Re: I am Mad
@Sampler
Australia, the US and the UK are not all that different. So have we not seen the same thing? I think the concerns of 'ordinary' citizens in these countries are largely the same but where we, in Australia, differ from the US and UK is that voting is compulsory in our elections.
I understand that many people in the UK and especially the US feel that not voting is an important right and I accept that. But on the other hand, I believe the compulsory voting necessarily engages - to at least some extent - the entire population. I suspect that this is what keeps Australian politics relatively centrist and makes elections mostly - though never exclusively, unfortunately - about policy issues.
Of course, we don't have a President so that's also a fundamental difference but what about the UK? The similarly between the US Presidential election and the Brexit vote is that, as voting wasn't compulsory, the appeal was much more emotional because they were not so much trying to sway people with their arguments but trying to fire up the existing feelings of the population.
In both the US presidential election and Brexit, one side was firing people up to change things and fix things and make it all the way their pre-existing emotions and biases tell them it should be - telling them that they've been marginalised and that their lay-person instincts were right all along. The other side was telling people to, essentially, stay the course - that the system works and we just need, essentially, some tweaks. Change this tax a little, amend that law a smidge.
In the US, you've also got a real patchwork of voting laws which certainly contribute to these results because, again, the election is not about swaying people but about turnout - about encouraging enough of your people to actually go and vote. There are barriers to voting and the goal is to get 'your' people impassioned enough to overcome those barriers and vote.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
