Apart from 2016 seeming like a bizarre game of Russian Roulette played by eminent celebrities, where numerous legends fell prey to the bullet of inevitable mortality. Something else rocked the world, two seismic events that eliminated the political Richter Scale, opening a chasm with a gulf whose size reached from the gutter to the stars, precisely the gap between working classes and political/media elites. Firstly, one year ago this month, 52% of the British electorate - roughly 17.5 million people - voted to leave the European Union, a trade relationship of 43 years. It was a close call, with 48% - roughly over 16 million voters - voted to remain in the EU. The nation essentially split itself down the middle, sometimes even through friends and families, causing previously unseen (or perhaps building on) tensions, making them break.
If a simple vote was going to be the end of things, then think again. Many lovers of the EU - dubbed by the leave camp as "Remoaners" - took to the streets, voicing their displeasure and more often than not reacting with overwhelming passion, or more accurately, sour grapes. The level of upset and the frankly shocking outpouring of grief from those who voted remain aped a bereavement rather than an unexpected result of a referendum. Many protestors marching for the EU were reduced to tears, appearing to see a bureaucratic Brussels Empire instead as a utopian idyll of global unity and friendship, willingly overlooking the financial and cultural ruin it has levied upon the continent. For most of the young people who favoured the EU, the remainder backed by wealthy middle-class voters and their wealthy middle-class lecturers, the notion of a little more paperwork and extra money to travel/study through Europe seems unconscionable. Inconvenience ostensibly the ultimate driver for their ire over an older generation that has seen changes not necessarily for the better under the auspices of Brussels. Of course, it didn't stop there. Businesswoman Gina Miller became the face of the Remoaners, not least its whining, monotonous voice, mounting a legal challenge against the government's intention to exercise the Royal Prerogative to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty for Britain to leave the EU. Miller's assertion was that Parliament should vote on whether or not to trigger Article 50, despite some 1.5 million more Britons voting leave than remain; fortunately, Parliament favoured triggering Article 50. All of the furore and fallout of Brexit's victory seems to be rooted in feeling, feeling that Britain is closing itself off from the world, feeling that Brexit is bad for business and trade, feeling as though old, traditionalist xenophobes have beaten progressive, inclusive youth, blah, blah, blah.
Then came Trump!
In November last year, despite some media sources citing a Hillary Clinton win as being 98% likely, Donald Trump won the Electoral College - the popular vote 62 to 63 million in Hillary's favour - it failed to stop her attaining the White House sixteen years after leaving it as First Lady. The victory of a populist outside of the political sphere made Democrats, and the left apoplectic or catatonic, enraged that their dreams shattered, forgetting - as they always have - about those in the Rust Belt, akin to the to the northern wastelands in the UK. Endless accusations against Trump failed, words proved that they were just words and had little effect on the actual feelings of the disenfranchised working class.
However, still, the liberal elite remain intent on dragging the backlash down and into the realm of hidden frustration again. Anti-Trump rioters take to the street, damage property while teachers like Eric Clanton nearly kill those politically opposed to them, Hollywood stars make impassioned entreaties against their President. Meanwhile, comedians maintain their right to shock by crossing boundaries into committing near petty treason in photos. All because they feel hard done by, feel as though 'evil' has won, while not considering that they have managed to attain a real disconnect with the populace that votes and consumes their media content. So liberals defend Kathy Griffin and claim how rednecks erected poorly crafted scarecrow effigies with a Barack Obama face cut-out as a comparison to a realistic, stylised severed head of the current President held aloft by a comedienne. Of course, it was enough when Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord to get liberals foaming at the mouth again, despite the Paris Agreement papering over cracks as opposed to true fixes to the climate. Carbon capture technology traps CO2, which then creates carbon fibre material, the coal industry still has some tricks up its sleeve yet. Paris only seeks to slow temperature rises, not halt it and seeks implementing more green energy, not viable alternatives to fossil fuel. However, it all boils down to feeling with the left once again.
Why is this? Many liberal protestors are young, heated and passionate students. Their idealistic conviction fuelled by a rabid belief that theirs is the correct world view, propagated by professors couched in cosy tenure who use students as pawns. Add to this the university structure of essay argument, with social science or humanities degrees, the basis of an argument or view comes from the feeling and impression of a point, instead of research backing up a hypothesis. So life is all about massaging and nurturing student's feelings, shaping them into weaponised outrage forged of professors' grievances over the state of the world that is widely wrong - or merely acting like cult leaders - to make sure that fact plays second fiddle. With tertiary education being a wealthy industry never short of those seeking to break into it, understanding that knowledge is junior to feeling now should have us screaming no like the woman at Trump's inauguration.
#Minds, #MAGA, #Quotes, #Politics.
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