Ed Luce: belief

Transcript context

…This past weekend, there was a plebiscite in Puerto Rico on statehood, and 25 percent of the electorate showed up. Today, yet again, we have another election here in Virginia. We have one every six months, where probably 20 percent of the electorate will show. Is this apathy, complacency, fatigue, or is there some illiberal mechanism that’s holding the electorate back? I think there is a cynicism about politics, which incidentally, manifested itself in France last Sunday, round two, the Macron En Marche landslide, was 40 percent turnout, which is a historic low for France. We’ll see this coming Sunday whether that goes up. I think there is a deep cynicism about politics, and about experts and establishment politics. Remember, in France, there’s also an anti‑establishment thing going on. I think there’s a deep cynicism about it, which is really quite understandable, if you look at what the experts have bought us. They bought us the Iraq War. The experts very much mis‑sold how that would fare. They bought us 2008. The experts were the last to see it coming. I think Millennials, who until last Thursday in Britain, had been turning out at lower rates in most democracies than other age groups, have grown up with this cynicism, and they feel it’s normal. Tyler would say that’s healthy, because they’re not actually angry. They’re just apathetic. If you’ve got a choice between anger and apathy, let’s go for apathy, but I think it’s highly corrosive of liberal democracy. There’s a related question on the iPad. I’m rewording a bit. Is it the case that elites have so used the judiciary and administrative law, in the case of the UK, through the European Union, that actually Brexit and Trump are simply democratic backlashes wanting to take back for democracy powers that had taken away from the democratic will of the people, and it had to get to the point of Brexit and Trump for that actually to be reversed?…

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