Not all that long ago, everybody seemed to be cheering the rowdy resurgence of democracy. Social media was hailed for making our politics more inclusive and participatory. Opinion makers were praising “the wisdom of crowds” and the creativity of the “hive mind.” Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party uprising had unleashed a flowering of political protest, from left and right, that America hadn’t seen in decades. We were entering a fascinating, albeit messy, new age of political contestation—of protesters, hackers, whistle-blowers, rioters, and radical challenges to both Republican and Democratic politics as usual.

But over the past few months, this revival of democratic spirit appears to have worn out its welcome. The crowd is quickly being reconfigured back into its historical double, the mob. And the hive is increasingly viewed, by liberals and conservatives alike, as a hornet’s nest, a threat to democracy itself.

The wave of anxiety began with the unbearable prospect of a President Trump. The notion of a racist, demented reality-TV star occupying the nation’s highest office has caused an increasing number of people—left, right, and center—to question the decision-making capacities of the masses. In May, in a widely circulated cover story in New York, Andrew Sullivan expressed misgivings that America is suffering from too much democracy. The rise of Trump, he warned, demonstrates that America is “ripe for tyranny.” Leaning heavily on Plato, who remains one of democracy’s most scathing critics, Sullivan argued that “hyperdemocratic” society was eroding vital “barriers between the popular will and the exercise of power.”

Then came Brexit. With a single referendum, British voters seemed to tear down those vital barriers, casting the United Kingdom out of the European Union. The economic confusion and xenophobia on display seemed to mirror the rising ethno—nationalism here at home. Trump even had an orange-faced, yellow-haired double in former London mayor (and now foreign minister) Boris Johnson. Impetuous, Sullivan-style panic ensued.

I confess I was not immune—as embarrassing as that is to admit when you’re someone who chanted “this is what democracy looks like” with Occupy Wall Street and helped organize a populist revolt of student debtors. I shared an article from The Washington Post—“The British are Frantically Googling What the E.U. is, Hours After Voting to Leave It”—that validated my sense that the electorate had behaved rashly, ignorantly. (What were they thinking?)