He Warned That the End of History Could Be Rough. Maybe Now People Will Listen.:
Francis Fukuyama’s famous take on the post-Cold War world was widely misunderstood. In a new memoir, he tries to set the record straight. (Jennifer Szalai, Aug. 31, 2026, NY Times)
In the last five chapters of his book, which hardly anyone seemed to read or remember, Fukuyama predicted that boredom and restlessness could fuel a rage against the establishment machine.
More than three decades later, restlessness and rage are everywhere, and Fukuyama, at 73, is still trying to make himself understood. On Sept. 8, Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish “In the Realm of the Last Man,” a memoir. As the title suggests, Fukuyama is doubling down, pushing back against what he derides as “these stupid, superficial interpretations of the end of history” that caricatured him as a naïve Pollyanna. He sees the current plight of liberal democracy not as a rebuke to his earlier work but as a vindication. The “last men” of our age grew so restive that they fell for populist demagogues who convinced them everything was rotten — “an outcome,” he says, “that was perfectly predictable more than 30 years ago.”
One of the reasons 9/11 was so thrilling was because Islamicism at least presented a challenge. But W and Obama dispatched it without asking much (not enough?) of us.
Suppose a presidential candidate treated eliminating the national debt and reforming the welfare state as the equivalent of the moon landings? He’d have to guarantee that everyone’s ox was going to get gored: not just budget cuts but getting rid of tax breaks; Means-testing all social programs; etc. An ideal candidate would offer a plan that his own party bitched about. This would foster some sense of shared sacrifice and treat the problem (even if it is aesthetic rather than economic) with a seriousness that folks could rally round. And the numbers have grown so big that folks could believe it a superhuman challenge.
