Sorry, but as a social philosopher I have to be honest: There is more quantity of words in this article than quality of thought. It makes facile comparisons among historical events and draws the dubious conclusion that because we find Trump and Brexit unpleasant they are similar to some past events that were also unpleasant and therefore Trump and Brexit will turn out like the other events (except this time it will be worse, OMG, raise specter of nuclear war, blah, blah…). It’s poor reasoning based on poor scholarship (for example, the author misunderstands Plato, among other things).

Instead of writing something that tells a target audience what it wants to hear to get applause, the way to defeat Trump, Brexit, and similar travesties is to get at the causes of such reactionary phenomena. The realities of how we got here are obscured by the “Trump is like Hitler” meme. The reality of how we get out of these travesties will never be found through hand wringing about “liberal intellectuals” not talking enough to each other. None of this digs beneath surface appearances. The constellation of human relations and ideological structures that give us such travesties as Trump and Brexit is unscathed by the “my party versus your party” thinking the author has fallen into. In fact, it is the simplistic, myopic dualism that this article expresses that maintains such travesties as Trump and Brexit.

The truth is not pleasant. Solutions are not easy. One cliche is correct, though: you must first BE the change you want to see in the world. Change your thinking.