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Politics From Trump to Boris Johnson, we're moving from post-truth to post-shame
I have no idea who sleuthfortruth is, but someone should find them and hire them as a speechwriter. “Voting for a populist party is like diving headfirst into an empty swimming pool, because you’re angry that there’s no water in it.” Brilliant. Trump and Brexit to a tee.
Trump: the inherited wealth billionaire who became president by ventilating and capitalising on public anger at politicians and elites, winning over many among the disaffected working classes, yet now pursuing policies aimed at further enriching the rich, and a politics of narcissism and family aggrandisement at the expense of the US’s global reputation.
Brexit: won with the help of the votes of those who will be hardest hit by its impact, as every regional analysis has shown. Those votes were secured with arguments about sovereignty, economic strength, more money for the NHS, trade deals galore falling from trees, big falls in immigration – arguments that have faded and died as campaign-winning rhetoric has been exposed to the real world of EU negotiations, the law and parliamentary arithmetic. So now the populists are reduced to saying simply that Brexit must happen because people voted for it, and a likely incoming prime minister, to be elected by a majority of the less than 0.25% of the country with a say in the matter, happily parrots his support for a no-deal Brexit that he and everyone else said was not even an option three years ago.
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We are not just in a post-truth world, but a post-shame world. How else to explain that Boris Johnson once lost his job at the Times for lying, yet the same newspaper now endorses him to be prime minister?
Trump: the inherited wealth billionaire who became president by ventilating and capitalising on public anger at politicians and elites, winning over many among the disaffected working classes, yet now pursuing policies aimed at further enriching the rich, and a politics of narcissism and family aggrandisement at the expense of the US’s global reputation.
Brexit: won with the help of the votes of those who will be hardest hit by its impact, as every regional analysis has shown. Those votes were secured with arguments about sovereignty, economic strength, more money for the NHS, trade deals galore falling from trees, big falls in immigration – arguments that have faded and died as campaign-winning rhetoric has been exposed to the real world of EU negotiations, the law and parliamentary arithmetic. So now the populists are reduced to saying simply that Brexit must happen because people voted for it, and a likely incoming prime minister, to be elected by a majority of the less than 0.25% of the country with a say in the matter, happily parrots his support for a no-deal Brexit that he and everyone else said was not even an option three years ago.
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We are not just in a post-truth world, but a post-shame world. How else to explain that Boris Johnson once lost his job at the Times for lying, yet the same newspaper now endorses him to be prime minister?
[link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/15/populism-boris-johnson-brexit-trump|
How do we stem the tide?
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