Watching the finale to Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+ this week, with its grating mix of canned nostalgia and self-defeating grandiosity, I was reminded of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat's argument that America has entered an age of decadence, effectively squandering its cultural and social inheritance.
But in some ways what we're seeing now is something more than mere decadence. And, given the political-economic moment we're in, I couldn't help but think of the famous remark by former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Iain Macleod, who in 1965 told Parliament: "We now have the worst of both worlds, not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of 'stagflation' situation."
