On Oct. 19, 2015, the Canadian Federal Election Day, I was reading in a Vancouver library when a man came up and started to make conversation. He was about 60 years old, poorly dressed, and skin's red because of too much sun exposure. A typical friendly white working-class. Naturally, we talked about the election, and he told me he voted for an independent candidate. (In Canada, any individual can run the federal election, and there's no requirement of any party affiliation. However, the chances for individual candidates to win is very dismissal.)
"Why? You think he stand a chance?" asked me.
"No," he grinned, "he won't win." But it seemed like the man had a happy day.
I felt puzzled why anyone would vote for a man or an idea that seems doesn't make any sense, but what's happening in the world now and patterns of history shed light on his choice, the choice of the anti-establishment.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican president candidate, is viewed as the spokesman of the poor and the unemployed. The idea that dumb people support Trump turns out to be a myth. In an article from The Economist, Uptown Trump, statistics show that College graduates and postgraduates made up 43% of Trump's supporters. It's not the dumb, but all the underprivileged choose him.
Whether American working class is going to make Trump their president remains unknown, but it seemed like the anti-establishment in Britain got what they want. Britain voted 52% against 48% to leave EU. The northern part, largely composed of victims of globalization, heavily supported Brexit, while London prefer to stay within EU. The turnout was 72%, 6 points higher than the general election last year. Undoubtedly, Britain is sharply polarized.
What's going to happen after the British political turmoil? Though not quite the same situation, but the after WWII China might provide a rough reference. After the civil war, the Chinese Communist Party successfully tapped farmers' burning desire of having their own land, so the Land Revolution strongly justified and stabilized the CPC regime. After that, the intelligent and the once-privileged has been given a decade long, bloody lesson, namely the Culture Revolution.
The world is always on the track that the underprivileged feel fed up about the status quo and find a way to sabotage it. The winner writes the history, so there's always an honorable reason to justify the subversion, and a cheaply produced "public opinion" to demonize the challenger. That's where the myth that the dumb support Trump was born.
Here, "winner" doesn't specifically refer to the wealthy and powerful, it refers to all the people the current social system serves. Middle class with an ambition to climb higher are definitely beneficiary, if not winner. So are the self-claimed "conscious of society", the press. "Winner" includes everyone who has a shot for a higher social status.
Maybe people who voted for Brexit and people who support Trump knew crystal clear that their choices are going to hurt social welfare measurements, like GDP, employment rate and capital markets. But what's also crystal clear to the poor, but may be not so clear to the middle and upper class, is that those indexes are not designed for the interests of the poor at all.
Globalization means job loss for the low-skilled for sure. Higher minimum wage doesn't soothe the "absolute poverty". By 2020, minimum hourly pay in Britain is going to be 9 pounds, or 60% of projected median earnings. According to official estimates, this will boost the overall pay by 4 billion pounds, of course excluding the potential rise in unemployment caused by higher minimum wage. However, the British government also plan to scrap 12 billion pounds from the working-age welfare by 2020. This means, even if the 4 million goes entirely to the people who are affected by the strapped working-age welfare, which is not likely to happen, it's still not enough to offset their losses.
So the logic of the old man in the library might go like this: If the current system gives no hope at all, why not vote against it? Who cares the intelligent think my choice is stupid, if they don't care about how I'm going to pay my bills?
I'd like to think no one is too stupid to comprehend that voting for Trump -- if he delivers what he promised, which is highly doubtful -- and Brexit might make no sense economically, but they are willing to accept the outcome, if it delivers change. And there's nothing high and mighty we oppose Trump, it's just about to defend our own interests as people who support him. History will tell which side wins, but hopefully, one day we'll find a way to live equally for real.
(With picture from alexedmans.com)
