Electing Trump: the moment America laid waste to democracy as we know it
The left, it seems really don’t get how this democracy stuff works. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but either way, there will be a selection of the demos that disagrees with your polices and that is what has happened here. It is not the death of democracy, it is democracy working as it is supposed to. Over the decades that I have taken an interest in politics, I’ve come to notice a difference between the left and the right in how they deal with defeat. The right tends to shrug its shoulders and campaign again next time. The left, on the other hand will take to the streets in protests in a fit of pique. The left are the perpetual teenagers, unable to mature beyond sixth form politics and cry when they lose. They lack maturity. What they lack, they make up for in spite, envy and downright nastiness.
They fail to recognise that they lost this vote – the other side didn’t win it. It was theirs to lose and lose it they did. However, upon recognising at surface level what the problem is, they do not understand the root causes.
I’ve heard enough of the white male rage narrative
If you spend decades vilifying a group of people on the basis of their skin colour and the contents of their underpants, then eventually those angry white men will respond with an almighty “fuck you!”, which they did this week. If you keep telling people who disagree with you that they are bigots, racists, homophobes, transphobes, Islamophobes, then eventually, they will tell you where to get off. And, again, they did precisely this. Ranting against angry white men doesn’t cut it. Try to understand why they are angry and addressing that, might. However, that will mean some real soul searching and an acknowledgement that politically correct, multicultural bullshit is the problem. Indeed, they are the problem. So, instead, in an enactment of collective insanity, they repeat their mistakes and rage against the angry white men and the failure of democracy to deliver their desired outcome. Donald Trump and over here, Farage and Ukip, tapped into that underlying rage and motivated it and the left are reeling, failing to comprehend why democracy isn’t working, failing utterly to understand that, actually, it did work. And still they don’t get it…
Brexit and Trump mark a whitelash. Politicians must not pander to it
Because, heaven forfend, that the demos, having spoken, should actually get from their employees what they want… That is how democracy is supposed to work. Of course, the answer to Brexit was that all those old, ignorant, bigoted white folk should be disenfranchised as that is the only way it will work – and the left have the sheer effrontery to call others fascist. How long before this idea takes root – that only the great and the good should get the vote, thereby ensuring the correct result every time?
One…
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From your “Well, bugger me…” link:
The experiment of experts who know best versus the average Joe ran in various places throughout almost the entire 20th century.
Average Joe flourished.
The experts committed genocide.
And like all of those who propose the little people shut their mouths and do what they’re told, I imagine Mr. Brennan believes he’d be one of the experts giving out the orders. Failing to realise that under the rule of “experts”, the ones who’ve shown their willingness to speak out for social change are among the first killed, to prevent them ever coming out against the experts.
He’s a millennial, so knows better than older folk.
And as a variation to “Quis custodiet..?”, who gets to decide who is sufficiently knowledgeable, and sets the standards for that knowledge?
Also who selects the overseers?
And who judges the selectors?
Ad infinitum, ad nauseam…
Wouldn’t the master list of so-called experts include all of the people in high Democratic Party circles who were responsible for turning over the party machinery to the Clintons?
And aren’t these are the same people who carry utopian dreams about how a giant economy of 330 million people could be managed, and of course they’re the ones who would be doing the managing?
So the people who were too dense to recognize their awful mistake in running that awful candidate are supposed to be put in charge of everything?
Sounds about right.
Brennan’s “democracy” seems to me more to describe plebiscite and his “epistocracy” to describe representative democracy which, if ‘not working well’ at the moment is less to do with an ignorant demos and everything to do with a self-serving, arrogant, self-identifying elite of Brennan’s “hooligans”.
He talks of competent government. How can we expect to have that when we have people going straight from university into politics without ever having held down any form of real job? They know nothing of the outside world, yet presume to tell us how to live our lives. The bar for entry to politics should be at the very least to have held down some form of career in commerce or industry.
A hearty concurrence from this side of the aisle. It’s well known in industry, or used to be, that it took around three years in the workplace to turn a university graduate into a worthwhile and productive employee. Academia has its place in education, but not everyone is suited to that educational environment.
Many years ago the head of the largest electrical company in the UK was called before a select committee. They wanted to know how US companies like Intel had started from nothing yet now ruled the world. What was the UK doing about the microelectronic business, specificallyintegrated circuits?
The great Lord, with total confidence, said, “We produce every printed circuit that we use in-house!
With their line of questioning stopped dead in its tracks our ‘expert’ MPs moved onto other topics, not realising that the high-tech process of putting ‘thousands of transistors’ on a chip of silicon had been substituted for the low-tech process of etching away 90% of the copper laminated on a piece of Formica, the sort of thing that schoolboys could do in their parent’s kitchens. And these are the ‘experts’ that determine our industrial and education policies.
This protesting the result of an election or referendum is something that baffles me slightly. If there was very good reason to believe that the vote was rigged, I could understand that people would feel justified in taking to the streets in protest. But these people are making no such claims, they are apparently only protesting the fact that their side didn’t win. This leads me to think that they have all the maturity of a four year old. In the case of the Brexit vote, many of the protesters admitted that they didn’t actually bother to vote. They only realised that this might be important after their side lost.
I forced myself to watch a few minutes of “Newsnight” on the Beeb last night. One of those interviewed in the US said that many young people didn’t bother to vote “as they didn’t think it would make any difference”. Exactly the same as here, with exactly the same whining about the wrong result, etc! My one big worry is that they won’t make the same mistake next time – meaning we’ll all be back to the Liberal/Left status quo…
Remoaners in a nutshell…
YOU ARE THE 48%
SO YOU WANT TO BLOCK BREXIT?
Well that makes sense. Democracy can be applied selectively to ensure favourable outcomes. You’ll put the in-group’s preferences first, because their decisions are well-informed.
There’s no moral impasse because the out-group are uneducated and selfish. You’re not selfish because the in-group’s wants are called progressive, while the out-group’s are not.
Your opinions are more valuable than the out-group’s. You don’t read the same news as they do, you read the right news. You’re not a low information voter. You believe in facts, data and expert opinion. You know, for example, that 48%, or 16.1 million, is equal to or greater than 52%, or 17.4 million.
That might be because each Remain voter is one person, but each Leave voter has a value slightly lower than one, due to their fecklessness and lack of information.
Maybe you should be paid more than any Leave voting colleagues. After all, your vote carries more weight and you’re more valuable than they are, so why shouldn’t you be remunerated accordingly?
You’re not indoctrinated like the credulous out-group. There’s no pro-EU bias in the education system–teachers all have the same opinions because they’re all educated, and they educated you too.
And you’re not anti-democratic, you’re upholding democracy. You acquiesce to the political class because that’s how it works. Why rock the boat? You’re in the smart group. Smart enough to let your betters call the shots. You know your place.
You’re the tolerant one, you’re liberal. This is clear because the values you want to see compulsorily enforced by the state are tolerant, liberal values. The ends justify the means. And you have plenty of self awareness—there’s a group consensus on that.
You don’t look down on people who have a different opinion, you want to help them. It’s not good to let people with opinions like theirs decide on important matters. They don’t know what’s good for them.
You think working class people are romantic and witty like in those wonderful Ken Loach films. But they shouldn’t be allowed to influence politics because they’re thick racists too. There must be some way to help them. You help by voting Labour or Green.
You’re glad that there are so many unbiased comedians unpacking this whole EU disaster. They really cut through the bigotry and lies, and they all agree with you. And the actors and pop stars too. All the rogues and the rebels, you love their anti- anymore, but what will happen if you’re not European either?
You are the 48%.
https://upallnight.tokyo/2016/11/06/you-are-the-48/
It is clichéd and oft repeated but it still seems relevant:-
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…
11 November 1947
The date seems pertinent and you cannot question that he was not a man of experience.
Dear Mr Longrider
Democracy isn’t broken, it’s government which has outgrown its usefulness. The solution is to downsize government to stop it killing the society it is meant to serve.
When government can dip into the taxpayers’ pockets any time it feels like to fulfil grandiose dreams, or abuse the people without fear of retribution, those without the moral fibre to behave in a civilised manner will be attracted to politics and government like flies to faeces. They will not give that up without a fight. Government holds all the power, the force and the guns. How to change government from without is anyone’s guess.
Rule by “expert” reduces the people even further to the status of livestock.
*
DP
* The Last Resort The Eagles