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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