I'd forgotten about this guy.
Back in the early 1990s, when I read Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man
, I was aware that he thought he was laying out a triumphalist's manifesto. We'd won the Cold War and that was that. The world had gotten to where it had been headed all along, the forces of liberalism and enlightenment and the legions of ignorance and tyranny who had been slugging it out since Archimedes hopped out of his tub had fought their last battle, goodness and niceness had vanquished evil and rottenness, and Western Civilization's favorite child, the United States, stood victorious over the body of the Evil Empire, while the people cheered, fade out. No more history to write. Last call, gents. Katie bar the door. , I was aware that he thought he was laying out a triumphalist's manifesto. We'd won the Cold War and that was that. The world had gotten to where it had been headed all along, the forces of liberalism and enlightenment and the legions of ignorance and tyranny who had been slugging it out since Archimedes hopped out of his tub had fought their last battle, goodness and niceness had vanquished evil and rottenness, and Western Civilization's favorite child, the United States, stood victorious over the body of the Evil Empire, while the people cheered, fade out. No more history to write. Last call, gents. Katie bar the door.
The idea depressed the hell out of me. And it seemed to me it depressed Fukuyama too.
