More pre Trump. More than that pre 9/11. More than that pre Reagan. Farther back, there was more democracy for white people post Depression, and probably the most right around the Civil rights era. There has never been acceptable democracy in the US, but it has been a sliding scale of marginally democratic to basically none.

Every bit of institutional democracy has cost blood, sweat, and tears. It’s always easier for it to be a state of nature, where the average citizen has no real stake in the system beyond how it can ruin their lives or be exploited. When democracy becomes truly incapable of affecting the levers of power and only serves as a charade to quiet the peasants, that charade has a limited lifespan.

People are only so stupid. It’s far easier to cause significant damage as a single person than it used to be. Most of that damage isn’t revolutionary action or resistance, just the natural consequence of there being no social contract. People act only out of self interest, and at our level of sensitive supply chains and systems, those in power need to fight harder to maintain control.

Without some level of democracy and civil society, even those in ivory towers are less safe. They’ll try tribalism and brutality, but eventually, the benefits of institutional democracy allow those providing some level of it to win out for a time. The cycle continues.