For a generation, liberal democracy was treated not as a choice but as a destination — the direction history was always moving, with America lighting the path. That certainty has now dissolved, as democratic institutions weaken across the globe and the United States itself shows the same vulnerabilities it once claimed to transcend. What is unfolding is not a sudden rupture but a slow hollowing: forms preserved while substance retreats, elections continuing while their meaning narrows. The world is left to reckon with a future no longer legible through the old maps.