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Not to ruin the fun, but we might take time to notice that it’s gotten to the point where the big question is whether the state of democracy is in a gloomier twilight in the world today than at any point in the past half-century or whether democracy’s prospects haven’t been this grim since as far back as the 1930s.

The Economist doesn’t let President Barack Obama off the hook, either. Washington’s political brinksmanship and beltway polarization have left millions of Americans still staggering from the 2008 economic collapse at a loss to explain why democracy is worth the bother. The astonishing rise of socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is a function that alienation, too.

Add to that what The Economist calls “the use of excessive violence by the state,” a “violent and punitive” law-enforcement system that ends up with young black men nine times more likely to be killed by police than young white men and an American prison population more than five times the size of the developed-country average. The United States couldn’t help but lose to us on those points alone.

If you’ve also noticed that the Obama Doctrine has reversed the reach of American democratic influence pretty well everywhere on Earth, you will not be surprised to learn that the world’s 20 fully fledged democracies in 2015 were outnumbered by 59 flawed democracies, 37 “hybrid” states and 51 outright authoritarian regimes.

There have been bright spots. Taiwan. Nigeria. Argentina. Even Venezuela is showing signs of emerging from the madhouse of Chavismo. But the snail’s pace of democracy stalled in 50 of the world’s sort-of democracies last year and deteriorated in 56 others. At the police-state bottom of the barrel, in descending order, unsurprisingly: Russia, Egypt, Qatar, Guinea and China.