To put it charitably, our little world, at least the parts I am most familiar with, located on both sides of the Atlantic and most of continental Europe, is in a funk. The introductory phase of our era of negativity began in Minsk (1997), moved to Moscow (2000) and festered until Vova’s first invasion of Ukraine (2014). The re-election of Donald a decade later (2024) ushered in the mature phase, referred to by some as The Golden Age of Ameriʞa, the one we are stuck in now.
Those who are shocked by the uptick in demogoguery should remember that we are dealing with leaders of sovereign democracies "vaccinated" by social media algorithms against progress1. A hundred or two hundred years ago, social and political upheaval was accompanied by extremely violent bloody revolutions rolling across nation states and continents. Today, at least, there is only one kinetic war in Europe, taking place in one country — Ukraine.
Steven Pinker, who wrote The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, might argue that this is a testament to the progress humankind has made over centuries.
We can make several assumptions about how the abundance of negative energy will manifest itself and disappear.
The current wave of illiberalism is destructive, not constructive. Don’t expect Team USA and Team Russia to build new, more liberal societies at home or abroad. Here, by definition, the “new world” is the old world, the future is the past and where cranes fear to tread, the bulldozer will boldy go, proving that the best way up is to dig deep.
The goal is not creation, but correction, alignment, braking. When coercion is exhausted, the negative phase will end.
Donald, like Vova before him, is the arsonist, not the accelerant.
He is like a Grimpoteuthis, a deep sea ballerina that currents have spat up on the beach. With a high degree of probability, the era of negativity will outlast his political legacy, although without him we would be happier. The trend may change only if something happens at the very beginning of The Golden Age, that is, soon, before he gains sufficient momentum.
The most unpleasant consequence of patrimonialism is a return to the old normal. When the moment comes to act, new ideas will be expressed as a reflection of this fact.
How long will the negativity last? One or two generations — twenty to forty years. The arrow of historical time is accelerating and transition to some new kind paradigm is possible. Subjective factors can also intervene, which, like a breakwater, will flatten the wave before it crests, not allowing it to crash in full force. In this case, we will see mixed and weak surges, but this does not change our trajectory: there will be no return to the past. Looking on the positive side, we are moving towards a new normal and may get there eventually.