Apart from the nonsensical, revolving-door pantheon of the Trump administration and its misplaced priorities, I'm not sure I agree with this framing. If anything, the past few decades have been...
As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps through the world, it collides with governments in the West that have spent decades deliberately shedding power, capability, and responsibility, reducing themselves to little more than vestigial organs that coordinate public-private partnerships of civic responsibility.
Apart from the nonsensical, revolving-door pantheon of the Trump administration and its misplaced priorities, I'm not sure I agree with this framing. If anything, the past few decades have been marked by significant overreaches in spending, particularly where it comes to surveillance, drug enforcement, immigration control, and military adventurism. You could make the case that powers have been amassed in all the wrong ways, but I think it's inaccurate to say that they have been reduced in general.
Apart from the nonsensical, revolving-door pantheon of the Trump administration and its misplaced priorities, I'm not sure I agree with this framing. If anything, the past few decades have been marked by significant overreaches in spending, particularly where it comes to surveillance, drug enforcement, immigration control, and military adventurism. You could make the case that powers have been amassed in all the wrong ways, but I think it's inaccurate to say that they have been reduced in general.