The Backlash has Begun

There are lots of Western articles on the Net moaning that democracy has stopped working; some going as far as to say that elections are bad for democracy! The “evidence”? Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump.

This sounds like a stupid and dangerous argument. In fact, it sounds like what everyone who doesn’t like the outcome of any election would say, doesn’t it?

Instead, I feel that Santosh Desai nails the underlying theme that is playing out: simplification.
-         Brexit was a complicated question with a simple answer: “Yes or No. In or Out.”
-         Trump calls out everything as black or white. Good or bad.
And so says Desai:
“When what you feel is what is right, the world becomes so much easier to deal with. Brexit and Trump both connect with an emotional truth that precedes logic.”

But why is this so appealing even in sophisticated Western democracries?
“The dominant intellectual constructs of the time impose a standard of behavior that renders illegitimate a lot of concerns that many have about their immediate surroundings… (Political correctness) is the lie that pretends that change has happened when it has not… It makes virtues out of deafness and blindness.”

Political correctness doesn’t allow for the voicing of concerns that many have: like immigration, job losses, or terrorism that is based on religion. As Desai asked in another blog:
“When terrorists slaughter people on the basis of who can recite from a holy book or not, with what face do we ask people to dissociate terrorism from religion?”
Such a stance on many matters (not just terrorism) is now creating a backlash:
“(The backlash is rooted) in the unwillingness that the intellectual elites have displayed in acknowledging the legitimacy of the fears that such a world evokes.”

Perfectly put.

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