The_Guardian_-_2016-12-29

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| Next | Section Menu | Main Menu | Previous | Donald Trump Opinion The lesson of Trump and Brexit: a society too complex for its people risks everything John Harris The populists have grasped that communities are struggling to cope with upheaval and intricacy – and have exploited the backlash ‘The simpler past seems more attractive than today’s complex reality, and so people vote [thanks to] inchoate frustrations.’ Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters By way of a gloomy seasonal party game, try this. Take the proverbial back of a cereal box, divide it into six rectangles, and on each one, write a supposed cause of the political turbulence now gripping the west: “the financial crash of 2008”, “inequality”, “racism and xenophobia”, “Tony Blair,
asically”, and all the rest. Then get out the gin, maybe put on a Radiohead album, and enjoy hours of doom-laden conversational fun. Were I daft enough to play the game myself, on one rectangle, I think I’d write an explanation so far barely mentioned in the acres of coverage of 2016’s chaos, but one right at the heart of it all: “Everincreasing complexity, and the diminishing returns it now creates.” It’s not the snappiest conversation starter, I know. But if you’re looking for a grand catch-all theory that ties together Donald Trump, Brexit, and the general sense of a world spinning into chaos, it might not be a bad place to begin. Complexity, after all, is a 21st-century leitmotif, captured in those news-channel screens on which scrolling tickers and stockmarket data combine to create the impression of a world so elaborate it is beyond anyone’s control. The average browse on Twitter creates exactly the same impression; so does a scroll through a Facebook news feed, now rendered even more confusing by the fact that a great deal of its content may well not be authentic “news” at all. Individual lives are more scrambled and complicated than they have ever been. For a lot of us, modernity is a mess Perhaps more crucially, individual lives are surely more scrambled and complicated than they have ever been. For a lot of us, in fact, modernity is a mess: not just of multiple user accounts, passwords, contracts for smartphones and Wi-Fi, and the generalised insanity of consumerism, but working lives that now have to undergo endless peaks, troughs and reinventions. The latter applies even to those who think of themselves as relatively successful, let alone people at the blunt end. From the US tax code to the structures of the European Union (an organisation so complex that leaving it is starting to look all but impossible), all this complication is also reflected in the workings of states and governments. Moreover, though they were sold to us as a means of simplifying the tangled messes weaved by bureaucracies, the endless marketisation and contracting-out that now define policies across the planet have only made things worse. Consider what the American thinker David Graeber calls his “iron law of liberalism”: “Any market reform, any government initiative intended to reduce red tape and promote market forces will have the ultimate effect of increasing the total number of … regulations, the total amount of paperwork, and the total number of bureaucrats the government employs.” There perhaps was a time when the idea that increasing complexity would benefit most people just about held true: the 1990s maybe spring to mind. But now? As we all know, wages are continuing to stagnate. Across the UK, Europe and the US, there are increasing worries about sluggish-to-flatlining productivity and disappointing economic growth. Automation is already disrupting millions of working lives. Therein, of course, lies huge opportunities for the insurgents now defining the political zeitgeist. Their basic approach is: a withering look at the labyrinthine realties of trade, technology, population movement, international agreements and the rest, followed by the simplest of answers: “Take back control”, “Make America great again”.
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His frank language about both the p
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doing my campaigning. This is the a
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“I just want to tell everyone I a
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Penman said the government may have
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She has now written to appeal, but
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[flying] up in the air. I saw two c
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It says the rest of the world also
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Estate agents recognise that the qu
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Sahara, to spend their winter in So
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Many Palestinians and some Israelis
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December 26, 2016 Trump also said o
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unusually blunt language to describ
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“[Israelis and Palestinians] have
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Formally the Foreign Office did not
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least because of the broader redefi
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J Alex Halderman and Matt Bernhard,
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and they’re still there. The deat
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A tractor removes rubble as the Syr
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in the attack”. Twelve people die
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harmed during the 2013 transfer sag
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top physical form and it’s well-k
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efused to grant Coleman permission
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signing bonus. Fellow rookie Isaac
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Lewis maintained his momentum with
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Bailly was on Wednesday included in
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necktie on Panthers’ flight to Se
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“She’s extraordinary,” Mullin
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Alvin Carpio (@AlvinCarpio) It gets
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came in the second quarter, near th
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more towards elusive backs than mas
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the ends of the streets and helicop
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‘South Coast Mariners’: Harry R
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That was a minor gripe, however, an
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here’s the 1985 John Player Cup f
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South Africa in Rio. But rather tha
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Chelsea’s 3-0 win in which Pedro
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England players Derek Underwood, Ke
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Gary, far left, and Phil Neville, s
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It looks like a happy christmas in
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Rain washed out the final session o
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Wide World of Sports (@wwos) Satura
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cricket.com.au (@CricketAus) The
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Jarrod Kimber (@ajarrodkimber) MCC
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Tea on day four - Australia 465-6 B
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close 3.42am GMT 03:42 112th over:
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2.51am GMT 02:51 102nd over: Austra
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pic.twitter.com/LqUZHsPF9n December
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1.29am GMT 01:29 91st over: Austral
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Perhaps more impressive was the pro
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