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We're going to have to look at the data over the next week or two or whatever while this settles but I remain skeptical economic populism is a dispositive explanation fueling the global populist rancor. Why not simply global population displacements? Sure, it's part and parcel of the neoliberal capitalism project to tolerate that if not welcome it. But it seems FAR AND AWAY the principle motivating factor here. I liked bobman's allusion to Trump's Visigothic takeover. Seems apt. Because I look and look for the uprising against global capital and I don't see it. What I see is the hoi polloi welcoming a ****ing billionaire real estate baron as emperor, promising mostly an incredibly business/elite friendly culture with some vague allusions to trade as tribute for the host population. Wither the genuine economic populist outrage? When you talk to Trump voters, they don't know ANYTHING about ANY of that. Not a clue. They knew about the wall and the Muslim immigration ban and the transgressive social un-PC stuff and that was it.
The election of Trump does not have to be mostly about economic populist outrage to have been caused by wider economic social conditions though.
As I said before average Trump voter is going to have little actual objective awareness of the actual social and economic conditions that create them.
They will have a sense that things are not fair, and then Trump/Fox or whoever provides the narratives to explain that sense.
Exploited classes being made to vote against their own self interests by having their exploitation mis represented is centre stage in political history. Its a common occurance.
The elites are in a spot similar to that just after WW2, where it was the left who provided the compromise of social welfare (at least in Europe) that would allow the pie machine to go on making bigger and bigger pies, in complete stability, safe. Pie masters were happy, pie makers were happy. The pie machine could keep on trucking right up to the shocks of the 70s, where the story gets a bit murky.
I think we are broadly in a similar spot now, to remove the fertiliser from the social determinants that make Trump/Brexit possible, there needs to be a bit of pie loving spread around. A good old dose of very palatable feel good factor, you never had it so good. Would not take much loss of pie by the Elites. Pie makes people forget their silly angsts and hatreds. Pie, hmmmmm, Pie.
Time for a New Deal.
Or we could just skip straight to WW3.
Last edited by O.A.F.K.1.1; 11-09-2016 at 04:47 PM.