So not one but three right-of-center ideologies — crusading neoconservatism, moralizing religious conservatism, Tea Party government-cutting — have fallen to progressivism’s advance. Meanwhile the country is more racially diverse, pot is legal or semi-legal in many states, incarceration rates have fallen, and ideas once on the leftward fringe are dominant across media and academia. In all these ways and more, America in 2021 is the country that liberals in the Bush era wished they lived in: more liberal and permissive across multiple dimensions, less traditionally religious and heteronormative, less male-dominated and less white.

Of course human beings adapt to new circumstances, so I don’t exactly blame liberals for not sitting around congratulating themselves. Arguably the victories I’ve described make it that much more frustrating that Republicans are still leveraging Electoral College and Senate advantages to claim an undeserved share of power. Or that much more frightening that all these gains could be threatened by a potential Trumpian coup or constitutional crisis. Or that much more dispiriting that other big progressive goals — on racial equality or climate change — still seem out of reach.

On the other hand, maybe — just maybe — the sense of American decline and even doom hanging over certain liberals nowadays is a sign that their own vision, a society of ever-increasing social individualism under the protection of an expansive welfare state, actually leads to a somewhat darker future than they thought …