Post-Brexit/post-Trump analysis: we are all connected but it’s complicated

June 23 2016 and the Brexit vote delivered by the “mother of democracies” could very well be remembered as the first salvo that toppled the liberal democracy we enjoy in what we call “the West”, essentially Europe and North America, with pockets in South America and Asia. The second salvo thundered on Nov 8 2016 with Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United States.

For all the apologists of authoritarian rules à la Putin, let’s remember that thinkers and writers were regularly jailed for their thoughts throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The ability to think and write freely are now taken for granted but history teaches us that this is not a given right, rather one to be fought for.

We are possibly witnessing the end of 19th century-style liberal democracy and we don’t have a replacement structure at the ready. Nation states are old and cranky at 200 years old, heavily in debt, seemingly totally unprepared to accompany and ride 21st century globalization, most of its people devoid of Ernest Renan-prescribed “vouloir vivre” and governed, mostly, by bland and change-allergic politicians.

Status quo for an over-indebted middle class is not possible anymore so the one who speaks loudest wins-these are the roots of Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. The Democratic Party is mostly blind to what’s going on and paid lip service to change and lost. It went from Yes We Can to I’m With Her — vapid, empty and exclusionary. Make America Great Again was derided but came across as the rallying cry of the “forgotten man” referenced by Trump in his dark inauguration address.

What will be the third major salvo against the liberal democratic order ? It could be the election of Marine Le Pen as President of France. The current political situation is chaos on the right and left: the Socialist Party’s candidate is a lightweight (Hamon) and Les Républicains’ Fillon cannot get out from under a mini-scandal involving his wife collecting an assistant’s salary, a job she claimed publicly not to have performed.

We’re witnessing the first tremors of an upending of the world order with calls for secession from California in the US and calls for the breakup of the European Union. The 18th/19th century construct of the nation state could give way to a future that harkens back to the political unit level that bloomed throughout history: City States, eg New York City, Toronto, Montréal, Paris, Berlin, linked together within trade zones. City states can muster adequate resources, effect change at a quicker pace than sprawling nation-states, and a motivated population can vote with its feet. The acceleration of urbanization won’t be stopped and the UN’s 2014 report states: “Globally, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas, with 54 per cent of the world’s population residing in urban areas in 2014. In 1950, 30 per cent of the world’s population was urban, and by 2050, 66 per cent of the world’s population is projected to be urban.”