Have you noticed that the world is on fire?

Crowds are chanting “Death to Khamenei” in Iran while the regime kills them en masse and shuts down the internet. Throngs are marching to preserve democratic rights in Hong Kong, Warsaw, Budapest, Istanbul and Moscow. The masses are angry in Pakistan, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and toppling leaders in Lebanon and Bolivia.

This is the most widespread surge in global civic unrest since 1989. It’s a story 10 times bigger than impeachment, although the two are related.

The seeds of today’s unrest were planted in those events of 30 years ago — the fall of the Soviet Union, the spread of globalization and all the rest. That was the heyday of liberal democratic capitalism, free market fundamentalism, the end of history.

We all know now what many of us didn’t appreciate then: Globalized democratic capitalism was going to spark a backlash. It led to growing economic and cultural clashes between the educated urbanites, who thrived, and the rural masses, who were left behind. It was too spiritually thin, too cosmopolitan and deracinated. People felt that their national cultures were being ripped away from them.