In other words: what did Luttwak know about the future, and when did he know it? I mean, this is an eerily prescient piece, so I'd thought you might be interested in it as well
I noticed the same after the 2008 crisis. That he noticed in the 90's is impressive. When Trump-ism appeared I was not surprised, since basically his message was trying to revert these forces. That nobody in Norway understood was also surprising.
I do have this impression that 'some' noticed (knew) early on. You see, Max Weber, a century ago, quipped that the likely 'progression' of industrial society would be 'mechanised ossification' (mechanisierte Versteinerung), and, gee, look at us: we may have a lot of digital gadgets (nevermind the physical/hardware underpinnings), but there's no more 'movement' in any direction.
Personally, I think that what is about to come next will be a kind of 'farcical' totalitarianism directed by 'public health tyrants' casing politicians and experts around.
Why would I write 'farcical'? For the main reason that our societies will probably continue to look like they did in the more recent past, but any significant ability to affect and effectuate change has long gone, as described by the late political philosoper Sheldon Wolin in his Democracy Inc. (2007) with its main hypothesis of 'inverted totalitarianism'.
(For a telling example beyond the US clown circus, take, e.g., the recent election results in Norway: out of power, now the Conservatives are pushing for Covid Passports, which they could have implemented long ago--it's a political tool, with the harmful side-effect of increasing governmental control over the population: it has nothing to do with public health or the like).
I noticed the same after the 2008 crisis. That he noticed in the 90's is impressive. When Trump-ism appeared I was not surprised, since basically his message was trying to revert these forces. That nobody in Norway understood was also surprising.
I do have this impression that 'some' noticed (knew) early on. You see, Max Weber, a century ago, quipped that the likely 'progression' of industrial society would be 'mechanised ossification' (mechanisierte Versteinerung), and, gee, look at us: we may have a lot of digital gadgets (nevermind the physical/hardware underpinnings), but there's no more 'movement' in any direction.
Personally, I think that what is about to come next will be a kind of 'farcical' totalitarianism directed by 'public health tyrants' casing politicians and experts around.
Why would I write 'farcical'? For the main reason that our societies will probably continue to look like they did in the more recent past, but any significant ability to affect and effectuate change has long gone, as described by the late political philosoper Sheldon Wolin in his Democracy Inc. (2007) with its main hypothesis of 'inverted totalitarianism'.
(For a telling example beyond the US clown circus, take, e.g., the recent election results in Norway: out of power, now the Conservatives are pushing for Covid Passports, which they could have implemented long ago--it's a political tool, with the harmful side-effect of increasing governmental control over the population: it has nothing to do with public health or the like).
Yes. They were literally pushing for them less than a week after leaving power. It was very surprising.