Worse, our democracy now practically must run on autopilot independently of a public that is happily and willfully ignorant of the issues and wants nothing to do with the dreary business of governing. The United States and other democracies have real problems, but the rise of a sour and selfish abandonment of democracy is not happening because of social injustice or “economic anxiety.” What’s going on? Ironically, this growing illiberalism is not the product of bad times, but of a long trend of rising narcissism and a sense of entitlement that was enabled by peace, prosperity, and rapidly improving living standards. Tom Nichols: Biden warns Putin on human rights and cybersecurity in Geneva. But I reminded him that such a memory was literally impossible, because the building was already a mostly empty hulk when we broke its windows as kids in the early 1970s. One of my hometown friends, for example, once pointed to a factory across the street we both lived on as boys and railed to me how he remembered when it was busy and full. Moments of weird nostalgia became more common, with people remembering grim years of industrial decline with a golden glow that I knew to be false.

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