3 June

Our public life is becoming a fantasy, like a film set. Celebrities at the front of the church with royalty at the royal wedding, now two TV stars in the White House. (Remembering Ronnie Raygun was also an actor.) I think we’ve become so immersed in fantasy, in films and tv shows, that the nice clean resolution of those stories seems preferable to the messy compromise of real life. People hate politicians, but they love celebrities, life is a big TV set or film. In the US in particular, which has such weak collective political institutions, reality and fantasy have been blurred for much of its history. But many countries are heading down the same path.