If voters mistake stupidity for authenticity, we are all in danger

The idea that complicated issues can be solved by feckless quick-fix chancers could lead to tragedy

Are we at war yet? Newspaper deadlines being what they are, you may, at the time of reading, be in a better position to answer that question than this column. With startling suddenness, the world has reached one of those moments when catastrophic news seems imminent: in which, indeed, the chief actors actually appear to be willing events to take the most devastating, unthinkable course. Or is it all just noise? Belligerent, idiotic, irresponsible mouthing off by national leaders who are, by general global agreement, unfit to hold office? The consensus at the moment is that this is the best we can hope for.

We know how Kim Jong-un was put in place. He is the hereditary leader of a corrupt totalitarian regime in the world’s last fully Communist stronghold, who succeeded to power without any need of a democratic mandate. But what on earth has happened in America? What, for that matter, has happened in a number of mature Western societies whose electorates have decided that all their experienced politicians are so repulsive that they would rather be led by a hot-headed know-nothing or a puerile fantasist untainted by familiarity with government.

Anything, it appears, is a more attractive option than established political leadership, whatever its ideological complexion: in the United States, it’s a motormouth businessman whose public standing comes via reality TV. Here at home, it’s Jeremy Corbyn, a perennial protest marcher locked in adolescent dreams of world revolution. There is an important clue here. Since the rejection of professional leaders and the elevation of amateur ones cuts across Left-Right boundaries, we must assume that this is a cultural phenomenon rather than a political one.

It is not the case that voters are rejecting one particular brand of governing, or any specific set of economic solutions: they are just blowing up the whole idea that experience and knowledge might be needed to run a country. And this at a time when modern nationhood and global economics are more complex and sophisticated than ever before: when more, not less, expertise and competence would seem to be required as basic qualifications. Would the people who voted for a Donald Trump or a Corbyn precisely because they were not professional leaders, want to be operated on by an amateur brain surgeon, or be flown across the Atlantic by a completely inexperienced pilot? This is perverse, surely. But it must be somehow explicable and, as a matter of urgency, we must try to understand it before the Trump fiasco produces military apocalypse or the Corbyn embarrassment leads to economic collapse.

If the people of advanced countries are making such reckless use of the franchise that it could undermine their own futures – or even the safety of the world – then something has gone very wrong, not just with the politics of the day but with the principle of freedom and the responsibilities it incurs. It is tempting to come to the most facile, despairing conclusion. Perhaps political consciousness really has been corrupted by popular culture with voters treating the democratic process as if it were a reality TV show in which they vote out the contestant they have decided to dislike for whatever frivolous reasons. Or maybe the impact of social media has elevated benighted prejudice to equal status with real knowledge and judgment. All that may be true but it is not the whole answer. Showbusiness and mass entertainment have had their trivialising influence for generations. What is happening now is both more profound and more confusing.

Voters seem to be demanding that they be governed by people who sincerely understand their desires but who are so unaware of the workings of government that they are incapable of fulfilling them. By definition, the more ignorance those would-be leaders demonstrate in their pronouncements, the more sincere they appear. Authenticity equals stupidity – or maybe the other way round.

Trump’s infantile egotism means that he can blithely deliver statements which are outrageously and demonstrably false. This makes him remarkably similar to many of those who support him for whom such mistaken or half-baked views have never had serious consequences. What his supporters clearly assume is that their own simplistic naivety could be a working solution for national leadership if only somebody would try it. Let’s just get rid of all these conniving elitists who mystify us with their patronising guff about how complicated everything needs to be and get down to the basics: America can be great again if we get rid of the foreigners and their cheap goods; everybody in Britain can be happy and healthy if we attack the “rich”. Anybody who won’t accept the obvious truth of these ideas is evil. Learn to talk like this and you will get a quite startling number of votes.

This, it would seem, is the new concept of democracy: the absence of experience and knowledge becomes the highest recommendation for office because you sound just like the demos, otherwise known as ordinary people. The more crass or simple-minded or demotic your pronouncements are, the more trustworthy you must be – because what you say promises a miraculous cure for all modern life’s exasperatingly complex dilemmas.

Trump advises the country to ignore what all the conniving cynics in Washington say: not only does he think like the guys in the bar but he behaves as if he’s still outside the Washington institutional network, re-tweeting unreliable news stories when he could get accurate information from his own governmental agencies. He knows he must go on with this guileless outsider charade even though he is in the White House. Corbyn still plays the holy fool – the trusting believer in Robin Hood economics even when fiscal evidence shows it would be ruinous.

So Trump must double down on his irresponsible war-mongering and Corbyn must idealise state socialism – even in Venezuela. Their ignorance must remain inviolable. How much more of this can the integrity of democratic politics withstand?

‘The more crass, simpleminded or demotic your words are, the more trustworthy you must be’