Thanks. And you may be right. Thought leaders led Europe out of a dark age, in the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. The masses trusted their dogmatic authority figures too much, since the Church was exploiting their ignorance. If we're headed for another populist, consumerist dark age, intellectuals may need to carry the torch of wisdom as new monastics.

So the cold war could indeed proceed in cycles. But there's a way of reading that that's consistent with what I said at the article's end. Intellectuals will stand back and bide their time, to wait out the dark age until the time's right for a cultural rebirth. Or something like that.