‘There’s been an outbreak of realism lately’

Derb:

And social fantasies, like personal ones, must sooner or later meet reality. Society-wide, they are bound to come off worse from the encounter, though the fantasy will survive for a century or two among a dwindling rearguard of believers. It may be that the Great Egalitarian Fantasy of the present age is coming up against this nemesis and that the little outbreaks of truth I noted above are straws in the wind.