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The only section of the book written after the 2016 election, this afterword provides the author’s reflections on the exercise of thinking historically about the present—and using a camera to do it—and on the rise of what we now know as Trumpism.

The conclusion reflects on some of the book’s key themes. Ideally, the Canadian intelligence and national security community should consist of a sum greater than the total of its parts, but it has not truly reached “community” status, and there is no strong sense of belonging that unites it. Intelligence is less unique than many members of the community perceive it to be. It represents one expert input into the policy making process, and the fundamental nature of its interaction with the policy realm is broadly similar to other inputs. Finally, structure matters: the international security environment in which Canada has navigated over the decades has shaped the nature of Canada’s intelligence community. This environment is changing with the rise of populism, the fluidity of threats, as well as new expectations of privacy, transparency, and accountability. As the Canadian intelligence community addresses these challenges, can it learn from its allies?

This chapter explains the rise of America First of Trump in 2016. Trumpism strongly opposes the liberal strategies that dominated US strategy since the end of the Cold War. There are also marked differences between realism and Trumpism.

This concluding chapter tells the story of the current revival of Fromm’s reputation that is underway around the world and evaluates both the strengths and weaknesses of his sociological vision. The chapter also theorizes how Fromm’s activism and public engagement shaped the quality of his ideas. And ends on making the case for Fromm’s contemporary relevance.

The Conclusion puts forward four key points for understanding spectacle as an embodied assemblage: (1) Spectacle is embodied and intense, not passive and hollow; (2) Donald Trump is as much a product of the spectacle as one of its masters; (3) Donald Trump utilizes spectacle politically, but as one of capitalism’s “lines of flight” he also threatens the State; and (4) The spectacle develops both interior and exterior linkages among consumer subjectivity and its broader environments.

Jouet begins his book by describing his work as a human rights lawyer representing poor prisoners in New York at the time of mass incarceration on a scale unprecedented in global history. He goes on to describe how the degeneration of American justice embodies troubling dimensions of American exceptionalism, including acute wealth inequality, systemic racism, anti-intellectualism, Christian fundamentalism, and chronic human rights abuses. While the word “exceptional” can imply greatness or superiority, American exceptionalism historically referred to how America is “exceptional” in the sense of “unique,” “different,” “unusual,” “extraordinary” or “peculiar.” Ironically, scores of Americans equate “exceptionalism” with their nation’s superiority when it might be its Achilles Heel—a self-destructive vicious circle threatening admirable dimensions of American society.

The author examines the notion of catastrophe through engagements with Foucault and Bataille, Celine, Weil, and contemporary references to Trumpism. He also explores his own "shamanic" approach. He also addresses questions of disenchantment vs re-enchantment.

The sixth chapter builds upon the conclusions of the fifth chapter around Labour’s renewal, but with a particular focus on Brexit. It chronicles the leadership’s deliberations on Brexit and what it means for Corbynism and the party’s policy programme. It covers the areas of Brexit, state aid, globalisation, the concept of socialism ‘in one country’.

Chapter 2 discusses how the John Hay Initiative, the Republican foreign policy establishment, became the purest strain of Never Trumpism. The John Hay Initiative was designed to create a firewall around the heresies of Rand Paul and to help the other Republican candidates competently defend their vision of conservative internationalism. However, no one around the project imagined that their party would be tempted by a figure like Donald Trump. Trump's candidacy threw them into a world of uncertainty, in which all of their experience and strategies were suddenly rendered unhelpful or even counterproductive. In sharp contrast to most of the rest of the groups discussed in this book, they responded to Trump with open, furious, and mostly unified opposition. There were two primary reasons that people within the Republican national security network offer for having gone Never Trump. First, many were mortified at Trump's statements on foreign policy issues. Even so, most Never Trumpers in the foreign policy network say that their objections ran deeper than policy disputes; it was Trump's fundamental and unredeemable character flaws that constituted the core problem.