Identity, Mr. Trump, and thymos.
In the “Preface” to Fukuyama’s influential recent book,1 he wrote that the “book would not have been written had Donald J. Trump not been elected president in November 2016.”2 Fukuyama warns of “political decay,” though he holds that it had set in well before the shocks of Trump (and Brexit) in 2016, “as the state was progressively captured by powerful interest groups,” viz., vetocracy, “a rigid structure that was unable to reform itself.”3 In his “Preface,” Fukuyama also draws lines to his earlier work, including his essay “The End of History?” (1989), later his related book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992) and his impressive recent volumes, The Origins of Political Order (2011) and Political Order and Political Decay (2014). Clearly, the theme of “vetocracy” suggests defects of democratic accountability in the workings of contemporary liberalism; and Fukuyama’s theme of “political decay” is reflected in his evaluation of Mr. Trump.