Democracy meltdowns
For months now the world’s two greatest democracies, the very wombs of political freedom and the birthplaces of the rule of law and individual rights, have been mired in the most disgraceful political exercises in their history. The U.K. “Brexit” vote today marks the last of an ideological battle filled with stuff and nonsense. Mercifully, it is ending. Not so in the United States, where the presidential candidates sink deeper into conflicts over race, gender and incoherent economic policies. Can democracy and sound policy survive?
Democracies will never be models of rationality where voters can weigh well-presented arguments and debating points before soberly casting ballots in elections and referendums. But the demagoguery and dishonesty of recent months within these two great nations seem to take democracy to new lows.
The two contests—Trump vs. Clinton, Leave vs. Remain—have produced such volumes of mis representation and distortion that it is impossible to know what exactly voters in either country might be supporting or rejecting when they vote or answer questions from pollsters. What can voters make of such bullshit as Donald Trump’s claim this week (picked randomly from among hundreds) that “For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America”? Or Clinton’s claim Wednesday that she plans to keep regulating Wall Street “so Wall Street can never wreck Main Street again.” Or when British PM David Cameron recently compared his fight to stay in Europe with Winston Churchill’s decision to fight Germany in World War Two: “He (Churchill) didn’t quit on Europe. He didn’t quit on European democracy.”
Voters face mountains of similar political blather, making it impossible for many to reach rational conclusions. Did the shopkeeper in Brighton vote Thursday to Remain in the European Union because he believed an alarmist but bogus British Treasury warning of economic Armageddon if Leave won the referendum? Will a shop worker in Pittsburgh vote for Trump because she believes trade protectionism will save jobs? Or will she vote for Clinton because she’s a woman?
The worst example of democratic horribleness came when the political and media classes in both countries were willing to enthusiastically exploit individual acts of murderous insanity and turn them to political advantage. While there are major differences in motive, context and implication, the killing of British MP Jo Cox was instantly branded “political” in the Brexit context, while the massacre in Orlando became a battleground over gun control, gender politics and terrorism. In both cases, it is highly likely the two killers suffered from major psychological problems for which the political backdrop simply provided motivation. That does not make them political actors. When mentally deranged people kill for political reasons, the cause is mental derangement, not politics.
The exploitation of race and immigration in both countries — where individual freedom and relatively generous immigration policies have long prevailed — highlights the ease with which these issues can be exploited in ugly and divisive ways. The Leave campaign in Britain, whose cause can be supported with strong national sovereignty and economic arguments, is marred by xenophobic activists who appeal to race and prejudice. The potential influx of immigrants is also a real problem for a British economy that, under EU membership, could force it to accept new populations that entered Europe through Germany’s open doors.
Economic policy ideas in the U.S and the U. K. are mired in voodoo macro-economic models that can be used to manipulate outcomes and political opinions. Economic theory is also a black box of ideological manipulation, for and against government action.
This week, Trump and Clinton delivered mindless strings of cheap rhetoric interspersed with glib policy ideas. Trump harked back Tuesday to America’s historic roots of protectionism and promised to guard U.S. manufacturing against the disasters of NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Clinton on Wednesday said she would “say no” to the TPP she previously supported and promised unspecified measures to prevent corporations from sending profits abroad.
In the U.K., the Brexit referendum voter has been the target of endless streams of predictions and forecasts from both sides — as if these had much basis in reality. The worst practitioners would appear to be the Treasury and the Bank of England. The Treasury said Britain would fall into recession if Thursday’s vote supported a British exit. One British editor said British Chancellor George Osborne’s “dishonesty is simply breathtaking” for having concocted a worst-case scenario in which the average Brit would be $8,000 poorer by 2030 if Brits voted for an exit.
The unstated and underlying basic element in both the Brexit and U.S. election processes, the missing substance, is that these are democratic battles over the role of big government in the lives of voters. Do British and American voters want to maintain and expand the role of the state in the economy and their lives, or would they rather see it limited and maybe contracted to preserve the freedoms that exist within these two great democracies?
That’s the debate buried at the heart of the Brexit vote and the U.S. election, but voters have little beyond political craziness to guide them.
VOTERS FACE MOUNTAINS OF POLITICAL BLATHER.