The West is in freefall. Liberal-democratic institutions have suffered a near-fatal blow in the United States; Europe, caught leaderless as the United States vacates this position, is in disarray. Three words have come to define this moment: I can't breathe. These devastating words -- spoken by George Floyd, Eric Garner and the legion of Black men and women killed by the U.S. state in a series of murders stretching right back to the nation's founding -- rebounded around the world.
