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Comment by BjoernKW | Hacker News Reader

> We've reached a point where factual evidence is no longer sufficient to convince someone of something.

Has it ever been? This whole talk about a post fact world is bollocks anyway. It's a heavy-handed device contrived to explain things like a President Trump or Brexit that according to conventional political wisdom aren't allowed to happen.

Well, guess what if people on either side of the political spectrum hadn't been so bloody arrogant we'd have neither Brexit nor Trump today. More importantly, people wouldn't believe some nonsense they read in the news if they were treated as actual, thinking human beings.

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"Well, guess what if people on either side of the political spectrum hadn't been so bloody arrogant we'd have neither Brexit nor Trump today. More importantly, people wouldn't believe some nonsense they read in the news if they were treated as actual, thinking human beings."

Arrogance didn't create this. Racism and Xenophobia? Yep. The destruction of confidence in government and the politicians who work there? Yep. A willingness to believe anything that confirms your current worldview? Yep.

The idea that people believe in things like "Pizzagate" because "they're not treated nicely" is nonsense and an attempt to shift blame onto those who don't deserve it.

>we'd have neither Brexit nor Trump today

That's just it, though. Was that ever realistically avoidable? Or was the momentum of arrogant politics such that that was inevitable?

In 2016 it was too late already but it's hard to say when the exact turning point happened. In terms of Brexit it possibly was two-fold: The hurried Eastern enlargement (which ironically was expedited by the UK) and flaws in the design of the euro.

After Trump's victory there were some signs of humility and contrition, which unfortunately were very quickly replaced by the "post fact world" meme and an arrogant "See? We were right all along." stance again.

Developments like that are no one-way road. If people come to their senses the pendulum might swing the other way again.

>After Trump's victory there were some signs of humility and contrition, which unfortunately were very quickly replaced by the "post fact world" meme

This chafes me to no end.

This belief that Trump/Brexit is some kind of disruption to the natural order of things and if we just get rid of "fake news", things will go back to the way they're supposed to be. We just need to bring back the "real news", like pondering if airplanes get sucked into black holes or gossiping about Clooney getting divorced. Then Hillary & Co can be in charge like the gods intended.

It seems to me that the sense of entitlement to the office is one of the things that people found so repellent about Hillary.

Exactly.

And this doubling down that they're doing is only burying them further.

Humility and contrition weren't exactly the route the Republicans used to get the pendulum to swing back their way again.

In UK politics Labour is a veritable orgy of soul-searching about what they did wrong after a slightly-less-narrow-than expected election defeat, which Brexit hasn't exactly improved. The SNP has a clear "voters were cheated by the lies of the London media" grievance narrative and hasn't shifted an inch on the desirability of an independent Scotland. One of these parties has seen the political pendulum swing back towards them.

Ultimately, if the Democrats are to win office again they'll do it from capturing votes from people angry enough about Trump to change their voting intention (and from having a different candidate) not from conceding he was right about a huge number of things. Sure, it might be a comfort blanket for their own mistakes, but the "Trump and his supporters deceived voters!" narrative is also at least as likely to succeed at winning over disaffected Trump/non-voters than trying to reinvent themselves by borrowing his policies or tone.

I don't think Trump won based on people thinking he was right, or that his positions (what positions?) were correct. There were some people who believed that, but not enough for him to win. Trump won because there were enough people who voted "not Hillary" to put Trump over the top.

You don't persuade people like that with facts. You persuade them by running a candidate less flawed than Hillary.

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