All long-lasting institutions drift toward it. Systems seek equilibrium and optimize for survival. Over time, survival becomes flattened as preserving internal coherence rather than fulfilling an external purpose. Once that happens, the institution closes itself off from external falsification.
The system no longer asks, Is this true? It asks, Is this compatible with what we already produce?
The current unrest in Minnesota is an example of an order that has reached equilibrium through mutual dependency between antagonistic subsystems.
After the Cold War, the Western world organized itself around a single moral injunction: Never again. Never again fascism. Never again totalitarianism. Never again a unified ideology capable of subordinating it to a single vision of man.
To prevent another Nazi Germany or another Soviet Union, the post–Cold War order built immunity to totalitarian ideologies.
Grand narratives were treated as dangerous. Politics was re-engineered away from totalizing visions and towards norms and institutional mediation.
For a time, this worked.