Opinion: Why so many people think the world is rigged
The reflex response of the centrists has been “tsk,” followed by “tsk.” A sad shake of our worldly heads at the regrettable resentments of young lefties who don’t understand the fruits of capitalism and their deplorable counterparts on the right, blind to the gifts of globalism. But for some reason, the insurgencies don’t find this condescension persuasive. And so, rather than doze through another wake-up call, the former establishment might try ’fessing up to their failings.
I’d start with the repeated exaggeration of our own competence and expertise. American leaders shifted somewhere during the past two generations from pledging good-faith effort to promising specific results. Here’s Franklin D. Roosevelt during the campaign of 1932, outlining his New Deal: “This country needs, and unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.
How rich of us to complain about the lack of specifics in the Sanders health plan, or the impracticality of Trump’s border wall. The establishment, not the insurgents, discredited expertise. Ordinary folks have also noticed that the establishment regularly over-delivers on promises that are never spoken, yet well-understood. A child-care subsidy for working parents would be a step down the road to communism, but subsidies for business are just business as usual. Miscalculate in starting a war and you’ll get rich on paid speeches and corporate boards, but miscalculate by skipping a few mortgage payments and you could be living on the street.
In very different ways, both outsider candidates have revolted against the government of so-called experts — the “best and brightest” who don’t even realize that the phrase is a lacerating put-down popularized by David Halberstam in a book about the “whiz kids” who blundered into the Vietnam War. Sanders and Trump each offer a version of FDR’s persistent experimentation. They promise to try something new.
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