Politics in the Western world this year has been dominated by two stories, Brexit and the Trump nomination. And there's been a quiet but steady drumbeat of response to both stories, to the tune of, "The Voters Got It Wrong".
Of course, there's nothing new about whining about the results of a vote, or Monday-morning quarterbacking. But it's coming more than usual from the intelligentsia, who are traditionally the flag-bearers of Western democracy. And that's worrying.
It's just a meme for now, but it's the sort of meme that authoritarians down the ages have been good at mining. Combine that with deep economic uncertainty -- of the three Great Economic Disasters predicted as plausible this year, one has happened and the other two are still quite possible -- and you've got a recipe for Something Has To Be Done About It thinking, which usually goes horribly wrong.
So far, it's just a possible concern, and hopefully the rest of the year will turn out okay. But I do find myself slightly nervous about the trend lines...
