The industrial revolution had turned a small island nation into an economic and military superpower. The writer Rudyard Kipling, one of imperialism’s greatest apologists, was asked to contribute an ode for the queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Yet far from boasting about the empire that Kipling adored, the poem he wrote imagined its eventual end. “Far-called, our navies melt away; / On dune and headland sinks the fire,” he wrote. “Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!”