Going Back to Our Roots

The post-Cold War optimism of the 1990s spawned a more superfluous academic consensus as to economic and social stability than perhaps ever before. Proclamations of the “End of History,” as coined by political scientist Francis Fukuyama, rang out in unison, the market-oriented, democratic, individual rights-based international order would bring prosperity unseen by the civilizations of old. However, the two intimately connected but hidden fangs of technological interconnectedness and civic disengagement have punctured that outlook, particularly for generation “Z,” the Zoomers, and it shows in their politics.