Great times for the Great Man Theory of History

We should define our terms here, and personally I don’t choose to go the whole hog with Carlyle, who claims that the whole of history can be written in terms of the stories of Great Men.  But that overlooks important ‘materialistic’ or ‘economic’ insights – such as those of Marx (someone else we won’t be going the whole distance with, either …).  I shall stick to something far more difficult to shoot down, and go with: at certain key points the course of human history is (sometimes) fundamentally determined by the purposeful actions of individuals.

In 2024, what more do we need to say?!  Whether Biden steps down is a decision he seems to have reserved to himself: I see no “economic” factors at work, just a painful case of very human personal vanity.  Whether Trump survived was a matter of chance (it seems), but a Trump presidency will – I think we might agree – set the USA and most probably the world** on a different course than any plausible Democrat victory this year.  (American isolationism has always been there, for more than 200 years, and its triumph over pragmatic internationalism has often been possible but never guaranteed.)  Neither is it a given that Russia would be in the hands of a dictatorial, brooding, fretful revanchist at this hour: nor that China would be in the hands of an all-powerful monomaniac nationalist. 

It seems to me that if one wants to argue against any of this, one has to have a thesis that requires stepping back to so distant a perspective (1,000 years?  5,000 years?) that all meaningful granularity is lost for any but anthropological, almost biological purposes.

ND

_____________________

** Some, though not I, hold that a Trump presidency will result in the US being withdrawn from global cooperation on actions related to climate change – with globally damaging consequences.  Interestingly, those folks are often highly materialistic lefty-greens.  If they couple their theoretical materialism with their fear of Trump, it must give them some uncomfortable ideological pangs.  (Of course, the whole of Reality ought to be fairly painful for them at frequent intervals … )