Donald Trump and the End of History: Did Trump supporters just have a Fukuyama moment?

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama published a book called The End of History and The Last Man. Fukuyama’s premise was that having ‘won’ the Cold War, American style liberal democracy and capitalism would be the perpetual and constant force guiding the world forever more. Alternative styles of geo-politics, government and economics were a thing of the past; a kind of erroneous trial process that had at long last reached the ‘correct’ conclusion.

From then on, there would be little or no meaningful war nor struggle, according to Fukuyama. We were all liberals now. Think of it as a kind of feel-good apocalyptic story where instead of Rapture, there would simply be no further changes or movements to history.

This was of course in the early 1990s when the arrogance, chauvinism and triumphalism of western leaders like George H.W. Bush led many to think there was really a ‘new world order’ that would forever dominate future historical trends.

Needless to say, the theory has been totally discredited. History has moved on. Russia, China much of the former Soviet space, India and many its neighbours, South East Asia and much of Latin America and Africa have moved further from and not closer to the liberalism that Fukuyama said would end history or perhaps better stated, end the need for history.

The rebellion against liberalism hasn’t been confined to the ‘east’. The popularity of Ross Perot in the 1990s, a protectionist, anti-intervention, free speech minded US Presidential candidate that once seriously challenged the political elite (and lost), paved the way for Donald Trump’s election victory two decades later. One could also say that the increased political popularity of political veteran Pat Buchanan in the 1990s and early 2000s also set the stage.

With Donald Trump’s victory however, many in the so called ‘alt-media’ movement which formed a significant portion of Trump’s base/Trump’s movement, were guilty of the same kind of triumphalism in the service of their cause as Fukuyama was in the service of  his cause; liberalism.

Because Trump had won, the follow things were falsely perceived to be assured: 

–American disengagement from the Middle East (except to occasionally fight terrorism alongside countries like Russia)

–Total reconciliation and peace with Russia

–American disengagement from East Asia in spite of strong words which would never be backed up by punitive action

–Friendship with a post-EU Europe based on the same values which propelled Trump to the White House

–Julian Assange as a frequent guest at Mar-A-Lago

–America as a protectionist free speech paradise, where a man was a man and a job was a job.

This ‘wish list’ would have been impossible even if Trump remained committed to keeping even half of his campaign promises. Now that he has been engaged in ‘Project U-turn’, the harsh reality has hit many in alt-media land, just as it hit those in liberal Fukuyama land (at least those who are still somewhat in touch with reality).

The deep state has ‘grabbed Trump right in the balls pussy’ and he is not only toeing their line, but doing it with a kind of Trump like zeal that the mere deep state middle manager Barack Obama could never muster.

Trump has militarily attacked an airbase of Syrian government, relations with Russia are at an historic low, he has dropped the world’s second largest non-nuclear bomb in Afghanistan, Trump is praising NATO, Trump’s CIA director is calling Julian Assange every bad name in the book and may be on the verge of bombing North Korea.

For those who thought that history had ended with Trump, the news that it hasn’t is a rude awakening.

History never ends, it is in constant shifts and within these shifts are some recognisable patterns, conflicts and power struggles that haven’t changed since the days of ancient Greece and Babylon before that.

That Trump has turned out to be a disappointment to many is an understatement. But the idea that even an honest Trump could ‘stop history’, was a fallacy then as it is now.

Wishful thinking can bring comfort but never assurance. This is something that the Fukuyama acolytes and the Trump ‘deplorables’ have both had to learn the hard way…through actual history in all its ugliness.