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| 2017-02-03 |
| Perry de Havilland at Samizdata tries to understand why the Left stumbled so badly just when it seemed about to win it all. In 2015 the Left had the media, academe, multilateral institutions firmly in the bag. The European Union seemed forever and US Federal government appeared destined to remain in progressive hands. The words "permanent progressive majority" and the end of the white race were spoken of as accomplished fact. Then came Brexit and Trump in a single annus horribilis with a suddenness that defied explanation. The progressives went from dominance to defense in an instant. De Havilland has no comprehensive explanation of why the dramatic reversal took place but thinks the first sign of a Leftist stall was Gamergate in 2014, when the Arc of History started to mush and wing over. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #5 Yes, leftoids can be smart when it comes to getting and keeping power. And to be fair, their corpse count is off the scale. With all those broken eggs, we should be up to our ears in omelettes by now. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2017-02-03 20:00 |
| #4 The Dirt People were listening. The leftoids (the smart ones) will be more careful next time. (Yes, leftoids can be smart when it comes to getting and keeping power.They just suck at doing anything useful with it once they have it..) |
| Posted by: charger 2017-02-03 19:28 |
| #3 As de Havilland put it: "so certain was the Left that they had won the culture war, so confident with the established media under their effective control that ‘truth’ was theirs to declare, that they gave up on any pretence of objectivity. And so they began to maneuver with the assurance and arrogance of an army under an umbrella of complete air(wave) supremacy, a supremacy that suddenly proved to be illusory". |
| Posted by: Pappy 2017-02-03 19:13 |
| #2 I'd point to the rise of alternative media outlets. The MSM has always been in the business of telling people what they should think and believe. But as their reach declined, so did their power to influence people. Combine that with the globalist Left's over-reach especially in relation to immigration, and many people found they no longer believed what they were being told to believe. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2017-02-03 15:06 |
| #1 A preference cascade. The people finally caught on that they were not alone. I think Brexit really launched Trump's turn out with a kind of "Look what they did" response and they identified Hillary with the globalist elite that had just been rejected. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2017-02-03 08:33 |