The anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall passed with a whimper last week. It’s no mystery why. At long last, that event in 1989 is seen properly not as a rupture or as a new beginning but as the fruition of diplomacy that began a generation earlier and now belongs to the ages. So too with the victory of Mr Trump. Americans are falling over themselves to explain it as the start of a new era, and/or the end of the post-war world order, whatever that is. Sorry, no. No matter what he and his people do or don’t do from now on, Mr Trump represents more continuity than change. He is the culmination of an uninterrupted reign of presidents from the ‘me’ generation. He has few of their virtues and all of their vices. If anyone ever thought they would go quietly or in peace, he hasn’t been paying attention. |