'Trump as Alexander the Great: A Theory That Explains Iran (And Everything Else)' [View all]

"Trump, it is increasingly clear, is a figure of enormous historical significance who is reshaping America and the globe in ways that will not easily be undone by Democratic wins in future elections...Liberals, naturally, would like to believe the opposite: that once they triumph at the ballot box, all can go back to normal. 'Time will show the Trump era to be less turning point, more freakish aberration,' Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs columnist for The Guardian, wrote in December. 'In history’s bigger picture, Trump is a blotch, an unsightly smear on the canvas.' "

"This could not be more wrong. And the ill-conceived but also era-defining war in Iran — the seventh country that Trump has attacked in his second term — is just the latest manifestation of how Trump is irrevocably changing our world."

"My confidence in this prediction derives from an unlikely source. To try to make sense of Trump’s presidency, I recently returned to G.W.F. Hegel’s 'Lectures on the Philosophy of History,' which I had read many years ago when I was trying to understand his influence on Marxism. This may seem to be an unnecessary diversion — like studying quantum mechanics in order to repair a car — but Hegel’s theory of history maps remarkably well onto our current situation."

"Hegel viewed history as consisting of stages punctuated by times of upheaval. He assigned to what he called 'world-historical individuals' a special role in spurring the transition from one era to another. These individuals didn’t necessarily grasp the full import of what they were doing, and their actions, while transformative, didn’t necessarily result in the outcomes they intended. Trump, I have come to believe, is exactly such an individual: He is speeding the transition from one historical era to another. The ultimate results are very unlikely to line up with his exact ideological aims, but they will be profound. And the world is never going back to what it was."

Article at link:

https://www.notus.org/perspectives/trump-as-alexander-the-great-a-theory-that-explains-iran-and-everything-else