Pampered elitists miss the point of Trump and Brexit

© 2016 Peter Free

29 June 2016

 

When the rabble object to being screwed, elitists see them as lacking in brain

But at base, Brexit and Trumpism revolve around two legitimate questions:

What kind of society do we want?

How might that social order be functionally structured, so that it cannot be immediately stolen away by greedy people?

 

With regard to these questions

Political philosopher Michael Sandel said:

 

A theme running through these various political movements is taking back control, restoring control over the forces that govern our lives and giving people a voice.

What Trump [and Brexit] really appeals to is the sense of much of the working class that not only has the economy left them behind, but the culture no longer respects work and labour.

This is connected to the enormous rewards that in recent decades have been lavished on Wall Street and those who work in the financial industry, the growing financialisation of the American economy, and the decline of manufacturing and of work in the traditional sense.

There is also the sense that not only have jobs been lost through various trade agreements and technological developments, but the economic benefits associated with those agreements and those technologies have not gone to the middle class or to the working class but to those at the very top.

© 2016 Jason Cowley, Michael Sandel: “The energy of the Brexiteers and Trump is born of the failure of elites”, New Statesman (13 June 2016) (excerpts)

 

That sense of being shut out is not new

Historically, elite rapaciousness has always been enemy of laboring people. The most fundamental instinct of humankind appears to be our wish to enslave others for profit.

The Common Person’s conundrum lies in coming up with a workable social structure that (a) is arguably fair and (b) is structured soundly enough to resist Rapacity‘s ability to seize it.

 

 

The moral? — Brexit and Trump Demagoguery are messy responses to the failure of morally legitimate political leadership

Existing Fat Cat political and economic structures are designed to extract wealth from the Rabble. People sense this, even when they cannot articulate it.

In a structurally unresponsive societal prison, anger and demagoguery are almost necessary twins. Occasionally, uncontrolled emotion breaks strangleholds.

Sebastian Fischer correctly lamented German Chancellor Angela Merkel‘s ho-hum attitude regarding Brexit. In the absence of inspiring political leadership — especially from someone as inherently respect-worthy as Merkel is — societal rage will eventually leak. Probably in destructive directions.

On the other hand, if some among the excessively grasping Elites are consumed by their self-created fire, should we care?