American exceptionalism

With the state the world is in, and with the particular challenges that Europe faces, it is very tempting to argue that Union will not last, that the continent's people are condemned to return to endless warfare.

Fukuyama, an American philosopher of Japanese origin, is also known for his book "The End of History and the Last Man", which he published in the early nineties, in which he argued that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies was largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

As I looked upon the ruins of the Athens Parthenon atop the Acropolis Hill from my favorite spot on Philopappou Hill, I reflected on the events that transpired in Washington, DC on and since January 6.

Here's how "The End of History and the Last Man," the 1992 best seller of political philosopher and Stanford University professor Francis Fukuyama, ends: "Perhaps this very prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again." Clearly, the engines of history restarted and have been working at warp speed in the past three decades.

I have to admit that I have started to appreciate the election victory of Donald Trump. No, mine is not a non-Westerner's Schadenfreude, although even that might be justifiable.