What is happening?

[redsturgeon]

First the Tories re-elected, then Brexit, now Trump!

The world has become a very strange and unpredictable place.

John

[wheypat]

I think I've woken up in one of those Sci Fi alternative realities. Maybe I'll have a coffee for breakfast . . . . . (I haven't had a coffee since I was 9 years old).

[bungeejumper]

Collapse of the political establishment. Two decades of the rich getting richer, and the poor man getting ignored by the parliament. So along comes a strong man who says he'll reclaim the national dignity and restore full employment and make the trains run on time, and all the people have to do is wave the flags and believe the lies, and start hating foreigners and minorities, and - whoops, no sorry, that was somewhere else.

BJ

[redsturgeon]

Did you almost invoke Godwin there BJ?

John

[redsturgeon]

Perhaps this will be, " the Trump that was heard around the world"

John

[bungeejumper]

Did you almost invoke Godwin there BJ?


Perish the thought. Just musing on a few coincidences. It takes a lot to make a whole people vote for stupidity, arrogance, hate-mongering and a complete absence of policy, and this has been one of those times.

[nigelpm]

Thought a radio caller this morning nailed it.

Older population are unhappy with this "liberal'ism" and "immigration" and are working to vote against it.

Totally unsurprising to me - you can sense it everywhere.

[WrenChasen]

Thought a radio caller this morning nailed it.

Older population are unhappy with this "liberal'ism" and "immigration" and are working to vote against it.

Totally unsurprising to me - you can sense it everywhere.

I'd buy that. Immigration was a key issue for Brexit voters. Someone living in an area they no longer recognise due to an influx of foreigners who have no interest in adopting their new country's way of life is going to vote for whoever they think can restore sanity as they see it. And s*d the wider political implications.

[AleisterCrowley]

I'd guess increasing wealth inequality has a lot to do with it. The 'poor' never have much of a voice, but there are a lot of angry middle class people out there.

[bungeejumper]

Perhaps this will be, " the Trump that was heard around the world"

It's odd for us anglos, isn't it? The irony of voting for a President Fart is totally lost on the rest of the world, including all my American friends. Most of them see a trump as something that ensures a winning hand. Oh well.

[DiamondEcho]

Immigration was a key issue for Brexit voters.

^This is a concern for me but perhaps a greater one is democracy. The UK is increasingly ruled over by Germany and it's French poodle. Whereas the very founding aim behind the original [c1947-50] blue-print for what the EU now is was, in effect, to stop the Germans trying to take over Europe again.

The UK-pols could lie and lie over decades about 'no loss of sovereignty' but there came a point where the electorate saw the EU for what it is. Progressively handing [supposed] soft-power to Germany, in order to stop them invading their neighbours again.

[brightncheerful]

First the Tories re-elected, then Brexit, now Trump!
The world has become a very strange and unpredictable place. John

Really? Having voted Leave and having predicted Trump would win (and said so on TMF (I have not yet found the link), the short response to your comment is that stating personal opinion(s) as if fact(s) is in my opinion symptomatic of failure to emotionally accept that one can assess and approach situations and events (including but not limited to the outcome) in a different way to you.

In my opinion, attitudinal flexibility is vital. I tailor my opinions and approach to suit the circumstances, which means that the following example of how I went about something is not necessarily how I'd go about doing something else.

Probably the highest profile event on the social calendar of the town where I live is the annual Carnival, held on August bank holiday every year. Started in 1945, except for few years here and there, it has continued to be held every year. It is an opportunity for the whole community to take part, be it a float in the procession or local societies and organisations to host competitions, whatever. With procession, funfair, food and drink stalls, live music for dancing in the streets, a beer festival and other pubs stuff, the event nowadays attracts more than 10,000 people.

Just over 20 years ago, shortly after I moved into the area, the committee of the previous year's carnival had announced their resignation en-masse (their offering having been a flop: they'd repeated what had been a good idea the year before only to discover more of the same wasn't wanted) and a public meeting was held to discuss the future of the carnival. I went to the meeting. When the chairman of the meeting asked if anyone would like to take over the task of chairman and form a new committee, I put up my hand. I'd gone to the meeting with my neighbour and he too volunteered to be vice-chairman. After the meeting and we were walking back to our homes I said to him 'what are you going to tell your wife?"

A few people from the previous year's committee said they'd join the new committee. We needed 14, we had 10, I said not to worry, we'd manage. At the first meeting of the new committee, I introduced myself, said I'd been living in the area for a few months, had no previous connections with the town, a complete outsider. I told them that I'm no good at the practical stuff, such as organising floats and activities, but if they'd agree to do all that sort of thing then I'd do the behind-the-scenes admin, marketing and importantly the fund-raising for sponsorship. There was a bit of money in the kitty left over from the past but without sponsors, the carnival couldn't be put on.

I thought about what might be wanted and how to get financial support. Over the next few weeks whenever out and about I chatted to anyone who'd listen about what I had in mind. At the next committee meeting, I outlined my ideas, including that if it didn't work out then at the very least the amount of money in the kitty we had to begin with should be no less after the carnival was over. The committee agreed and we set things in motion. Some 9 months before the carnival date, I had more than enough sponsorship money, including commitments from some organisations and local businesses that had never sponsored the Carnival before.

Previously all moneys collected from public donations during the procession on Carnival day had been distributed by the carnival committee to local charities and good causes. Usually around £400. For some causes carnival day was their most important source of donated revenue. I scrapped all that. Instead, I told the various charities and causes that they could each have a stall at the carnival and could keep all the money they raised for themselves. A spokesperson for one of the causes told me that's not how things are done round here.

I initiated a theme for the carnival; a theme wasn't something any previous carnival had had. Something that didn't go down well with members of the previous committee (at least not until after the Carnival) was the stand-off I had with the fair operator. The fair had always been in the high street, I wanted it moved to a side street. The fair operator pays the carnival committee for the on-going right to hold a fair on carnival day: i don't know how much now but then it was £750. When the fair operator refused emphatically to be in a side street and said we wouldn't have a fair if I didn't agree, I called his bluff. I suppose he thought I'd give in, be overruled by the committee, he was wrong. The committee weren't enamoured but I asked them to trust, we'd come so far. I discovered on making enquiries that the fairground code of conduct is that unless the particular fair operator is willing to give up the right, no other fair can come instead. To minimise disappointment, we hired for the princely sum of £400 a children's roundabout from a party business. Kiddies loved it, so too their parents. Charging less for a ride than the fairground operator would've done, we easily covered the cost and made a profit as well. In the aftermath, I discovered that the fairground operator used to subcontract space at the fair to smaller stall-holders and rides, etc. The subcontractors were livid with the operator for not agreeing to what I wanted, it transpired our town is amongst the most profitable.

The previous committee had commissioned some t-shirts to sell (500 or so) but hadn't sold many (a dozen or so) because the date they'd had printed on the front of the garment was the wrong year. The t-shirts had been stored in the dry. To give myself something else to do on carnival day, I stood at a stall and sold all the t-shirts one by one at £3 each or 2 for a fiver: new, 100% cotton, suitable for cleaning the car, wearing even.

The carnival day itself was not a great success by comparison so I was told by a previous chairman who collared me in the street and expressed his disappointment: no fair, no car boot sale, etc. It didn't helped that it rained, but from my point of view and that of the committee the ideas had worked. Amongst the crowd was a seam of quality people: someone told me they wouldn't normally have gone to a carnival but having heard of what was being planned they'd come along out of curiousity. For the local charities and good causes, the day was fabulous, one local school raised over £300. The sponsors were pleased and said i could count on their support for the following year. Traditionally, the carnival committee would take itself out for a meal as a thank you for all their hard work: that happened. The customary ex gratia payment to the chairman, something I only found about when presented with it, was increased. After paying all costs, the amount of money in the kitty was substantial more than at at the onset.

The committee called a public meeting to discuss the carnival going forward. Some 75 people turned up. Despite mutterings from some, the opinion was a successful carnival. About a month or so before the carnival, I'd decided I'd had enough, too much spare time taken, so I told the meeting I wouldn't be continuing. A leading member of the local establishment told me that I had too, it was expected. I stood my ground. The person that would become my successor volunteered to take over.

I designed the blueprint, my successor built on it and an excellent job he and his committee did: by the time he resigned he had after some 20 years become the longest serving chairman the carnival committee has ever had. In 2014, the carnival celebrated its 40th year. I was invited to a reunion of past chairmen (mostly men) of the C/committee, also a goodbye party for my successor. A woman in her early 20s asked if I remembered her. No. She said she'd been the Carnival princess the year I'd been chairman. We chatted but had as much in common now she's older as then. I chatted to a few people that I am acquainted with, but mostly I listened and observed. The room was packed with people reminiscing, chatting in a convivial atmosphere, some speeches were made. I felt like the outsider I am.

---

Every so often (in my opinion) the world needs shaking up and it takes an outsider to do the shaking. People are creatures of habit so it is easy to mistake habitual tendency with loyalty. The success of Aldi and Lidl is another good example of how two outsider retailers have shaken up the big 4 supermarkets in the UK. Complacency leads to mediocrity, fixed rigid thinking to dull and boring. with no way out and lacking the confidence to go it alone, people self-inflict illness and ailments, obesity for example. When people are inspired by words, and rousing language, that those words might not necessarily convert into successful actions is irrelevant: the point is a choice is offered and hope brings a shining light.

I reckoned Trump would win because he's a businessman, not a politician. Businessmen have a feel for things. Politics can be learned from textbooks, business cannot. The way the politics is marketed to the electorate differs from how a business would market its products and services to customers. An intellectual (deemed superior) approach to that comparison might be to ridicule, to assert lack of experience as a bad thing, but ordinary people (deemed inferior) are fed up with being told how to think, what to feel, how to be.

No amount of legislation can curb how people really feel about something, even if the legislation prevents expression of those feelings in public. I didn't vote Leave because of immigration in itself, but out of concern for loss of national identity, the feeling that when I amble along a street or in some public place I am increasingly no longer amongst what I was brought up to consider my fellow countrymen/women to be. Outwardly I might have to be politically-correct in some things but inwardly I don't have to be. Why I should be expected to compromise on something that doesn't make sense to me just because others have been brainwashed is no reason for me to change. It's not so much that some parts of the UK have been taken over by foreign communities that doesn't sit comfortably, but that surnames are becoming unpronounceable. Whether that would be considered racist is not the point. I suspect the people in the rural areas of USA didn't vote for Trump because of immigration, but out of concern for urbanites acting like they're somehow superior.

I read the articles on Wolf Street almost every day. Much of what is going on in USA replicates UK. A vote for Clinton would have meant more of the same. Predictable is simple more of the same. Nothing strange about it.

[Slarti]

Collapse of the political establishment. Two decades of the rich getting richer, and the poor man getting ignored by the parliament. So along comes a strong man who says he'll reclaim the national dignity and restore full employment and make the trains run on time, and all the people have to do is wave the flags and believe the lies, and start hating foreigners and minorities, and - whoops, no sorry, that was somewhere else.

BJ

Well in the USA, the richer you are, the more likely you are to have voted Trump.

And the older, whiter, more rural, Christian, male you are, the more likely you are to have voted Trump

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html

[dspp]

I went over to the Fool USA mothership to see if they had answered my question re preps for any UK Fools arriving:
http://boards.fool.com/fool-uk-board-cl ... e#32463065
... and there was a partial holding reply.

Then I had a look at their 'best of' board:
http://boards.fool.com/bestof.asp?sourc ... snv0000001
.... and rapidly remembered why 15 or so years ago I decided that the better conversations were on this side of the pond.

Thanks again to Stooz & Clariman for setting up LemonFool.

regards, dspp

[simoan]

First the Tories re-elected, then Brexit, now Trump!

The world has become a very strange and unpredictable place.

John

Hi John,

If you haven't already seen it, the Adam Curtis Documentary "HyperNormalisation" (available only on iPlayer) has a pretty decent stab at what's happening and why world events have become so unpredictable. It's long, at over 2 1/2 hours, but it's a really excellent and thought provoking film and very worth watching IMHO.

All the best, Si

[brianpreston]

First they came for Socialists, but the Tories came back to power in the UK.
Then they came for foreigners but Brexit won.
Now they've come for Democrats, and the Reds av won it.
Might as well open a bottle and keep my glass filled until I'm totally beyond caring.
I suspect hanging will swing back into fashion; job adverts for assisted suicide assistants, and Boris as PM in the medium term.

[JustLetOneOff]

Was this election only advisory?

[redsturgeon]

So Clinton has more of the popular vote.

The only constituency that Trump represents, as has been stated is white christian men.

More women voted for Clinton

More Jews

More Blacks

More Latinos

More minorities

One can only hope that these people feel included by the new administration

I said this as too close to call, absolutely the right prediction

I also said that a Trump presidency would probably not be as bad a people feared while a Clinton one would possible result in greater chance of war.

I remember Reagan coming to power and how that turned out.

John

BTW BnC I didn't have the time to read your tome...perhaps I will catch up with it later if it is relevant.

[brightncheerful]

Shortly after it became clear that DT would triumph, according to media reports, the official website of the Government of Canada’s immigration office – Citizenship and Immigration Canada - crashed.

The thing about Brexit is that the only mainland country for Rmainers to emigrate to would be Scotland. Which for all its charm gets according to the weather forecast cold windy and snow. Wales isn't any warmer.

[88V8]

Read somewhere that on current projections, white Americans will be a minority by 2044.

Pretty fundamental. Can imagine some Americans being upset about that. Trump represents hope to them.

Wonder what the equivalent date is here? If I ask More or Less, I wonder if they'll tell us? Beeb not keen to publicise, would imagine.

V8