It's so easy to blame someone else, isn't it? Take your pick from corrupt politicians, big business, the media, foreigners, the legal system, the cops, the establishment ...
We are most certainly living in an age of disillusionment. We don't like the status quo. Everything is rotten. When we go the polling booths we feel like voting for "none of the above". They are all as bad as each other. And that is leading us, all round the world, to reach for more radical candidates and more radical religions. There is a strong sense of "we must do something different", which pushes us into the arms of Trump, Corbyn, Syriza, ISIS et al.
But stop for a second and ask why we are disillusioned. What exactly is wrong with the world? At the risk of heroic over-generalisation, there are two main things going on which are making us all feel less happy about our lot. The first is that our world is changing and whether we like it or not we need to change with it. As we are living longer, we are facing an increasing problem about how we pay for the retired. Improvements in automation change the profile of the jobs that we can do or need to do. We need to look after an increasing fragile environment. All of that means that our politicians cannot offer us a land of milk and honey. There are difficult times coming which will mean that we will have to rein in our quality of life. And that's not an easy message for any political candidate to give.
The second problem is that the science of manipulation is getting stronger and stronger. Advertisers and policymakers are finding ever more powerful ways of influencing the way that we think. Big business is getting better at selling us stuff that we really don't need. Politicians are finding increasingly slippery ways of pushing their agendas. The problem is that all of this erodes our trust in the people using these techniques. We are getting to the point where we don't believe anything that the establishment tells us, simply because it is the establishment.
At the same time, the media and opposition politicians are very good at picking fault. No opposition ever got voted in by agreeing with the Government. Good news is no news. So even when the Government does something reasonable, the opposition still finds something to complain about. The overall sense that the public gets is that it is all rotten.
There is a solution, but it's not easy. We have to recognise that we, the voting public, are a part of the problem and the solution. The only reason that Trump is popular is because people are voting for him. But what most people seem to forget is that politicians don't have a free ride. They can't say whatever they want. They can only nudge us into a direction that we already want to go. So if the public all started asking for something the politicians would soon have to follow.
But we have to start by getting rid of this blame culture. We have to recognise that sometimes the establishment gets something wrong and sometimes it gets something right. We the public probably have to be prepared for a reduction in our quality of life in the interests of the greater good. We need to look for consensus rather than trying to bash the other guy. And sometimes protecting the rights of one group of citizens can disadvantage another group. That's how policy goes - it's a little bit of give and take.
