THE TRAGIC VISION COMES FOR C.J. POLYCHRONIOU.

He has often provided us with amusement, and more recently, with a taste of the desperation among self-styled progressives.  Now reality might be dawning.  "Ukraine and Gaza Confirm That the Post-War International Order Is Obsolete."

Well, yeah, Poly, you're a little late to the party.

Twenty years after Victory, the victory babies we knew as the Baby Boomers chafed at the regimentation of the American High, and perhaps their parents, who knew not how to exist without all that structure, vicariously enjoyed their children throwing it off.  And thus, to use the Fourth Turning typology, the Consciousness Revolution gives way to an unraveling of everything, and that eventually exposes the weaknesses of the old values regime.  "Normals put up with the nanny state as long as its nannying was limited in scope and duration.  Thus the 55 mph speed limits after the 1974 oil embargo or the security theater after the airplane hijackings or even the financial bailouts after affordable housing proved to be a sham did not prompt the rebellion."  Then came the corona tyranny.  The lies are the problem.  And "the public is becoming accustomed to being lied to."

That brings us to our present.  "Just like that, 'government is force' hit everyone in the face, and 'the Wise Experts ... aren't' dawned on more than a few among us.  And that, dear reader, is the way saecular orders fracture."

Poly, however, continues to hope for the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Alexandra Boutri: Under what circumstances can you imagine the restructuring of the current world order architecture and the end of capitalism?

C. J. Polychroniou: Unfortunately, I cannot imagine the restructuring of the world order architecture or the end of capitalism in my own lifetime. Such radical transformations would mandate, first and foremost, the end of the nation-state and the subsequent rise of cosmopolitanism. The driving force behind the formation of the nation-state was capitalism itself, so the two are deeply intertwined even though global capitalism gives the impression that it seeks to transcend the nation-state framework but, in reality, depends on it for its own expansion. Be that as it may, the point is that neither international law nor the UN collective security system work in preventing wars and resolving conflicts. Certain progress in human affairs notwithstanding, we continue to live in a dark and brutal world.

Efforts to end the nation-state in favor of whatever that "cosmopolitanism" means might be the most effective way to make the darkness, and the brutality, worse.