This has now become morbid as Anthony Fauci goes on television to explain that you can’t make Christmas plans yet, even as much of the country is returning to as much of normal life as the law allows.

A democracy cannot long put up with such a glaring mismatch between the people — broadly conceived — and their ruling institutions. One writer tried, in his own age, to descry “the cause of the present discontents.” He is something of a model for me in these times. “I am not one of those who think that the people are never in the wrong,” he wrote. “They have been so, frequently and outrageously, both in other countries and in this. But I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is at least upon a par in favor of the people.” That was the inveterate populist Edmund Burke.

The next decade is going to see a fantastic contest. One the one side are nearly uniformly liberal governing institutions. They will claim to defend liberalism — our inalienable rights, as mediated to us by the media, Silicon Valley, and NGOs — from the predations of populist demagogues. And they will often be caught merely defending their present privileges. They will demand respect for institutions in which their opponents have no voice or share. On the other side will be the ragged populists, democratic in spirit, but prone to wild misstatement and intemperate promises of violence and cataclysm.