Don’t worry about Trump – he’s not the problem!

Double Vision with Charlie Adley

Trump is a problem, but he’s not the problem.  A vacuous psychopath, Trump had to win the game, but he’s just another contestant in an evolving show. To focus on Trump is to miss the point entirely.

Politics is not about Left or Right any more. This is a revolution from all sides of what used to be the political spectrum, from Trump to Podemos; Corbyn to Le Pen; alt-Right to Syriza; Bernie Sanders to Alternative für Deutschland.

The only thing that these disparate types have in common is that they all want to erase what was.

Trump’s victory was another manifestation of the frustration of people who live in a system that no longer works for them. Successive electorates have spurned traditional voting patterns, because they see that Western democracy has been dying for decades.

The Irish know first-hand, having voted against two EU treaties only to have their rejections ignored. Hillary won a million more votes than Trump and lost, so half of America feels unheard. Half of the UK population want to stay in the EU, the young and urban at odds with the older and rural.

Wherever you look, there are too many people feeling ignored.

Time was when governments governed and leaders led. However, over the last 30 years there have been extraordinary changes in the way the world works, which combined to negate the effectiveness of our old political system.

Once governments were active, imposing ideologies upon their people. For some time now they have been able only to react to global economic conditions; the fluctuations of currencies; the mood of the markets.

Through systemic tax avoidance, trade deals like TTIP and trading blocks like the EU, corporations are now powerful enough to dictate to governments; to intervene in the running of previously sovereign nations.

Now businesses are able to sue governments for loss of profits they might have earned in the future; workers’ rights, guaranteed hours and job security have eroded into dust; overseas entities are able to operate inside other nations’ health and education sectors and universally, voters are outraged that their politicians serially fail them.

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.