0:00

Michael? Peter. So what do you know

0:02

about the end of history? I mostly

0:04

know that eighty percent of the arguments

0:07

about it were about the title, not the actual

0:09

book. So

0:25

before we talk about the

0:27

essay, and the book. We should probably

0:29

talk about Francis Fukiama.

0:32

He's a political philosopher

0:35

her who starts to work at the Rand

0:37

Corporation

0:38

in nineteen seventy nine. Fukushima

0:41

is also doing he worked for the

0:43

Reagan administration and the state department, the

0:45

Bush administration, the Bush one administration. And

0:47

in the summer of Nineteen

0:51

eighty nine, he publishes a little

0:53

essay called The End of History

0:55

Question mark. Oh, Summer of

0:57

Eighty nine, so before the Wall came down. It

0:59

is it is before the wall came

1:01

down. A wall comes down, I think, towards the end

1:03

of the year. Right? November -- Yep. -- and, you know, the

1:06

the Soviet Union is teetering, but

1:08

still won't formally dissolve for couple

1:10

of years. There's an understanding that

1:13

at this point, the Cold War is ending.

1:16

There's this lingering question

1:18

in everyone's mind of what comes

1:20

next, what comes next for all of us, what comes next

1:22

for America, And the end

1:24

of history is Fukuyama's attempt

1:27

to answer that question. And

1:29

his answer really like captures the imagination

1:32

of political elites especially and

1:34

really defines how American

1:37

politicians, Western politicians and

1:39

academics look at the world

1:41

--

1:42

Yeah. -- for

1:42

the next, like, quarter century.

1:44

You could not get away from this book.

1:46

Yeah. I was in college in the mid

1:48

odds. And it was assigned -- Oh, yeah. -- by

1:50

more than one professor. I read this book

1:52

twice once in grad

1:54

school and once in other

1:57

grad school. And I

2:00

barely remember it. Yeah. I think

2:02

a lot of that comes from like his writing

2:04

style. Yeah. I

2:05

mean, Look, Fukushima is

2:07

a he's a smart guy. Mhmm. But he

2:10

rebels in the safety of

2:11

abstraction. Right. And I'm

2:13

not in point of political philosophy. I

2:15

enjoy it, but there is a

2:17

type of dumb person that

2:19

thrives in the realm of political philosophy

2:22

because philosophical analysis provides

2:24

so much abstraction

2:26

that

2:26

you can readily hide the fact that

2:28

you are not able to accurately describe

2:30

the world.

2:31

Also Peter don't know if you know this, but I

2:33

have a master's degree in political philosophy.

2:35

I did not know that. And

2:37

and what you're saying about people not knowing

2:40

what the fuck they're talking about is exactly like

2:42

my grad school experience. I

2:45

remember just being like, what do you mean what

2:47

exactly do you

2:48

mean, please, and people not being able

2:50

to articulate it?

2:51

I I have a political science degree. So I'm kind

2:53

of a STEM guy.

2:54

Oh, the hard science

2:56

and the soft science. Now, the thesis

2:59

is best summarized by a quote

3:01

from the original essay. What

3:03

we may be witnessing is not just the end

3:05

of the Cold War, but the end of history

3:07

as such. That is the endpoint

3:10

of mankind's ideological evolution

3:12

and the universalization

3:14

of Western liberal democracy as

3:16

the final form of human

3:18

government. We

3:19

did it, Gang. We came up with the ideal

3:22

way to run a country. I know it's crazy,

3:25

but I think we got this. I think

3:27

we actually got this human society

3:29

thing forever. So

3:31

yeah, you know, the initial essay is

3:34

just fifteen pages or so, published in

3:36

a little conservative journal called The National Interest.

3:39

The book comes a couple years later

3:41

in nineteen ninety two, and

3:44

it's called the end of history and the

3:46

last man. So no more question

3:48

mark.

3:48

We're making statements now.

3:50

Yeah. He's he's getting cocky. I have

3:52

been looking forward to this episode because

3:55

I always thought of him as someone who

3:57

I don't agree with. Like, I think that the central

3:59

thesis of his book is

4:01

wrong. But I also think that it contains

4:04

some, like, genuine insights --

4:06

Yeah. --

4:06

and a lot of the discussion and criticism

4:09

of his book did in fact seem

4:11

like it was coming from people who thought

4:13

that he was saying that, like, stuff wasn't

4:15

going to happen anymore. Like

4:18

See, Francis, something happened.

4:21

Like, your book is wrong. It's

4:23

like, it's not really what he was

4:25

saying. Yeah. No. I think that's right.

4:27

A lot of the criticism I saw

4:30

was a little bit off base and mischaracterized

4:32

his work. The ways in which he was

4:34

wrong were much more subtle. Put it that

4:37

way. Right? He takes care to say,

4:39

I'm not I'm not talking about the end of things

4:41

happening. Humanity has sort

4:43

of decided upon a

4:46

structure of governance for itself.

4:49

Right. What's behind this thesis is the idea

4:52

that originated at least in Western philosophy

4:54

with Haigel, who articulated this

4:57

idea of the dialectical view

4:59

of history, which just means that history has

5:02

a narrative arc. There's a beginning.

5:04

There's a middle. There's an end. And

5:06

it ends when society meets mankind's

5:09

most fundamental needs and wants.

5:11

Right. So, like, Marx was a proponent

5:13

of this dialectical view. Right? His belief was

5:15

that the course of history is defined

5:18

by class struggle and the

5:20

endpoint is a stateless communist society.

5:22

Fuciano's proposing something conceptually similar

5:24

with a different endpoint. Right? Two world

5:27

wars have been fought, the result of

5:29

which He believes the defeat of fascism.

5:31

And now you he's seeing the Soviet Union fall.

5:34

So he is witnessing in his mind

5:36

A point in history where Western liberal

5:39

democracy is not only Ascendant,

5:41

but is the final stage of

5:44

human governance, Right. Alternatives have

5:46

been vanquished in the battlefield of

5:47

ideas.

5:48

Mhmm. And I don't wanna get too deep into

5:50

his discussion of, like, human nature

5:53

but he believes that liberal

5:55

democracy satisfies mankind's

5:58

innate desire for recognition. And

6:01

that's why it's fundamentally appealing

6:03

to people. And that's why it has

6:05

prevailed and why there is no next

6:07

step. I have a huge fetish for like theory

6:09

of everything books. These books

6:11

like the end of history because they're

6:14

always wrong. always

6:16

wrong in, like, such fundamental ways just

6:19

like as a methodology.

6:20

Here's the one true narrative. They

6:23

never hold up to specifics. Yeah.

6:26

III enjoy a narrative. I think it can

6:28

be useful there's only so far you can zoom

6:30

out. Right? And I and Fukuyama has

6:33

zoomed out impossibly far.

6:35

Yeah. That's like the problem with the type of abstraction

6:38

he uses where you

6:40

get this essay. It's it's a

6:42

short essay. Makes this quick point.

6:44

And then I look at the glance of the book

6:47

and it's four hundred something pages. And I was

6:49

like, oh, he's going to, like, use

6:52

data to support his

6:53

assays. No.

6:56

Naive, Peter. That was deeply

6:58

naive. That was Peter three weeks ago.

7:03

A young boy with the whole life in front of him.

7:06

No. It was actually four hundred

7:08

pages of extrapolation on

7:10

the essay. Yeah. Each of those fifteen

7:13

pages in the original essay yanked

7:15

into, like, fifty.

7:17

Yeah. It it just goes on and on

7:19

and on. The same idea rephrase

7:22

over and over again. I remember

7:25

this from his future books too that

7:27

both of them. I mean, they're big. They're like

7:29

bricks. And both of them easily could

7:31

have been a New Yorker article. Right.

7:33

He does a lot of, like, in this SAI

7:35

will, like, setting the table stuff. Does

7:37

he do that in end of history too? Where, like,

7:39

the first four pages of every chapter are

7:41

him, like, describing what he's about to do. Yes.

7:44

And then he describes the exact same thing again

7:46

in, like, twenty pages. And then he does,

7:48

like, what I've just described is,

7:50

like, described the same thing

7:52

in, like, another four pages.

7:54

When you're bullshitting this much, you have to remind

7:56

people what you're talking about. It's incredible. And

7:58

then you look back on the chapter and you're like, well, he only gave

8:00

me, like, one example of what he was actually talking

8:02

about.

8:03

Like, there's no actual information

8:05

in these chapters. It's just like pros.

8:08

Oh, so much pros, man. He's

8:10

trying to write a book about the entire

8:12

structure of human society and

8:15

why he believes liberal democracy both

8:17

has prevailed and will continue to prevail.

8:20

When the thesis is that broad, It's

8:22

hard to know where and how

8:25

to start critiquing it. But I think

8:27

when you glance at the thesis, A

8:30

couple of major threshold questions pop

8:32

up. Namely, you're saying

8:34

liberal democracy is the final form of human

8:36

government. But how are you defining

8:38

liberal

8:39

democracy? How

8:40

does he answer that? He defines it.

8:42

He says, the state that emerges at

8:44

the end of history is liberal insofar as it

8:46

recognizes and protects through a system of laws,

8:48

man's universal right to freedom, and

8:50

democratic and so far as it exists only

8:52

with the consent of the governed. So

8:55

right off the bat, we're working with a definition that

8:57

is simultaneously vague and like

8:59

clearly untrue at least around the

9:02

margins. Right. Because he's describing it

9:04

in these like super idealized terms.

9:06

That, like, it recognizes our deepest desires

9:09

and everybody gets to participate or whatever.

9:11

But then you look around at actual

9:14

liberal democracies and all of them

9:16

are doing that to varying degrees.

9:18

Right? Like, none of them are actually reaching this,

9:21

like, high minded definition that he's set.

9:23

Even though he's trying to describe the real world

9:26

with

9:26

this. He is incredibly credulous

9:29

about, like, the extent to which countries that claim

9:31

they are liberal democracies are actually

9:34

either liberal or

9:35

democratic. Right. I

9:36

mean, and a good example is

9:38

he will describe aspects of

9:40

the United States as like inherent

9:43

to the United States, while writing off

9:45

other very real aspects of the United

9:47

States as like not inherent. He

9:49

says, the US is fundamentally

9:52

egalitarian. Sure. In making

9:54

that argument, he acknowledges like disproportionate

9:57

black poverty. For example. But he

9:59

says that that's not fundamental to the US.

10:01

It's just the legacy of slavery

10:04

and racism. Right. But, like,

10:06

why is a Gallitarianism

10:07

fundamental to America while racism

10:10

is not?

10:10

Yeah. The three

10:11

fifths compromises in the fucking constitution. But

10:13

it's basically this thing that we saw when

10:15

all the Abu Dhabi stuff came out

10:17

where George w Bush was like, we do not

10:19

torture. Right. Like, yeah, we tortured

10:21

a bunch of people. Right. And like, yeah, it was US government

10:23

policy and

10:24

everything, but we're not the kind of people

10:26

who do that. Give me a break. Right. It's

10:29

the international policy equivalent

10:32

of your dog bites someone and you're

10:34

like, he's he never does that.

10:36

Yes. In in the

10:38

book, he makes an argument that there

10:40

are more liberal democracies now

10:43

than in seventeen ninety. He says that

10:45

there were three in seventeen ninety.

10:47

France, Switzerland, and the United

10:49

States. I get what he's going for here,

10:51

but is that right? What's the United States

10:54

a liberal democracy in seventeen

10:56

ninety? Does it make sense to call a country

10:58

where only white male landowners

11:00

could vote? Yeah. And one out

11:02

of every what? Seven or eight people was a slave.

11:05

Is that a liberal democracy?

11:07

I don't know. I I don't really

11:09

think so. Well, okay. I remember

11:11

very vividly this part of the book, and I actually,

11:14

at least from my, like, now fifteen year old

11:16

memories of the book, I actually thought that this

11:18

was one of the better parts of it and one of the

11:20

more convincing cases. Mhmm. I

11:22

I think it's a much more deep insight when you look

11:24

at the post world war two world. You know,

11:26

if if you look at the nineteen sixties and nineteen

11:28

seventies, most of Latin America

11:31

was under some form of dictatorship. Spain,

11:34

Portugal, all, like,

11:36

the entire USSR -- Mhmm. -- a

11:38

a huge number of people who

11:40

used to be living under totalitarian regimes

11:43

are at least nominally living under

11:45

democratically elected regimes. Mhmm. And,

11:47

like, I know that that's like a that's a blurry distinction

11:50

or whatever. But, like, there is actually

11:52

a pretty big difference

11:53

between, like, living under Franco and,

11:55

like, living under, like, modern Spain.

11:58

Completely agree. And I think that the

12:00

good faith read of his

12:02

argument is that, like, Democratic values

12:05

are originating and spreading.

12:07

Right? Not necessarily that all these countries

12:09

are embracing them in full. Right. But

12:11

there's this problem that he starts to run into

12:14

where if you make that argument

12:16

about the early US. Right?

12:18

It is espousing democratic values.

12:20

And while it's not really embracing them in

12:22

full, it's taking

12:25

steps towards that. Right? I

12:27

get that. But what he ends

12:29

up doing is then sort of failing

12:32

to ask the important questions about,

12:34

like, the late later stage democracies.

12:37

Right? About whether they are in fact

12:39

furthering Democratic and liberal

12:41

values. Mhmm. So to give an example, there

12:43

there are couple of chapters where he describes what

12:45

he calls the weakness of strong

12:48

states. Meaning, like, the decline

12:50

of authoritarian governments across

12:53

the globe, especially in the

12:55

post world war two era. His

12:57

basic claim is like, authoritarian

12:59

governments are losing their grip on power because

13:01

the people yearn for liberal democracy.

13:04

He mentions the example of Latin America, which

13:07

had a surge of Democratic governance

13:09

starting in the nineteen eighties. This

13:12

is why debunking this book is so fucking

13:14

annoying because Yes, that is

13:16

true in a sense, but he's also hiding

13:18

the ball when he has his discussion because

13:21

he starts in the nineteen eighties. And if

13:24

you're asking yourself why the nineteen eighties?

13:26

Probably because if you go back before that,

13:29

a lot of the history of Latin American

13:31

Politics involves the United States

13:34

orchestrating violent coups -- Right.

13:36

-- that, like, replaced authoritarian regimes

13:39

into power. Right. I'm gonna send you

13:41

a a

13:44

little

13:45

excerpt. He says, the

13:47

nineteen eighty two Falklands Malvenous

13:50

War precipitated the downfall of the

13:52

militaryunta in Argentina and the

13:54

rise of the democratically elected Alfonsen

13:56

government. The Argentinian transition

13:58

was quickly followed by others throughout Latin

14:00

America with military regimes stepping

14:02

down in Uruguay and Brazil in nineteen

14:05

eighty three and nineteen eighty four respectively. By

14:07

the end of the decade, the dictatorships of

14:09

Strozner in Paraguay and pinochet in

14:11

Chile had given way to popularly elected

14:14

governments. Look

14:15

at that. Everything's coming up

14:17

democracy. So look, I I know

14:19

that you're not a historian and neither

14:22

MI, but Do you know what

14:24

literally every single one of those

14:26

authoritarian regimes has in common?

14:29

They were put into place or

14:31

materially supported by the United

14:33

States.

14:34

Nice. He specifically mentions the fall

14:36

of pinochet in Chile as a win for

14:38

liberal democracy. But

14:41

Chile had a long Democratic

14:43

tradition that was purposefully and

14:45

violently interrupted by the

14:47

United States Right. Which

14:49

Fukuyama considers like an o g

14:51

bastion of liberal democracy. Right.

14:53

You know, if you wanted to look at the pinochet

14:55

regime, and say, well, this is good example

14:58

of how authoritarian government struggled to hold

15:00

on to power. That in

15:02

and of itself isn't isn't particularly offensive

15:04

to me. Right. What's offensive is

15:06

when you basically give

15:09

almost no examples of your thesis

15:11

in your -- Right. -- four hundred and fifty eight

15:13

book. And when you do,

15:15

you take a an incredibly complex

15:18

story that involves a a huge

15:20

amount of malfeasance by the United

15:22

States. And you just compress that down

15:24

to, like, authoritarian states lose power.

15:26

Right. That might be a forgivable oversight if you're

15:29

a college freshman writing baby's first

15:31

Poly sci paper. But this dude

15:33

worked in the state department under

15:35

Reagan and Bush. Yeah. If

15:37

you work at the state department in the nineteen

15:40

eighties, you would come to work

15:42

And there was, like, a big button on your desk

15:44

that said genocide. And you would just

15:46

smack that button over and over for

15:48

eight hours --

15:49

Yeah. -- wash the clock and go home.

15:50

He's doing reply all on, like, should

15:52

we kill this guy emails? He

15:55

knows what's up. It it takes a certain

15:57

kind of rotten brain. To be like a

15:59

literal state department employee pointing

16:02

to Latin America -- Right. -- as proof

16:04

that, like, liberal democracy sort of organically

16:07

triumphs. Over any ideological

16:09

opponents. So I guess it's like

16:11

you go into neighborhood and you bulldoze a bunch

16:13

of homes and you put up tennis

16:15

courts. And then, like, ten years later, you're

16:17

like, oh my god, everybody's playing tennis. These people

16:19

love tennis.

16:20

People love tennis these days. I guess,

16:22

tennis is just like the best sport.

16:24

Hard not to notice that people love tennis more

16:26

than homes. I remember reading something

16:29

years ago about mass

16:31

shootings they looked at every single

16:33

mass shooter in the United States, and they came up with, I think

16:35

it was, like, five typologies of

16:38

mass shooter. It was, like, the family annihilator,

16:41

the give me attention, something something.

16:43

There were these, like, types of shooters. And

16:45

I think that would be a more accurate

16:47

way to talk about the ways

16:50

that during those couple decades, countries went

16:52

from authoritarian regimes to

16:54

quote unquote liberal democracies because that

16:56

is a real shift in the

16:58

world.

16:58

Yeah. But for him to basically say that, like, there's

17:00

one thing that happened. Seems like

17:03

really silly because we're talking

17:05

about, like, Uganda and

17:08

Chile and South Korea.

17:10

Right.

17:10

I don't think you have to necessarily take it down

17:12

as granularly as, like, every single

17:15

country is individual and you can't pull

17:17

any themes out of

17:18

it, but also saying that there's like one

17:20

theme. Also seems like equally disingenuous

17:22

And it's not yeah. It's not entirely that

17:25

he is necessarily wrong

17:28

about the ways in which authoritarian

17:30

government struggle to hold on to power. Do believe

17:32

that author authoritarian government struggled to hold

17:34

on to power in various little ways.

17:36

Right? And that can manifest in in

17:39

the collapse of those governments it can manifest

17:42

in the tightening of

17:44

the yoke. Right? It there's all sorts of

17:46

shit that can happen. Mhmm. And this is sort of something

17:48

you you saw all over the world at the time. Right?

17:50

United States was not pro liberal democracy.

17:53

It was anti communist.

17:56

Right? Right. Anti socialist. And so

17:58

to the extent that Democratic countries were

18:01

producing left wing governments.

18:03

The United States was stepping in and

18:05

trying to interfere. Right. And that's something

18:07

that just does not get addressed in the end

18:09

of

18:10

history, and it drives me fucking insane. We need

18:12

a segment on the show every time we cover an international

18:14

affairs book just called It's Kissinger.

18:18

Actually Yeah. His, like, his

18:21

head spinning into into frame.

18:23

Oh, god. I really just got so angry.

18:27

Fuck this guy. I have like adrenaline. Okay.

18:30

I got I really lost my ability

18:32

to articulate

18:32

stuff. I was just like

18:33

fuck

18:33

me. We need to do one of those help help books after

18:35

this. One of those, like, mindfulness books. Should

18:38

I help you calm down? Using

18:39

science.

18:40

I I would like to sort of shift my vibes

18:42

from angry snarky lawyer to, like,

18:44

Gwenith Peltro.

18:45

Yeah. Get get smoothie, Peter. So

18:48

fascism and communism. Mhmm. Those are

18:50

the biggies. The the other two.

18:53

And Obviously, a major

18:55

thesis of his is that both of them

18:57

are more or less at this point, done

18:59

for good. Not that they would never appear

19:01

again, but that they are not in serious

19:04

competition for global ideological

19:07

domination. Right. Fukiama really

19:09

seems to think that the military defeat of

19:11

fascist states in World War two is enough

19:14

to signal that fascism is dead. Oh,

19:16

interesting. He he says fascism

19:19

was destroyed as a living ideology by

19:21

World War two. This was a defeat,

19:23

of course, on a very material level

19:26

but it amounted to a defeat of the idea

19:28

as well. What destroyed fascism

19:30

as an idea was not a universal moral

19:33

revulsion against it since plenty of people

19:35

were willing to endorse the idea as long

19:37

as it seemed the wave of the future, but

19:39

its lack of success. So

19:42

he points out that no significant

19:44

fascist nations arose after

19:46

World War two. Right.

19:47

Nobody looked at fascism and was like, let's do

19:49

that. Right.

19:50

And look, I I think that's a

19:53

little too clean-cut of

19:55

an argument. You know, you can say that

19:57

there are degrees to which, like, the

20:00

regimes of pinochet, for example, to use

20:02

that example again, where like Peron

20:04

were fascist. They certainly had significant

20:07

elements of fascism. But

20:09

more importantly, the fact that

20:11

many of the governments popping up across

20:13

the world and the Cold War era were

20:15

either communist or hard right

20:17

capitalist is a

20:19

direct result of the fact that, again,

20:22

they were being propped up by the Soviet

20:24

Union and the US. Right. He just scribes

20:26

all of these cold war power struggles again

20:28

as if they were just taking place on the battlefield of

20:30

ideas and not like the result

20:32

of these powerful interests trying

20:34

to, like, very purposefully shape

20:36

the world.

20:37

It's also hopelessly naive about

20:39

the nature of fascism. Yes.

20:40

Fashism isn't the kind of quote unquote

20:42

idea that gets defeated in the marketplace of

20:44

ideas. Like, my arguments were

20:47

so good that no one did fascism

20:49

anymore. Like, fascism draws upon deeply

20:51

human impulses to like blame

20:54

societal others for your problems

20:56

and to allow a strong man to manipulate

20:58

your emotions you

20:59

know, if he's writing this in the community too, this is

21:02

as the rise of slovid on Melosovitch

21:04

is happening.

21:04

Right. It it's frustrating. That

21:07

Fukian was looking at this and he's like, oh, we defeated

21:10

Fascist. like, we we don't need to worry about

21:12

Fascist and coming back. It's like, oh, it doesn't work.

21:14

And it's like, well, it works in the short

21:16

term. It works really well in the short

21:18

term. And it works really well if

21:20

you're a fascist leader. It's not really

21:22

an idea in the same way that, like,

21:24

liberal democracy is. Right?

21:26

Fascism is predicated on

21:28

this in group declaring

21:31

themselves the inheritors of

21:33

the nation's power. Right. How do you convince

21:35

someone out of that? You're not like, well, what if

21:37

other people? Had power.

21:39

Right. And you had less. Like,

21:41

that's I

21:41

think you're misunderstanding what the what they're

21:43

trying to do. They're trying to take the power because

21:45

they don't fucking care. There's something kind of

21:47

bleak about the fact that there's

21:50

this huge tranche of, I think,

21:52

intellectual elites like the foreign policy

21:54

establishment, whatever you wanna call

21:55

it, who seem to still think

21:57

that politics is a battle of ideas.

22:00

I do wonder if end of history

22:03

was just like his justification

22:06

for the way we got here. Mhmm. Because

22:09

anyone in his position, a

22:11

Rand Corporation state department

22:14

employee knows that the descendants

22:17

of these ostensibly liberal countries in

22:19

the Cold War era was a brutal

22:21

undertaking. And if you

22:23

had a hand in that brutality, it might

22:25

be comforting to tell yourself a little story

22:28

about how what actually happened was that

22:30

the

22:30

best, most appealing ideas triumphed

22:33

over their competitors.

22:34

Yeah. That's my pet theory about

22:36

what brought Francis Fukuyama to

22:38

this point where he writes this book. He

22:41

had to write it because he could not

22:43

face God. That's why thirty

22:45

years later, I had to read it for a podcast.

22:49

So, you know, I almost didn't wanna talk about

22:52

his, like, analysis of economics

22:54

because he's out of his depth

22:56

in, like, large portions of this book. Mhmm.

22:59

But maybe none more than

23:01

his economic stuff. Mhmm. He talks as

23:03

if there's no question that capitalism reflects

23:05

like economic liberation. Sure.

23:08

Obviously, that's just like hand waving

23:10

and assuming away every critique of

23:12

capitalism that has ever been. And

23:14

it just completely adopts this right wing framework

23:17

where, like, free markets mean free

23:19

people --

23:19

Yeah. -- there's

23:20

a line worth pointing out from the original

23:22

essay. He says,

23:25

Marx asserted that liberal society contained

23:27

a fundamental contradiction that could not

23:29

be resolved within its context that

23:31

between capital and labor. And this contradiction

23:34

has constituted the chief accusation against

23:36

liberalism ever since. But

23:38

surely, The class issue has actually

23:41

been successfully resolved in the west.

23:43

What? Wait. That's a whole quote. I

23:45

I wish I could tell you that there's like another couple

23:47

of lines that, like, really explains what he says. He's trying

23:49

to say here, but

23:50

there's really not. He gives a little more

23:52

explanation. It's that he says, quote,

23:54

The root causes of economic equality

23:56

do not have to do with the underlying legal

23:59

and social structure of our society, which

24:01

remains fundamentally egalitarian.

24:04

Whatever. What he's saying is that, like,

24:06

yeah, there are problems, but they're not fundamental.

24:09

They're not inherent. To our

24:11

system. Yeah. So anyway, that's little

24:13

snippet. You can keep in your pocket the next time.

24:16

See, like, an on house person who needs

24:18

money for food. You can just Hey,

24:21

don't worry,

24:21

bro. The class issue has

24:24

been successfully resolved in the west.

24:26

But then what's so interesting about that though is

24:28

that the extent to which the class issue has

24:30

been resolved is almost entirely

24:32

a function of socialist structures

24:34

that we have placed for the redistribution of wealth.

24:36

Right. Right. I guess you can tell it a triumph

24:39

of capitalism if you want to, but it's a

24:41

triumph of capitalism plus redistribution

24:44

and high taxes on wealthy people. It's not

24:46

like, oh, capitalism just like happened

24:48

to solve this thing. There's no scenario

24:50

under which capitalism itself would

24:52

provide money for

24:53

unemployment, for example, or for old age.

24:55

I think that what he's actually saying

24:57

is that, like, society has agreed

25:00

that Western capitalists Liberal democracy

25:02

is the winner. And yes,

25:04

inequality and poverty persist.

25:07

But those people who have come out on the bottom of

25:09

our system They're just the natural

25:11

and organic

25:12

losers. And

25:12

I can hear you. I don't give a

25:14

shit. Right? They don't factor into

25:16

this, like, global consents that

25:19

he's describing. They're just losers. And,

25:21

like, he he's basically making this,

25:23

like, very common conservative

25:26

argument that, like, the

25:28

fact that someone is impoverished

25:30

or suffering is not something that

25:32

you actually have to care about unless

25:35

the Conditions were unfair

25:38

to begin with. Right? And they refused to

25:40

acknowledge that they were, of course. Right.

25:42

That's the argument being made. He just sort

25:44

of dresses it

25:45

up. By using terminology,

25:47

like fundamentally a gala period.

25:50

It's funny that in all of the discussion

25:52

of this book and the fact that it still appears in

25:54

like so many, you

25:55

know, undergraduate syllabi and stuff.

25:57

I I don't think that it's come across how, like,

25:59

fundamentally conservative He's a conservative.

26:02

He's a conservative. Yeah. And, you know, he

26:05

was responsible in

26:07

part for, like, the ascendance of

26:09

the Neo conservative in the nineties and

26:11

their takeover of like the Bush

26:13

administration -- Right. -- the Neo conservative

26:16

mindset that led to the Iraq War

26:18

was something that Fukushima contributed to

26:21

immensely. The idea that democracy --

26:23

Right. -- is the best system and therefore we

26:26

should be spreading it across the globe

26:28

by force if

26:29

necessary. Right? That's something that

26:30

was sort of extrapolated from

26:32

Fukiama and his peers --

26:34

Right. -- to the point where he ends like, having to distance

26:36

himself from

26:37

them.

26:37

yeah. He does

26:38

a lot of that where, like, a few years later, he has to

26:40

rate an essay being, like, don't totally agree with what

26:42

those guys are saying.

26:44

All my friends keep becoming like incompetent

26:46

fascists. Strange thing.

26:48

Look around on my Facebook page. Everyone's

26:50

a fan. Just now. God. Some people

26:52

took my ideas and ran, like, a

26:55

little too fast with them. Yeah.

26:58

It's hard to explain. It's it's hard to explain

27:00

the experience of reading this book. Mhmm.

27:03

I I imagine that it's basically

27:05

the same thing as getting a very minor held

27:07

concussion. Like, when

27:09

you stand up after too quickly

27:12

after sitting down for a long period

27:14

of time,

27:15

it really is a a slog.

27:18

You know, the opening chapters are

27:20

about, like, Latin America and the fall

27:22

of the the Soviet Union. And

27:24

you feel like maybe he's gonna be talking

27:26

about history in like a meaningful way.

27:29

But no, those are the only chapters that

27:31

are like that. It gets rough real quick

27:33

and then it never stops. Most

27:35

of the book is completely

27:38

forgettable because it is very dense

27:41

philosophy stuff. And

27:43

he does one of those things that philosophers

27:45

do where they make up a philosophy word,

27:47

a word that's like meant to synthesize bunch

27:50

of complicated things -- Mhmm.

27:52

-- and then

27:52

starts, like, throwing that word around recklessly.

27:55

Doing the old Gladwell. By

27:58

the end of the book, you're reading sentences that, like,

28:00

don't make sense because they're both

28:02

hyper abstract. And also using

28:04

words that you just learned that

28:06

have really vague broad meanings

28:09

Nice. To give an example, the

28:11

biggest example in the book, Fukiyama uses

28:13

the word Thymos or Thymos, which

28:16

originates with Plato, to

28:18

refer to, like, the human desire to be

28:20

recognized. Mhmm. And, you know,

28:22

this goes along with his theory of

28:24

why democracy succeeds. Right? To

28:27

fill that fundamental desire

28:29

for recognition. Plato defined Themis

28:31

as like almost like an instinct that

28:34

we have, something that is in conflict with our

28:36

reason. Fukiyama defines

28:38

it differently. He says it's, quote,

28:40

the seat of our judgment of worth.

28:43

Okay. There's a chapter called the rise and fall

28:45

of Dimas. Oh, no. There's another called the

28:47

thymotic origins of work.

28:50

Now look, I don't wanna sound like anti

28:52

intellectual, but this is just fucking

28:54

gibberish. It's just different. Well,

28:56

he's just redefined the word recognition as

28:59

Thymus. Right? Is it doing anything more?

29:01

I don't think so. I think that what he's trying

29:03

to say is that

29:05

we all have this. Right? It's it's not

29:07

just a need for recognition. It's something that's,

29:09

like, fundamental to our souls.

29:12

Right. So he's pulling this super

29:15

abstract term, Themis, from

29:17

Plato, redefining it

29:19

to suit his needs in a way that by the

29:21

way, like, I checked in with various

29:23

experts and they're all like, we don't know why he's

29:25

doing this. And

29:28

then he used the term in some

29:31

form

29:32

two hundred and forty three

29:34

times throughout the book.

29:36

Wait, really? Yes. What?

29:38

That's more by the way than

29:40

they say word fuck in the departed

29:43

just to give you a sense of where we

29:45

are. I'm gonna send you an excerpt

29:47

because I think it's important to

29:50

hear some of this out loud

29:52

to understand

29:53

what it feels like to read

29:55

this book. He

29:56

pulls a book out of a box and it says,

29:58

papa, this will help

30:02

Okay. He says, the

30:04

desire for recognition arising

30:06

out of Thimos is a deeply paradoxical

30:09

phenomenon because the latter is the psychological

30:11

seat of justice and selflessness

30:14

while at the same time being closely related

30:17

to selfishness. Okay.

30:20

The thymotic self demands

30:23

recognition for its own sense

30:25

of the worthiness of things,

30:27

both itself and of other

30:29

people. Oh, I'm back on maintenance

30:31

phase. This is like some health girth like he's about

30:33

to sell me supplements. This for

30:36

four hundred and fifty pages is what

30:38

reading this book is like. Michael,

30:40

I mean, I wanna give the guy some

30:42

credit, and I'm gonna imagine

30:45

that if I thought about this for a

30:46

bit, it would be coherent. But

30:49

this is the worst fucking type of

30:51

writing. Thinos is the psychological seat

30:54

of justice and selflessness while

30:57

at the same time being closely

30:59

related to selfishness, I

31:01

guess this is what you mean by you can't really

31:03

debunk this stuff. Right. No. It's

31:05

actually closer to selfishness. What

31:08

can you even say here? There's nothing

31:11

he's saying, God damn it.

31:13

See, now you've done to me what has happened

31:15

to you, because now I'm staring at this fucking paragraph.

31:19

Those are the psychological seat

31:21

of justice

31:22

Oh, yeah. It's just

31:24

Oh, my god. I I'm sorry. I'm I'm

31:26

so happy

31:27

that you're experiencing this now

31:29

because this is what had that what happened to me.

31:31

Bimodex self I understand the

31:33

the need every now and then to delve

31:35

into abstraction. It's hard it it can

31:38

be hard to understand things like love

31:40

without abstraction. Right.

31:42

But when you just do this page

31:45

after page after

31:46

page, You can't tell me

31:48

that the reader is learning something. You just

31:50

can't. You just can't. Anyway,

31:53

I I just wanted you to suffer with me. I didn't

31:55

really have more sense about this. Bring

31:58

me into the

32:01

junk tunnel that you've been in for the last

32:03

couple weeks. That's why, by the way, I have nothing

32:05

to say about half of this book because I was just, like,

32:08

ripping through the pages

32:09

being, like, again, we're still doing this. Like,

32:11

is anything happening? Am I learning something?

32:13

What's going on?

32:15

As I recall, that's where he makes, like, the

32:17

argument. Right? That, like, liberal democracies

32:19

are the best or whatever? Yeah. That that's right.

32:21

I mean, although he's

32:23

sort of constantly making it and

32:26

never making it. Yeah.

32:28

He he's always sort of touching on

32:31

the ways in which he believes that liberal

32:33

democracies are superior, but

32:35

he always falls back on the say that

32:37

same basic argument that it is appealing

32:40

to these base human desires --

32:42

Mhmm. -- the desire for recognition. And

32:45

that is why liberalism

32:48

and democracy succeed because

32:50

they feed those desires and people need

32:52

those things. And all of his arguments

32:54

sort of circle back to that point. I I don't wanna get

32:56

into, like, the human nature stuff, but I don't hate the argument

32:58

that that's a big part of the appeal of

33:01

democracy. And I I am a proponent democracy.

33:03

I don't wanna, like, sit here shooting

33:05

on democracy. On record.

33:07

I'll

33:07

go on the books. But I think what his problem

33:10

is is that he's seeing this this

33:12

recognition as something that can only lead

33:14

to good outcomes. Yep. If you look at,

33:16

like, Milosevich, the Balkan example, a

33:19

lot of what he was doing was recognizing people's

33:21

Serbian identities -- Yeah.

33:23

-- hey, you've been tamped down and there's

33:25

these minorities that are trying to take all

33:27

of this from you. Yeah. Like, that's a form of recognition

33:29

to completely agree. And

33:32

that's why the book is so, like,

33:34

just so arrogant. This, like, whole idea

33:37

to, like, evolve as a species

33:40

for millions of years. Try one

33:42

form of political organization for like

33:44

two hundred only a few decades

33:46

of which are even like a good faith effort.

33:49

Right. Right. And then declare that

33:51

you have solved the problem of ordering

33:53

society as

33:55

if, like, all of history is a Disney movie,

33:57

and we're now just in this happily ever

33:59

after phase.

34:00

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is an analogy that will

34:02

probably not resonate with most of our fans,

34:04

but when a sports team wins

34:06

a championship I'm already confused.

34:09

There's a I knew this

34:11

might not hit with you, Mike. I Walk

34:14

me today. There's something that happens

34:16

to the fan base where they

34:18

become convinced that you

34:20

will win every championship for the next

34:23

several years. Right. And they

34:25

forget that it's hard to do,

34:27

and there's a lot of variables that's

34:29

what it feels like. It feels like this

34:32

this book is the day after

34:34

you win a championship being like, we're

34:36

gonna win next year too. Yay. Yeah.

34:39

It's the same it's the same vibe.

34:41

And even worse because he's publishing

34:43

it. Right? To look to look at

34:45

like a million different interconnected

34:48

events across the globe and think

34:50

that you could articulate a comprehensive theory

34:53

of what's happening. Right. Right. Publishing

34:55

this book titled, like, society, an

34:57

explanation.

35:00

It's like That long man.

35:03

Come on. I I don't know if he's ever reckoned

35:05

with this, but I feel like he's

35:08

right in that the world has become more liberal

35:10

democratic, but he hasn't reckened

35:12

with how much he helped

35:14

bring about the world that we have now,

35:17

where a lot of countries have quietly

35:20

backslid into authoritarianism

35:22

because they still look like liberal democracies

35:25

on the surface. Right. There's this

35:27

real like complacence that

35:29

this thesis breeds. Yeah. History

35:32

is marching toward a single future.

35:34

And therefore, You don't really need

35:36

to worry about these nascent threats so

35:38

much. Right? Things will work themselves out.

35:41

You think about just like how quickly the

35:43

tide has turned on LGBT rights.

35:46

Where even with, like, popular

35:48

acceptance being super

35:50

high, it really feels like

35:52

we're losing. Yep. Did that happen?

35:54

think if I could, like, sum it up

35:55

quickly, it's because a lot of Liberals forgot

35:57

that they were in a fight. Yeah.

35:59

And Fukushima does this. Very

36:02

jarringly when he talks about apartheid.

36:04

Oh, which he says failed

36:07

because of loss of legitimacy among

36:10

WHITE SOUTH AFRICANS. YOU KNOW, HE

36:12

DOES NOT MENTION THE YEARS

36:14

OF STRUGGLE IN PROTEST BY BLACK SOUTH

36:16

AFRICANS. Doesn't mention Nelson Mandela

36:19

who got out of prison between Fujayama

36:22

publishing the essay and publishing the book. Like,

36:24

Right. There's a detachment that

36:27

makes these people I

36:29

I guess I would say sort of amoral in

36:31

a way. Right? Right. He he never has,

36:34

like, put himself out there in

36:36

any meaningful way. And whenever

36:38

someone took his ideas and ran with it,

36:41

It was always awful. Right. He

36:43

has, like, at no point in his

36:45

career fought for

36:47

anything other than like the basic

36:49

idea that liberalism in democracy

36:52

is good. Mhmm. I've digested an

36:54

enormous amount of his work

36:56

And I still barely

36:58

know what he

36:59

believes. Right. In, like, any meaningful

37:01

sense. It's also it was very smart of him to

37:04

write an unreadable book. Because nobody's

37:06

gonna go back and find, like, specific passages

37:08

that debunk him. Like, this is the Paul

37:10

Ehrlich move where, like, even when

37:13

you make specific predictions about

37:15

the future, like, there will be large scale famines

37:17

and then those famines don't happen. All

37:19

anybody remembers is

37:21

like, this guy seems like a smart dude. Like,

37:23

he really has the finger on the pulse. Like,

37:25

you you never fall out of polite discourse

37:27

-- Right. -- because nobody goes back and actually

37:29

reads your specific words. And in

37:31

for the youngest case, no one understands what the fuck

37:34

he was trying to

37:34

say. Right. I mean, and you can you can even

37:36

see, like, how the discourse plays out where

37:38

someone's like, hey, you had a book that said,

37:41

liberal democracy was

37:43

going to be the basic

37:45

form of human government forever based

37:47

you know, more or less. And then he

37:50

he gets to be like, uh-huh. Now,

37:52

you didn't understand.

37:54

What I said was that -- Right. --

37:55

the thymotic response some

37:58

liberal democracy -- Right. -- is

38:00

such that. And then, like, you're just like, what

38:03

what what the fuck? Like, He gets to

38:05

take you into a place where you're totally uncomfortable

38:07

because he's literally created his own

38:09

vocabulary. Peter, are you saying that

38:11

Thimos isn't the psychological seat of

38:13

justice and selfishness while at the same time being

38:16

closely related to

38:17

selflessness. What

38:17

I'm saying is that the thimodics self demands

38:20

recognition for its own

38:21

sense of worthiness of things. We

38:24

both have this fucking text in the window

38:26

in front of us. Just staring

38:28

at it like, my head

38:30

tilted, like, a golden retriever. The

38:32

whole episode is

38:35

he talking about?

38:37

It's so unfair that

38:39

we're not allowed to call someone like this stupid.

38:42

It's less offensive to me to just be

38:45

bad at math.

38:45

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

38:46

Better than it is. To write something like

38:48

this. I feel like Fokayama is

38:50

is less of an interesting beast

38:52

than the kind of person he

38:54

is and the times that birthed him.

38:56

Right? Like, this is like the formation

38:59

of sort of the ideas industry and

39:01

this this kind of fetishization of

39:03

ideas. Ideas are gonna save us. Right?

39:05

Right. And think one of the ways you remain

39:09

popular in like places like Davos

39:11

you can't really get down in the muck

39:13

of actually wanting

39:14

anything.

39:15

Yeah. And you don't wanna actually do any fighting

39:17

for these ideas because all of a sudden people are gonna pull

39:19

back and be like, oh, it seems like you're doing politics,

39:22

whereas like, this is ideas. But then,

39:24

what's the point of an ideas industry if it doesn't

39:26

actually become policy some Right? Like,

39:29

these people want the the seriousness

39:31

and the credibility of people who

39:33

are meaningfully linked to politics. But

39:35

they don't wanna actually, like, do the

39:37

boring stuff of supporting

39:40

one political outcome or another.

39:42

Right. He's doctor Manhattan on Mars.

39:44

Like, I'm I'm tired of being caught in the tango

39:46

of these people's lives. I

39:47

mean, that's what we've been looking for. Yes. He

39:49

just sort of, like, watching everything like the fucking

39:51

magi. And, you know, in general, It's

39:53

hard not to look at like the post twenty sixteen

39:56

era of international politics and

39:59

not think like It seems

40:01

like maybe the whole communism, fascism,

40:03

capitalism thing hasn't been quite

40:05

hashed out. Right? Right. You know,

40:08

the thesis took its initial hit on nine

40:10

eleven, which really opened up this, like,

40:12

new narrative of civilizational struggle.

40:14

Oh god. And the great recession

40:16

hits and many neo liberal

40:19

economies and cultures have shown signs

40:21

of fracture that never really repaired

40:23

after that. And you know,

40:25

if I could, like, summarize quickly what

40:27

I think he missed here, it's like,

40:30

will liberal democracy provide what it

40:32

promised to provide. Right. He thought that if

40:34

it didn't, we would simply tinker with it until

40:36

it did. Right? You you suddenly

40:38

improve upon the system. But what actually

40:40

happens is that after many decades

40:43

of unsuccessful tinkering, inequality

40:46

worsening, cost of living, not being

40:48

matched by wage growth, all of these

40:50

things, many people come to, like,

40:52

the fairly reasonable conclusion that maybe

40:54

the problem is systemic. Right. He thought that

40:56

these were just minor tensions that would be resolved,

40:58

but you know, maybe they are base issues

41:00

that weaken the legitimacy of the

41:02

liberal order over time. And

41:05

what's weird is there is an incredibly

41:07

poignant part of his essay

41:10

that I think is spot on. He says, the

41:12

end of history will be very sad time.

41:14

The struggle for recognition, the willingness

41:16

to risk one's life for a purely abstract

41:18

goal, the worldwide ideological struggle

41:21

that called forth daring, courage, imagination,

41:23

and idealism will be replaced by

41:25

economic calculation the endless

41:27

solving of technical problems, environmental

41:30

concerns, and the satisfaction of

41:32

sophisticated consumer demands. Oh,

41:34

god, that's bleak. It is in

41:36

a a very prescient description of

41:39

the neo liberal malaise of like the

41:41

nineties and the two thousands. Right? And

41:43

if you had framed this essay

41:45

as a prediction of like what the next couple of

41:47

decades would look like rather than the

41:49

next couple of centuries, I think

41:51

you could argue that he was on point or that

41:53

he was, like, getting it with something very real.

41:56

Right. Right. I mean, people are coming and

41:58

saying my life sucks. Mhmm. And

42:00

Fukiama is just, like, capping the

42:02

sign, like, well, we are a fundamentally egalitarian

42:05

country. So

42:07

the problem's been solved. Right.

42:09

There's only

42:10

so long you can tap that sign

42:12

before people are like fuck that sign.

42:14

Right. Right. Shit sucks for me.

42:16

I've listened to a bunch of interviews with

42:19

Fukiama and read some pieces

42:21

by him where it feels

42:23

like he should be answering the question

42:26

was your thesis wrong. Right.

42:28

And I've never heard him say no.

42:31

Okay. But I've heard him make a ton

42:33

of concessions.

42:34

Oh, issuing correction on a previous

42:36

post of mine regarding fineness. So

42:39

Twenty twenty two was a big year

42:41

for Fukushima because

42:43

Russia got got itself into a little

42:45

bit of

42:46

trouble. Oh, yeah.

42:47

And In October,

42:50

he publishes a piece for the Atlantic titled

42:53

More Proof that this recording

42:55

is the end of history.

42:56

Yes. Go Girl,

42:59

give us nothing. Did you read this?

43:01

I did read this, and it was I was gonna

43:03

do my little schtick, kind of like live

43:05

tweet, reading it, and like highlight passages and

43:07

being like, I don't know that I agree with this

43:08

stuff, but like, I couldn't fucking highlight

43:10

anything because he's not saying

43:13

anything in it. It's

43:14

trying

43:14

to grab water. But then I don't even understand how

43:16

Russia invading Ukraine proves his point. I feel

43:18

like it un improves his point because this is like

43:20

the rise of authoritarianism.

43:22

No. No. The problem

43:24

for Russia, of course, is

43:26

that they're not doing well.

43:28

Okay.

43:29

I'm sending you an excerpt from the

43:31

new essay where he sort of lays

43:33

out again his thesis.

43:36

Okay. No authoritarian government

43:38

presents a society that is in the long term

43:40

more attractive than liberal democracy and

43:42

could therefore be considered the goal or end

43:44

point of historical progress.

43:46

The millions of people voting with their feet leaving

43:49

poor, corrupt, or violent countries for life

43:51

not in

43:51

Russia, China, or Iran, but in the liberal

43:53

Democratic West, amply demonstrate

43:55

this. So What?

43:58

This is Fukiyama trying

44:00

to, like, reset the discussion a

44:02

little

44:03

bit. Right. He's doing his Fukiyama thing

44:05

where he's, like, saying a bunch of true

44:07

facts. But he's using them

44:09

to reach a conclusion that's not justified by

44:11

them at all. He's basically saying

44:13

that like people don't like living under dictatorships,

44:16

which certainly depends on the

44:18

dictatorship. Like, some in groups are actually

44:20

quite happy to live in authoritarian states.

44:22

Right. And then he's like, oh, well, everybody's

44:24

leaving, so you can tell they don't like living under

44:26

dictatorships. But, like, people leave

44:28

countries for, like, a really wide

44:31

range of reasons. Like, one of the highest

44:33

out migration rates in the world is Lithuania

44:36

because it's in the EU, and people can just

44:38

really easily move to other countries and make

44:41

more money. It's not a dictatorship. Yeah. And,

44:43

like, he has to know this. Right? World

44:45

immigration trends are not driven

44:48

by one

44:49

factor. You

44:49

know, he's like people are leaving Iran and it's like,

44:51

well, we have used sanctions to completely

44:54

cut them off from the rest of the world. So

44:56

I I guess, I I mean, that's true in some

44:58

regards, but isn't really a good

45:00

example?

45:00

Right. I don't know. I'm half Orion And so

45:02

this sort of makes me lose my mind a little

45:04

more than it usually would. You

45:07

have the control f ready as you go through

45:09

these

45:09

things. But it's just sort of

45:11

like come come on, like, you can't discuss

45:14

the economic situation in Iran as

45:17

like the manifestation of

45:19

ideology. Yeah. He has to

45:21

write this piece because it's been

45:23

thirty years since he published the book

45:25

and he's sort of seems to be wrong.

45:28

Right. Liberal democracy appears to be on the

45:30

decline globally, not

45:33

permanently ascended. And he's

45:35

SUDDILY CHANGING THE DISCUSSION BY

45:37

SAYING NO AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENT

45:39

PRESENT A SOCIETY THAT IS IN THE LONG

45:41

TERM. Right. More attractive than

45:44

liberal democracy. Constantly

45:46

pushing it further into the future,

45:48

his thesis did not predict

45:51

what is happening globally right now.

45:53

If he were honest, he would be

45:55

like, I missed something here. Right.

45:58

I was a little too conclusive or

45:59

whatever.

46:00

But instead, he's like, one day

46:02

it'll be liberal democracy forever. God,

46:04

it's the political philosophy equivalent

46:06

of self driving cars where they're

46:09

just always five years away

46:11

or like a

46:12

good Sonic the Hedgehog three d game. Maybe

46:14

the next one. He makes this case

46:16

in the early nineties that

46:19

breeds a complacency that I

46:21

think you can credibly

46:23

argue leads to liberal backslide.

46:26

Just a couple decades later. And then

46:28

he, like, writes about liberal left backslide.

46:30

Like, oh, this is bad. You know? He

46:34

recently did an interview with a

46:36

Vox podcast, and he

46:39

was asked about Chinese communism. Sort

46:41

of, is that a model that is a threat

46:43

to liberal democracy. And he said yes,

46:46

Chinese con communism could prevail,

46:48

and then he said, quote, I don't pretend

46:50

to have any insight into the future. And

46:52

I almost jumped off my

46:55

fucking roof. Yes.

46:57

You do, motherfucker. You did pretend. No.

46:59

I wouldn't be so presumptuous. You

47:02

may I read your stupid four hundred

47:04

fifty page book about predicting

47:06

the future, and then you're gonna tell me that you don't

47:08

pretend to have any insight? Yeah. Be

47:10

faster.