US ELECTION
Blowback for deluded moral guardians
Trump’s stunning victory exposed mischievous forces that appointed themselves to influence completely beyond their place in the world, writes Simon Lincoln Reader
If the whingeing emerging from the losing quarter of the US electorate is actually genuine shock, then it is perhaps the most depressing indictment of the civilised world in recent history. The more it accelerates following Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the US presidential elections, the more it exposes three mischievous forces that appointed themselves to influence completely beyond their place in the world. The first of the three is useless but largely harmless: the polling firms. The UK’s elections of 2015 should have demonstrated that it’s impossible to determine human behaviour via arithmetic, yet the basic theory that what people say in public and what they write in private is completely different was jeered at and the methodology was clearly unchanged for 2016’s referendum, leading to these firms entertaining a second humiliation in two years. The second bunch is more evil but no less stupid. These are the economists — people who should have long been presenting weather ...
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