Occupy, Sanders, Corbyn, Trump, Hanson, Brexit

They're all symptoms of the same affliction.

I mentioned before that I was beginning to get the shits up a little bit with other lefties who think that the rise of Trump in the US; the Brexit vote in the UK; and the huge swing towards Pauline Hanson here, are simply expressions of ignorant racism. Now, I don't want to argue that racism isn't playing a substantial part; I just don't think it's the whole story.

Twenty years ago, we were all held captive—at least, to a certain degree—by the traditional news media. It was difficult for an story to get legs if the papers and the telly chose to ignore it. Well, now everyone's on Facebook & Youtube; we've circumvented the traditional news media and we're actively talking amongst ourselves on a national/international scale. So, what conclusions have we reached?

Well, I think the conclusion that a lot of us have reached is that there are two groups of people—those who have money & power, and those who don't; and the group that does has rigged the social/political/economic/legal system in order to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. I think many things have fed into this: child abuse in the church; weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; Wikileaks; Snowden; the GFC; European austerity; stagnant wages; decreases in pensions; increases in politician's salaries; political expenses rorts; and every story involving police brutality or wrongful conviction of a poor person, or wealthy/connected person getting away with a slap on the wrist.

I think it's all coming together to feed a single overarching narrative of us vs them; and what's coming out of that is a generalised, unfocused revolt against authority. The guts of the story isn't about whether people are swinging left or swinging right, it's that people of all persuasions are trying to circumvent established power structures in the same way they circumvented established media structures; and in doing so, they're looking to "establishment outsiders" for leadership.

Now, I don't know if we're looking down the barrel of a full-scale revolution, or if this whole thing's going to fizzle out to a fart; but I do know that I've been getting frustrated by the fact that nobody else seemed to be joining the dots and seeing the same pattern I was. … And then, lo and behold, this week, 50% of the political podcasts I listen to are talking about it. … It's about time.

I've isolated the relevant part of the most interesting and colourful one. There's a few jokes in there that don't make sense if you haven't listened to the whole thing, but I don't think it's too much of an issue.