"The alternative to American pre-eminence was not a globe full of mini-Americas but a world dominated by tyrants. Freedom was at stake, as it always is, but America had tied itself into a political knot. The cyclonic forces of fascism and nihilism gained in power as the centre weakened. The only thing that kept democracy from winding up in a suicidal brawl of self interest was a sense of common purpose, but the pandemic exposed that the United States no longer had one."

Lawrence Wright - The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid.