Successive political, social, and health crises in western democracies – indeed in most of the world now – mean that staying abreast of current affairs can be a painfully depressing exercise. The ambient pessimism is so pervasive that our society’s problems can seem intractable, but this fatalism can become a self-fulfilling prophecy that puts democracy itself at risk. Rampant political partisanship feeds into this negativity, because virtually any pronouncement from any poli