22 Jan 2019
The
Spectator editorial has got the story half right, so far as it went. The
political outlook of the editorial, however, forced the thinking into
categories that do not exist.
The problem
with political discourse in western democracies nowadays is that over the last twenty or
so years it has been more and more regulated by political correctness and
speech codes. Progressivism became in the media and then in political
circles the only respectable political outlook. Progressivism came not
even to argue the merits of its positions and advocacy, it simply dismissed
opposition as immoral in some way. One had to be immoral to oppose the
sanctity of progressivist causes.
What is
called populism is the inevitable reaction to the excesses of progressivism.
When one is
rich and powerful, one can cope with disadvantageous situations. America
is rich and powerful and so it should sustain NATO even though it is being
taken advantage of by European states that shirk their own burdens.
The
political conversation during the latter years of the Obama administration was
about transgendered rights and the weather that might occur eighty-five years
in the future. Meanwhile, the white, middle-class of America was being
hollowed out by lack of jobs, and drug use, brought on by unemployment, was
becoming rampant. Life expectancies were falling, and white people
were being condemned for their privilege and for being the root cause of all
the evils in the world. Clearly, the established political class were not
paying attention to a large segment of the electorate – the segment Hillary
Clinton called “the deplorables.” Well, deplorables also vote, and have
feelings too. They could sense the contempt of the progressives towards
them and their plight.
With Davos,
we see all the hypocrisy of the progressive elite on display. Being rich
and powerful, they are not subject to the ramifications of their own
ideology. They believe in carbon taxes because they can afford to pay
them, and fly in private jets to Europe for the conference. They live in
gated communities, but declare a border wall to be immoral, a wall that by
keeping out illegal immigrants will boost the wages of the unskilled domestic
laborer.
In France,
the rioting in Paris began over carbon taxes intended to save the world – in
the year 2100. You can live in Paris and get around quite nicely without
owning a car. It doesn’t matter to you that the price of petrol is $4.00
per liter and is going up to fight climate change – that collection of weather
events eighty-five years in the future. But outside of Paris, a car is
essential for modern life, and for employment. Another thoughtless turn
of the screw affects few Parisians and enables President Macron to strike a moral
pose for the politically correct. But for those who need cars and who use
cars to make a living, the cost of fuel reached the point where they could no
longer absorb the hit. And so the riots began. Presently, they
continue because other examples of elites not being subject to the consequences
of their own ideology are being grieved. They are being grieved in the
streets because addressing these grievances became impossible by normal
means. These matters simply weren’t discusses in polite society.
Populism as
a category is being employed by progressives as a put-down, as yet another
reason to dismiss opposition as beneath contempt and unworthy of talking
to. In Europe, they are held up as proto-Nazis.
If the
middle class of America were as rich and strong as they used to be, they
wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about Davos. Now, Davos has become a symbol of
the excesses and hypocrisy of the elite whose ideas and policies afflict the
middle class with real problems.
Because the
American middle class is largely white, and progressives have persuaded
themselves that whiteness is the root cause of all the evils in the world,
progressives may not be able to come to terms with the revolt against the
excesses of progressivism, which they call and dismiss as populism – a revolt
of the unwashed and uneducated.
Davos will
continue, and globalization will continue to develop, though perhaps not in a
straight line. But Trump and those like him around the world are the
consequence of the insufferable speech and thought codes that came to encrust
public debate in the western democracies, codes that prevented addressing real
issues of the majority of voters in America, and the same elsewhere in the
world. Even now, reactionary and rear-guar actions are being fought by
progressives against Trump’s border wall.
It wasn’t
just the elites of Davos that stoked so-called populist rage, it is the
excesses of progressivism itself that neglected and ignored, when not
insulting, middle class voters.
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