1991: history has ended. Now: not really
China is becoming prosperous. But at what cost?
Francis Fukuyama and his End of History and the Last Man thesis was one of the required readings for one of my political theory courses 14 years ago. I remember my professor was an advocate of Straussian methodology and theory, and was actually a student of Allan Bloom, who was a direct student of Leo Strauss at the University of Chicago--Strauss heavily influenced Irving Kristol, a founding member of the neoconservative movement--Bloom groomed political figures like Paul Wolfowitz and William Kristol. One of the interesting arguments by Fukuyama that I do think aged well was that the End of History, as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and hence communism would also nurture the Last Man mentality in Western liberal democracies. The last man mentality, Nietzsche's form of nihilism, would arise in the West as a result of society getting too comfortable and entitled, and you could also argue here too much American Exceptionalism. So I say, Fukuyama got the Last Man mentality part fundamentally correct, and the American foreign policies and the Trump Administration's idiotic domestic policies are the product of Western nihilism for the past 30 years.