>Let's stop downplaying what happened there and in the US: a similar, unethical & careful PSYOP teasing legitimate popular concerns to tip the vote toward a result that breaks the stability of the West.
Actually let's stop altering what happened in the UK and in the US (and in France).
The masses, after 40+ years (beginning with Reagan and Thatcher) of getting the short end of the stick,
increased globalization and loss of domestic worker jobs (which the Left once, especially in Britain, was much protective of),
and the left (using the term loosely for people like Clinton, Blair, and co) and right elites agreeing on business as usual on everything that matters (including corporatism, trillion dollar bank bailouts, and war) and peddling token social/religious issues to divert their ever impoverished working class voters, while having pundits and specialists telling people who've seen their jobs and cities destroyed how they had it "better than ever",
decided to go off the rails and vote for a populist "bring jobs back, stop globalization, reduce imperialism wars" candidate in the US, and a "fuck EU imposed laws and German economic leadership, let's have a sovereign Britain again" brexit, or take it to the streets in France.
The 10% of well of "good hearts", who were never affected all those years, and probably have it better than ever indeed, consider them deplorables, unwashed masses, etc, wonder why the masses don't just "eat cake" and get on with the program, to let their favorite politicians continue business as usual, and of course are certain that they know better and everybody else
Unable to understand their defeat, those bleeding hearts, blame it on some inconsequential villainy on the part of Russia, on some BS "collusion", on the masses voting "against their own interests", and whatever other straw they can grasp...
They are the same people who consider a president who helped destroy 5 countries and turn them into hell-holes of civil war and fundamentalism a Nobel peace prize award winning good person, and another who tried to withdraw from 2 wars, de-escalated and met with the S.K, and acknowledged that the real competition to the US in the 21st century is China in trade, as a bad person (because he has no manners and tweets random BS, which, as we all know, is what's really important in a politician).
In the end everybody votes based on their wallets, and the 10% (and an additional percentage who feeds of them) never had reason to disturb the status quo.
US, UK & France situations are different. Widely. Each with their own issues. But every issue can be spun, let's say... elegantly. As you do. Amazingly.
I did not mention Russia. If that were a country, it could mean several other countries too.
I did not blame it on only manipulation, but on manipulation based on existing tensions & facts. That does not excuse the past 40 years of political morass of course. But that does not excuse populists lying and twisting this situation for their own interest - and certainly not the people's: see where the US & UK are today.
As for UK & France "masses", for the past 40 years, we have lived in _peace_ on our homeland, contrary to the few centuries before. Not by accident.
As for the rest, you can have it way harder than others and still consider populism, racism, mysoginism and cronyism supporters as "deplorables". They still are.
Tagging Trump as "has no manners and tweets random BS" is the least you could do. He's not bad only, he is a stain on US history. Not only does he lacks manners... I don't even know where to end if we go down this hole. The only thing he doesn't lack is ego. To the point it's embarrassing. Not only for him, but also for the future of the institutions and the nation that his role makes him supposed to protect. As well as the people that let him have his ways from the get go.
>US, UK & France situations are different. Widely. Each with their own issues.
Yes, and some of those issues are more common. Thatcher and Reagan for example, started the same big money / fuck working class policies at about the same time. The "left" parties similarly diluted their support for common folks and criticism of corporatism and got into warmongering and business as usual in both countries (e.g. Clinton, Blair, to today's TINA stars).
>I did not mention Russia
Sure, but many did so I addressed that too. I was giving the bigger picture as I see it of the situation, not addressing solely what you wrote.
>As for UK & France "masses", for the past 40 years, we have lived in _peace_ on our homeland, contrary to the few centuries before. Not by accident.
No, because UK and France had become less significant post-WWII, lost most of their colonial slaves, that span half the earth, and US and USSR became the dominant top dogs fighting each other.
Plus Germany was for half a century after WWII split into two, given to different countries to nanny, and deprived of an army -- precisely to avoid more wars in Europe.
So it would make no sense for UK and France to fight, as the stakes were low. When those were powerhouses, fighting for global expansion/dominance, sure it made sense. In the past 40+ years it makes no more sense than Luxembourg and Finland fighting.
US and USSR did fight a lot, had the whole Cold War thing, and tons of wars by proxy all around the world. Same way US and China today are at tension.
>As for the rest, you can have it way harder than others and still consider populism, racism, mysoginism and cronyism supporters as "deplorables". They still are.
Well, there's a long history of the good souls on the top towers of society looking down on the unwashed "Morlocks", and patting themselves in the back for how better they are.
Part of this is because most middle class/upper middle class people learn from a young age to consider a person's worth by their net worth, clothes, manners, school they went to, and so on, and those deplorables don't cut it.
(Of course the poor black, latinos, muslims, immigrants, etc, cut it even less, and are usually even more misogynist, homophobic, etc than the flyover state deplorables, but they're not usually classified as belonging to them. They vote the right way, plus, it's not like the bleeding hearts who "care" for them really care. They just want to signal their higher virtue to the rest of the whites.).
The funny thing is that the upper classes consider the "deplorables" as lesser persons, because they haven't adopted the intellectual fashions, that they themselves just got recently (a few decades ago, all the same "refined" classes were themselves openly anti-gay, misogynist and had no problem with it, in fact in the 70s and 80s you couldn't be in "good" society without be such).
Actually let's stop altering what happened in the UK and in the US (and in France).
The masses, after 40+ years (beginning with Reagan and Thatcher) of getting the short end of the stick,
increased globalization and loss of domestic worker jobs (which the Left once, especially in Britain, was much protective of),
and the left (using the term loosely for people like Clinton, Blair, and co) and right elites agreeing on business as usual on everything that matters (including corporatism, trillion dollar bank bailouts, and war) and peddling token social/religious issues to divert their ever impoverished working class voters, while having pundits and specialists telling people who've seen their jobs and cities destroyed how they had it "better than ever",
decided to go off the rails and vote for a populist "bring jobs back, stop globalization, reduce imperialism wars" candidate in the US, and a "fuck EU imposed laws and German economic leadership, let's have a sovereign Britain again" brexit, or take it to the streets in France.
The 10% of well of "good hearts", who were never affected all those years, and probably have it better than ever indeed, consider them deplorables, unwashed masses, etc, wonder why the masses don't just "eat cake" and get on with the program, to let their favorite politicians continue business as usual, and of course are certain that they know better and everybody else
Unable to understand their defeat, those bleeding hearts, blame it on some inconsequential villainy on the part of Russia, on some BS "collusion", on the masses voting "against their own interests", and whatever other straw they can grasp...
They are the same people who consider a president who helped destroy 5 countries and turn them into hell-holes of civil war and fundamentalism a Nobel peace prize award winning good person, and another who tried to withdraw from 2 wars, de-escalated and met with the S.K, and acknowledged that the real competition to the US in the 21st century is China in trade, as a bad person (because he has no manners and tweets random BS, which, as we all know, is what's really important in a politician).
In the end everybody votes based on their wallets, and the 10% (and an additional percentage who feeds of them) never had reason to disturb the status quo.