The Financial Times's man in Washington Edward Luce took Henry Kissinger out for lunch in 2018. Luce tried every which way to corner Kissinger into a direct comment on Trump, but his aged quarry easily evaded the pursuit. Except for one evidently premeditated and striking, if cryptic, assessment that I wrote about at the time, under another blogging hat, here: naimisha_forest.silvrback.com/kissinger-hege… A thread… 1/
Kissinger:
"I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its pretences. It doesn't necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident."
I make five points. Four are specific to Kissinger on Trump. The last is on the Hegelian model of historical change - the cunning of reason - that Kissinger rather casually deploys here while toying half-heartedly with his branzino (European bass) on a bed of green vegetables. 2/
