Our political certainties have been knocked completely off balance. The world as we knew it is “out of whack.” Yet, in the meantime, the contours of a new world are becoming increasingly clear. You just have to want to see them. The upheavals of recent years are helpful and necessary for opening the eyes of the informed – but also privileged – circles in this country to the causes, which have been repressed for too long: the vehemence with which global flashpoints are directly encroaching on our lives, and the grotesque and obscene inequalities that are becoming so apparent and which their victims refuse to continue to accept – here at home and around the world…
In an age of Brexit, Trump’s America, ISIS terror, the flow of refugees worldwide and new nationalism, there is a growing desire and need for political stocktaking and analyses that reach beyond the present. In recent years, Bernd Ulrich, head of the politics desk at Zeit, has devoted himself to this effort with bravura, cool-headedly probing, time and again, the causes and connections behind these countless national and international crises. On the basis of these inquiries, Ulrich has developed a precise portrait of this era – indispensible to the political culture of this country and to an urgently needed democratic engagement.
