The Man Who Mistook Civilization for Decline examines a well-known authoritarian reflex: the insistence on viewing complexity, pluralism, and democratic friction as signs of collapse rather than evidence of a vibrant society.
This essay explores how Trump and leaders like him have misinterpreted a changing civilization as a declining one, and how this misdiagnosis has become the pretext for a politics of resentment, cultural nostalgia, and power consolidation. What appears to be decline is often the result of democracy at work—noisy, imperfect, and public.
The danger lies not in the supposed weakness of civilization, but in the confidence of those who believe they alone can “fix” it.
~Dunneagin
