I have been navigating many of these ideas and feelings since retiring from the Foreign Service and beginning to teach undergrads and graduate students at a major university. I sell myself, in a way, as a “professor of practice”, but I try hard to draw on a developing ideological perspective that is rooted in world systems theory and class-based analysis - ideas from my academic training way back when, updated for today. It is not always easy. My analysis of developments is pretty solid, I think, but mainly I just want to challenge The Blob and explode the foreign policy consensus. Please keep writing and sharing insights that you glean along the way. I really enjoyed this piece.