“Things can only get better” felt like the anthem for the 1990s. Released in 1993, four years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the song was the perfect soundtrack for a decade in which apartheid ended, democracy came to eastern Europe, peace came to Northern Ireland and the Oslo accords promised an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

In the 1990s, the spirit of the age favoured peacemakers, democrats and internationalists. Today, it is nationalists, warmongers and conspiracy theorists who have the wind in their sails.

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