The surprising continuation of history. Gasp!

Twenty-eight years ago some goofball named Francis Fukuyama mistook the ever-decaying Soviet Union’s imminent demise as proof that St. Ronnie’s shining city on a hill would be the final, and finest, expression of humanity’s potential.

With all the glee they could muster, the paid propagandists at the Heritage Foundation AND Brookings Institution rallied together to move Fukuyama’s proclamation of the End of History from theory to fact.

In the intervening period, humanity did not build a liberal capitalist utopia. Instead, it immediately began devolving into a slave population in the service of a minuscule, corrupt, kleptocratic, global oligarchy. The erosion of actual self-determination is masked by the fetishization of low prices and the celebration of conspicuous wealth. The underlying theft of the 20th-century public commonwealth begun under Thatcher and Reagan has metastasized into a global race to monetize the essentials of human life itself.

Fukuyama’s back making the case that his original thesis is still valid. History is over and unfettered markets are the only way that humanity will allow humans to fulfill their potential. Timothy Snyder disagrees and explains the current historical phase as Sadopopulism – which sure sounds a lot like the preparations for a return of monarchical empires, this time with unregulated corporations wearing the warring crowns.