OK, so this may sound like I'm making things complicated when I'm trying to figure out the Trump victory.

"It's simple man, a lot of people, voted for him and they were just in the right states."

But listen, this election is on par with a growing sense of populism, an electoral college, economic disenfranchisement, nationalism, globalism… need I say more?

I'm not trying to make this election result complicated. It's already complicated.

So I'm gonna be going through a string of thought (cause how much damage can you do in one post?) encouraged primarily from an IQ squared talk featuring Jonathan Haidt, an American social psychologist, and author of The Righteous Mind. I'm looking into how an economic system can effect democracies within the western world, and try to narrow it down to the United States.

Wish me luck.

Ok so within a capitalist system, at least for the most part, there has been a steady increase in the standard of living. You can have your qualms about the system (and I do), but you cannot ignore the fact that it has been beneficial prima facia and that this system is here to stay for a while. So with better economics comes more chances for more rights. This leads to rights for women, the LGBT community, and people as a whole. Some countries are going to be more ready to adopt this, If you want to compare Denmark to Turkey you can, but more than anything, people are shifting their ideas towards governance. However, the next step is to recognize the ideas that stick around a little longer.

Nationalism is constantly going to compete with globalism. There are many kinds of nationalism, but in most cases, it doesn’t seem to do too much harm. If anything, nationalism is a means to get an identity, something many of us are still struggling with. It is a hearth and home argument that usually has nothing to do with the jingoistic nature that many liberals tend to portray it as. For example, after the 9/11 attacks, many New Yorkers and people in D.C. were not as gung-ho as the individuals in the southern states. They wondered "why are they so frustrated when they aren't even the ones who were attacked" as if to say that this was an attack on only two cities and not one of the biggest attacks on the collective American state since 1941. Its patriotism, and globalism, as inclusive and diverse as it is, is against a single narrative patriotism in nature. Globalists are ready to accept all kinds of refugees and are scratching their heads when they try to understand Brexit. While these are issue, I tend to be on the left on, I'm beginning to see the other side. We were ready to pull out our pocket calculators and tell you how great the EU market is, but according to the Haidt, we aren't willing to pull on the heart strings of the people who voted Trump.

The same can be said for the people in the US. We got our little Denmarks on the coasts in New York and California, and we are ready to vilify others just as they are ready to vilify us. This is the next step: under the democratic capitalist system, we are ready to agree within our in-group biases, but when someone disagrees with the number of refugees and immigrants progressive liberals want, people are ready to call them racists. The other side may deem the one group patriotism (which can be equally damaging). The point is that the discourse on issues divided in politics escalates pretty easily to ad hominem attacks on people's character, and no side is ready to admit fault.

Maybe one of the many solutions that liberals may need to implement is an internal recognition of our faults. Maybe it's not our fault, maybe the other side has more to blame, even more, but that doesn’t matter. Properly recognize the fears of the more nationalist party. Otherwise, both parties will feel like they are disenfranchised by the coming (I hope) 4 years. Populism is not meant to be a good or evil thing. It's like physics, it just is. Yes it can lead to some unsavory results, but it also was a threat to keep politicians in check with the people they represent.

Well, it's not a check anymore. The next thing to do is to recognize the next step.