While cleaning my basement, I found an old copy of Foreign Affairs dated September/October 2014. If you didn’t look at the publication date but only its table of contents, you would have thought it was a recent edition.

Titled “See America: Land of Decay & Dysfunction”, the edition’s front cover is a painting of a crumbling Capitol Building that houses the United States Congress.

Keep in mind we are talking about the second year of the second term of Barack Obama, whose presidency is now fondly remembered by many Americans as the high point of US democracy and prestige in the 21st century.