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We learn from history that we do not learn from history. FRIEDRICH HEGEL
To be clear: the West’s souring mood is about the psychology of dashed expectations rather than the decline in material comforts.
When economic growth slows, society loses pace. That might seem counterintuitive in an age of instant connectivity. But we delude ourselves that the frequency with which we post Facebook updates, tweet or communicate on Snapchat amounts to meaningful action. Having hundreds of Facebook friends is no substitute for seeing people.
a new acronym to replace Nimbys (Not in My Backyard): Bananas (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything).
Fascism is based on group rights. Liberal democracy is founded on individual rights.
The public’s idea of democracy is that it is a simple process in which people elect their representatives to carry out their instructions. Scholars call this the ‘folk theory of democracy’.50 It is an updated view of the faith medieval peasants placed in their monarch. If the king was ignoring them it must be because he had bad advisers. Simply update the divine right of kings with the divine right of the people: ‘The people are never corrupted, but sometimes deceived.’
As Bismarck put it, ‘Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.’ I have watched my fair share of sausage-making in the European Commission and on Capitol Hill. It’s enough to put you off eating pork for good. Yet it is the only alternative to rule by dictatorial fiat.
‘We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas,’ he wrote, ‘but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.’
The US–China war scenario I sketch out is not a prediction. It is meant as a plausible extrapolation of the direction in which Trump is taking US foreign policy.
The author creates a false reality without explaining its ungrounded speculation until the end of the chapter.
