Let’s begin with a troubling truth: in many countries, hundreds of millions of people nowadays feel that when it comes to the biggest decisions affecting their lives, despite all the talk of “democracy” and “the people”, they have no control over those who decide things in their name. Their shared experience of organised powerlessness is amplified by fears that our small blue planet is spinning out of control.
People are not just annoyed and angry. They’ve grown convinced that elected governments have become so blind and corrupt that they no longer notice or even care that we earthlings are hurtling towards a future bruised and battered by more than a few perilous forces. Naked big power rivalries. Nasty genocidal wars. Hatred of immigrants. Border closures. Trade and tariff disputes. Extreme weather events. Pandemics. Corporate greed.
Polls show that millions of people are equally bothered by another unpromising political trend: the mounting anxiety that demagogues, despots and a strange new kind of Russian-style despotism with thoroughly 21st-century characteristics are gaining traction and everywhere getting the upper hand.
