Rule of the worst

 

A somewhat infuriating essay by libertarian-elitist gadfly Richard Hanania (who is now officially off the Trump train - not sure if he was ever on it in the first place, though). Yes, populists are bad boys und so weiter, but...wait a minute, how is it that the populists are so succesful? Why now? Why not, say, 50 years ago? 

In every democracy, there is always a certain percentage of the electorate which votes "populist". In the United States, we have the presidential bids of George Wallace and Ross Perot. In the UK, we had the National Front. In France, the Front National. In Denmark, that old clown Mogens Glistrup. In Sweden? Well, there was Ny Demokrati. And so on. Heck, there used to be a certain percentage of the electorate in select Western European nations which voted Communist! So how come the populists have suddenly become stronger? 

Same with Hitler. Why did the Nazi Party go from almost nothing to almost everything in just a few years around 1930? Did the IQ of the average German suddenly drop by one standard deviation? Somehow, I find that hard to believe...

What Hanania leaves out of the equation is that the "IQ" (or rather political intelligence and foresight) of the establishment has crashed. The establishment creates its own grave-diggers. When the system doesn´t give any dividends to anyone outside the elites, guess what happens if elections are reasonably free and fair. And very often even if they´re not. Donald Trump isn´t some evil genius (or svengali?) who just emerges out of the woodworks one shiny morning and seduces the masses with magic. He is a product of the system´s malfunctioning. Of course he isn´t the "solution" to much of anything. Trump is the warning, the error message, that the established structures need a serious overhaul. "Why, oh why, didn´t you listen".

It´s almost as if Vilfredo Pareto or Polybius were right or something. We are in one of those almost proverbial cycles. And since our old elites have become "rapacious but effete" (to use Pareto´s admittedly sexist language), they are ripe for overthrow by some kakistocratic demagogue. But who knows, maybe next time they´ll learn. I mean, they are supposed to be high IQ Elite Human Capital.

Right?    

Kakistocracy as a natural result of populism: The problem with anti-establishment politics