Social Matter

The recent European elections in France, England, and elsewhere on the continent have surprised the international press while not particularly surprising most other people. This is because the people who occupy the positions of influence within these countries are accustomed to having their words listened to. It’s shocking when swaths of the population become immune to lines that were so effective only a few years before.

Most will blame the ‘financial crisis’ that erupted in 2007 world-wide. This financial crisis has also created a credibility crisis that can’t be waved away through credit rating manipulation or through extraordinary central bank policy. It isn’t just that there’s a reduced level of financial trust between people and institutions: it’s that people no longer believe much of what the official information organs are telling them.

Parties like the National Front and UKIP have arisen almost entirely through self-published political material. In Soviet-occupied countries, that communications network was called ‘samizdat’ — except with the difference that, at least in most Western countries, it can be rather tough to wind up in jail for your opinions (although many people in both England and France have had that experience).

When people no longer believe what they’re being told in the newspapers, on TV, or on the radio, they seek out alternative sources of information, narrative, and meaning. Usually, crowds being stupid and vicious, they will make poor choices, even when they hope earnestly to be going down a better path.

It takes more effort to persuade Westerners today than it did in the past, because so many people have lied so passionately for such a long time. The people are more paranoid, they will tend to be more insular, and less trusting of international institutions or global solutions. For an elite entirely trained in promoting international governance, this will be a fatal environment for many of them in a way that few can see right now. When your entire education is predicated on the existence of various international institutions and policy structures that will probably not exist anymore in 10 years, it doesn’t prepare you to adapt to a politics on a different scale.

Putin’s invasion of Crimea, which took Western intelligence agencies by surprise, is an example of the pace at which political shocks will continue to arrive. Because the West’s governments lack real popular support, they can be knocked around by any group that takes initiative and applies pressure. Post-war institutions that seemed fixed may topple over with no warning, given that none of them stand upon strong foundations.

It’s for this reason that the Western political classes seem so hysterical and prone to a brand-new panic disconnected from real problems every three weeks or so: power is up for grabs in the West, which means a time of bitter conflict that few polite people want to think about. It is easier to redirect attention to petty rivalries and minor events than it is to address the real points of contention, because the current leadership has no sensible way to respond.

It’s this dynamic that’s driving to the end of the European Union and the political swap in Europe, and also more profound changes at the core within the United States. The periphery countries of the US are going through crisis in advance, because the US is no longer the power that it once was.