“Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses”

 

The first weeks of the second Trump administration have been a wild ride. Like many, I’ve been blown away by the speed and scope of the blitzkrieg that Trump and his team have unleashed on the permanent managerial state in Washington. 

In fact, the blows continue to fall so fast that it’s honestly hard to keep track of it all. I’ve therefore found it difficult to say anything about the specifics of what’s happening. To try to do so here would be to be overtaken by events almost immediately. But amid the furor kicked up by a dozen different world-shaking moves – from trying to annex Greenland, to the closing of borders and imposition of trade tariffs, to the dismantling of USAID – I think we can begin to glimpse a much bigger picture that is now coming into view. 

There’s a 2018 quote by the late Henry Kissinger that’s circulated recently, in which he mused about whether “Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretenses.” If that wasn’t true in 2018 it certainly is now. I believe that what we’re seeing today truly is the end of an era, an epochal overturning of the world as we knew it, and that the full import and implications of this haven’t really struck us yet. 

More specifically, I believe Donald Trump marks the overdue end of the Long Twentieth Century.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.