I agree with your point. I'll just add that in my country, at least, the facade of democracy seemed to provide society with infectious glimmers of hope. The hope is fading quickly, and the general mood is both sour and bitter, straining interpersonal relationships.
Anyway, I'm not sure how democracy can really work in huge super-complex societies. This is why we have the "iron law of oligarchy".
There's a lot of exuberance lately in areas that benefit from low interest rates; housing (again), corporate debt (this one is huge), and sovereign debt (another big one).
Over the last few decades, we seem to have a boom-bust debt cycle of sorts, and it doesn't seem to be abating at the moment given what we're seeing with the Fed, yields, and debt.