The subject line is flip, to keep some perspective, but nagging in the back of my mind, I'm concerned about a growing meme.
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...
Perhaps Trump and Brexit will be wake up calls for people to go out and vote.
Now the worrying thing is if others don't take that message and do try to Do Something About It, like changing the rules of the RNC convention process, or negotiating free trade and labor agreements with the EU. These run the risk of perpetuating the problem of not listening, and if you invalidate the vote as a vehicle for voice, there will be ... other ways people express themselves.
So, yes, there is that possible trendline, but equally there are others trying to understand root causes and address the diseases, not the symptoms.