"Yet lurking in the mist behind all these interesting ideas is that great orange beast who may be slouching out of Mar-a-Lago on his way towards Washington again..."
Yes, this is the enormous fear, the enormous elephant in the room that dominates the thinking of just about every public intellectual and the entire …
"Yet lurking in the mist behind all these interesting ideas is that great orange beast who may be slouching out of Mar-a-Lago on his way towards Washington again..."
Yes, this is the enormous fear, the enormous elephant in the room that dominates the thinking of just about every public intellectual and the entire progressive left. You see it so clearly in Fukuyama's recent writing, his whole argument is heavily guided by his personal dislike of Trump to the point that corrupts what he otherwise is trying to write.
The Trump ascendancy just might be the most fascinating and consequential event of my lifetime (I'm 53).
I'm not exactly an expert historian, but I really can't find any previous historical episode where an entire ruling class (also comprising a culture and intellectual class) had such a sustained and complete nervous breakdown, to the point where they repudiated every prior principle and belief and replaced it with a permanent tantrum. (I guess living in the age of Twitter makes a big difference.)
Ever since that man came down that escalator, what used to be a liberal ruling class that supported free thought and free expression has turned into a vindictive, authoritarian Red Guard (if the Red Guards were all emotionally brittle and psychologically unstable toddlers) that uses guilt, shame and bigotry accusations instead of bullets.
We will not have any kind of normal politics or culture until Trump is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.
As a British citizen (enjoying refuge in France) add Brexit to Trump. Both fuelled this fire like nothing in my lifetime, not even Thatcher’s financial revolution.
The cultural-left (PMC, BLM, "woke" creepy crawlies, etc.) has mutated into a POLITICAL WEAPON of the ruling elites ("Virtuals", globalists) against the working classes ("Physicals").
Hah! I enjoyed your post.
"Yet lurking in the mist behind all these interesting ideas is that great orange beast who may be slouching out of Mar-a-Lago on his way towards Washington again..."
Yes, this is the enormous fear, the enormous elephant in the room that dominates the thinking of just about every public intellectual and the entire progressive left. You see it so clearly in Fukuyama's recent writing, his whole argument is heavily guided by his personal dislike of Trump to the point that corrupts what he otherwise is trying to write.
The Trump ascendancy just might be the most fascinating and consequential event of my lifetime (I'm 53).
I'm not exactly an expert historian, but I really can't find any previous historical episode where an entire ruling class (also comprising a culture and intellectual class) had such a sustained and complete nervous breakdown, to the point where they repudiated every prior principle and belief and replaced it with a permanent tantrum. (I guess living in the age of Twitter makes a big difference.)
Ever since that man came down that escalator, what used to be a liberal ruling class that supported free thought and free expression has turned into a vindictive, authoritarian Red Guard (if the Red Guards were all emotionally brittle and psychologically unstable toddlers) that uses guilt, shame and bigotry accusations instead of bullets.
We will not have any kind of normal politics or culture until Trump is either dead or otherwise incapacitated.
As a British citizen (enjoying refuge in France) add Brexit to Trump. Both fuelled this fire like nothing in my lifetime, not even Thatcher’s financial revolution.
Class warfare in disguise.
The cultural-left (PMC, BLM, "woke" creepy crawlies, etc.) has mutated into a POLITICAL WEAPON of the ruling elites ("Virtuals", globalists) against the working classes ("Physicals").
See Kotkin on Neo-feudalism:
https://joelkotkin.com/the-coming-of-neo-feudalism/