The Octagon and the Republic | The Flourishing Journal The Flourishing Journal  ·  Culture & Democracy The Octagon and the Republic When a nation celebrates its 250th birthday with a cage fight on the White House lawn, Neil Postman's long warning in "Amusing Ourselves to Death" finally makes sense. By Victor Counted, Ph.D.  ·  June 15, 2026 Neil Postman did not live to see this. He died in 2003, two years before YouTube existed and a decade before the smartphone colonized every moment of human attention. But on the evening of June 14, 2026, on the South Lawn of the White House, beneath a structure called “The Claw,” with jet…