Raymond Geuss in The Ideas Letter:
All of us who live in Western societies have the sense that our world is unravelling and collapsing around us. This can be seen in almost any area one investigates. In international politics, the idea that the international realm is subject to some kind of law, even of the most minimal kind, may always have been more a pious hope than a reality, but now it has become just a bad joke. Domestically, our political systems lurch between massive immobilism and utterly capricious, wanton acts of institutional destruction. Gone is the idea that they automatically ensure a smooth and orderly transition in power from one group of office-holders to another. It has become difficult, if not impossible, to hold that gradual reform within the system is, as it were, its default position. Most importantly, we seem to be incapable of producing political figures who have even a tenuous ability to look reality in the face or a basic competence in dealing with the world.
This dysfunctionality characterizes not just politics, but the technical, economic, and military domains as well. Our civil infrastructure is falling apart, and the military is no better off: ships and tanks built at great expense malfunction unpredictably. US military forces, on which funds have been lavished for decades, show themselves in a very vivid way to be significantly less irresistible than advertised. The stock market has become a la-la land where prices keep rising despite real economic stagnation. Where is the promised prosperity? Do any parents now still assume that their children’s lives will be qualitatively better than theirs?
More here.
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