Many of these new consumers now have access to education, health services and opportunity. That’s a huge gain for humanity. The problem is the rise of the rest — with its accompanying transfer of jobs, investment and optimism from places like Ohio or Alsace-Lorraine to places like Vietnam or Indonesia – has created a bitter class made up of the losers in this global shift.

They are Trump’s people, and Le Pen’s.

Steven Weisman, in his intriguing book “The Great Tradeoff: Confronting Moral Conflicts in the Era of Globalization,” observes that in recent decades the bottom third of the world’s population have gained “with many of them escaping destitution.” The middle third has become richer, while the “top 1 percent, and to a lesser extent the top 5 percent, have gained significantly.” The losers have been the 20 percent below that top swathe, with stagnant real incomes or minimal gains. “They represent the working class in the United States and other advanced countries.”

So the picture is mixed. Emergent societies have done well, even if some like Brazil have now lost their way, deluged in corruption. But what the angry politics of the developed world show is that the current trends are untenable. Another two decades of neo-liberal, reward-the-rich, trust-globalization-to-deliver politics will lead to social breakdown, the triumph of demagogues, and perhaps mayhem. A rising tide may raise all yachts. It does not raise all boats.

Isaiah Berlin, who witnessed the ravages of Fascism and the destruction of Europe, wrote that, “Equality may demand the restraint of the liberty of those who wish to dominate; liberty — without some modicum of which there is no choice and therefore no possibility of remaining human as we understand the word — may have to be curtailed to make way for social welfare, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, to leave room for the liberty of others, to allow justice or fairness to be exercised.”

Those words were written decades ago. They are no less valid today. Justice and fairness have lost out in the West to “those who wish to dominate.” If this election cycle can be viewed positively, it is as a clear warning that something is rotten in America and must change.