Rick's b.log - entry 2025/04/03

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Politics

It was pointed out "what you said in that sentence is just as dismissive and judgemental as the populism that comes from Trump's mouth".

So let me expand a little on this. The main thing to understand is that I fully believe that it is the duty of a citizen to vote.
You see, we live in countries that claim to be democratic. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than some places (often those with "Democratic" in the name).
But this democracy was not handed to us by a benevolent king. It cost blood and bodies. Because throughout history human civilisation is predicated on the idea that the people at the top exploit the people at the bottom. For whatever measure of top and bottom you care to choose - kings and serfs, or western teens and Asian sweatshops, people are exploited.
Democracy doesn't entirely sit well with this scheme because it gives the little guy some rights. And we try to have elections that are some measure of 'fair'. Again, no system is perfect and because of quirks in how the votes are held (such as Britain's First Past The Post), it is often possible for a fairly small "majority" to carry the election simply because that party got a bigger score even if twice as many people spread their votes between all of the other parties.
Like I said, no method is perfect, and I'm not sure that there even is a good solution.

Anyway... the largest number of voters for Brexit were not the ones that voted Leave, they were the ones that didn't bother to vote.
The largest number of voters in the recent Presidential weren't the ones who voted for Trump, they were the ones who didn't bother to vote.

I would like to believe that if more people bothered then this might have turned the vote around. Why? Because populists do a pretty good job of getting their supporters fired up, riled up, and out voting.
Of course, this is just my personal belief. In reality, maybe if every eligible voter in the UK did vote, it would be a massive landslide for Leave. We just don't know.

I mentioned kings and serfs before. Well, those days have gone and we in the democratic west are free to do many things - often around deciding our own path in life. Whether that be career related, gender related, or whatever. Yes, even women. These freedoms shouldn't be taken for granted. In my mother's lifetime, she had to have a joint bank account with my father. She was good with money, he was a failure at, well, life. But he had a penis swinging between his legs so he could hold a bank account. My mother, lacking the necessary penile appendage, needed to have somebody suitably equipped to countersign her right to have banking facilities. It sounds utterly daft, doesn't it? But it happened. Little by little this patriarchal bullshit was pulled down. Little by little our freedoms, rights, and possibilities expanded. Because we could vote for those who promise to do the things that are important to us.
But make no mistake, this isn't a war that was won, job done. This is a constant battle. Because those at the top get value from their exploitation, which is a nerdy way of saying it helps the rich get richer. So while in the past we had to fend off kings and bishops, these days it is CEOs and techbros. They want to remove your rights, your abilities, your options. Why do you think, in the US, the Bezos tat emporium is so very against workers unionising? Ditto Apple. And I understand there is some strife with Tesla in Sweden because, hey, welcome to Europe where that crap just won't fly.

It is also worth taking a good look at why people vote for the likes of Brexit, Trump, the right-wing populists. It isn't just because it's a bunch of gullible people falling for lies playing on their fears. To put it like that may make sense to you if you're left-leaning and tired of reading the same misinformation over and over, but there is something else going on.

Make no mistake here. A primary reason for Brexit wasn't Farage and co lying through their teeth. Nor was it Johnson's infamous bus. It was the complete and total inability of Remain to hold a coherent argument. You see, populists are very very good at snappy slogans and easy solutions to complicated issues. What did Remain offer? Michael-bloody-Gove waffling incoherently about the economy. Leave had a two-word reply: Project Fear.

As it happened, Gove was mostly right. The UK economy is in total disarray, and all the things Labour might want to do can't be done because, well, I rather suspect that if they told the actual truth there would be a run on the banks that would make Truss look like a minor hiccup. But back before the referendum I told mom, and my cow-orkers, that Leave was going to win. Mom wasn't best pleased, my cow-orkers tried to tell me all the benefits to being in the EU - very little of which could be heard on mainstream British media. Far too much attention was being paid to publicity stunts like the Boris Bus. Couple this with the fact the Cameron was quite passionate about the EU and he was somewhat hated. Yes, people voted Leave to spite Cameron and "stick it to the man". People voted Leave because they want to kick out the foreigners. It may seem that these aren't realistic legitimate reasons, but when you're presented with the choice of "In" and "Out" with very little explanation of what these actually mean, then people are going to come up with their own subtext.
I can't help but feel that Remain were so superior and convinced that nobody in their right mind would really vote Leave that they basically phoned it in, just didn't put in much effort or make much of a case. But, alas, the British public - the same ones who overwhelmingly voted for Boaty McBoatface - don't necessarily do what those in power expect. Because, well, that's how it goes when people are given a free vote. They were sick of being told what to do and think by some rich twat in London (oh yes, the irony...).

Likewise on the other side of the ocean, it is worth asking not how the hell Trump could win, but how the Democrats could manage to lose to Trump, a felon for christ's sake, not once but twice. This isn't so much a win for Trump as a deplorable failure for Harris. Was she too wishy-washy? Was it because she didn't have that appendage between her legs? Questions...

Now let's look at populism. To me, populism is based a lot on greed. It's a legitimate way of saying "I want, I want, I want". It gets wrapped up in catchy slogans, and as I said before, complex things are given simple solutions. Often completely unviable - I feel that the United States is about to learn what happens when their executive is obsessed with applying tariffs because [bullcrap emotionally loaded reason].

That being said, quite a lot of the populist manifestos actually make some sort of sense. Wages are crap, everything costs the earth, jobs are hard to come by, life sucks. If you're in Britain and you live north of Cambridge then life sucks even more because in the scheme of things you simply don't exist. So along comes somebody who understands. Who listens. Who proposes possible solutions.
Okay, to me Farage is a shameless grifter, but it shouldn't be hard to understand why the lies he peddles gives hope to some people. He makes the forgotten feel seen.

Likewise Trump - he's clearly a few screws loose and completely full of crap, not to mention a massive bully with paper-thin skin. But his big presentations were targetted to the lost and disenfranchised. This is why the mantra is "Make America Great Again". I'm sorry, but when has America not been great? The US got the position of world police because they had the clout to pull it off, and the general principle of liberty to do it mostly right, and the military might to follow through (and don't waste your breath arguing reality vs perception, I'm quite aware that they meddled a lot and bombed awkward countries and/or installed more compliant governments; I'm just going on the general perception of America here). Many of the world's financial transactions are done using US dollars. For many people around the world, "the American dream" or some romanticised version of it, is what they hope for. So when has America not been great?
From inside, that's where. There is a lot that is broken in the US. Worker's rights are a sick joke and speaking of sick it is inconscient that a first world nation still doesn't have anything that even remotely resembles universal healthcare.
I'm not going to go any further or mention the big elephant in the room because this isn't about bashing the US. Britain is broken too, just differently. But us Brits, we'll just call it "Broken Britain" (bonus points if you roll those 'r's), shrug, and then keep calm and carry on. Because it's Britain, nothing works, the trains are late or cancelled, and it's always raining. That's just how it is. That's how it's always been, at least since either World War Two or Queen Victoria, and that's how it'll be in the future.

Joblessness, homelessness, debt, medical, other precarities... all of these sorts of things play on people's minds. These are the sorts of discussions where populists offer solutions. People want solutions. Is it wrong to want better for yourself? So if somebody comes along promising to make things better, then voting for that person shouldn't be seen as ridiculous.

Marine Le Pen, yes, that naughty woman, pledged to bring the retirement age back down to 62 and bump up minimum wage. Logically this just isn't possible - there isn't the money to make these things realistically happen - but it's what people want to hear. They don't want to have to make decisions like "eat or heat" and they don't want to die on the job. So the person saying they can make these sorts of things happen? Well, it can be convincing.

The solution isn't to demonise the populists, or call their supporters idiots. A better solution is to expose who they really are, but most of all listen to why people are voting for them. Like Macron utterly failed to do when pushing through his pension reform, and his very "do what I say for I know best" attitude that really rubs people up the wrong way.
More and more people here in France are starting to take the far right seriously. Because while the middle ground parties talk about stuff like GDP and fiscal deficit, that has little direct effect on people's lives, the far right have toned down their "we hate foreigners" attitudes and are instead proposing solutions. Solutions that are unlikely to actually work, but solutions that people want to hear. Just like Trump did.

Democracy is fragile, and needs to be protected. And the way this will happen is for the centrist parties (both left and right leaning) to understand that - really - nobody outside of the financial heart gives the slightest modicum of a crap about things like fiscal deficits. If the state can't balance its books, it is clearly because that lot in those hallowed halls failed to do their jobs, right? Let's talk about what really concerns people. Pay. Prices of things. Availability of doctors and dentists. Retirement. The state of the roads. Reproductive rights. Islamification, even. Don't say "oh, we can't talk about that" because the extremes already are (and not necessarily in any productive manner). What will win, what will help democracy continue to thrive, is to have a better argument. Be the more convincing and realistic solution.
Or, put simply, don't cock it up and lose to a halfwit demagogue.

And people, go vote when given the opportunity. It's not a hassle, it's a hard-fought privilege. Use it.

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