In response to an FT article by Janan Ganesh on 29th March 2016, entitled 'The trick to populists is to see them in perspective'
https://www.ft.com/content/bbe57aa6-f1dc-11e5-aff5-19b4e253664a
"There is too much neatness here to be credible. It is not obvious that anything connects Jeremy Corbyn, whose leftwing leadership of Britain’s Labour party sprung from nowhere, to Marine Le Pen, whose far-right Front National is a seasoned force in France, to Donald Trumps’s gonzo command of the US Republicans. There is such a thing as randomness. Not everything has to mean something"
Too much neatness? There is no neatness at all, and that’s the point that you seem to be missing, along with many of your colleagues. You are trying to analyse the outside of a box from inside the box.
Your thinking here illustrates a mindset that I suspect many of these ‘random’ people would agree on – they are disgusted with smug and dismissive 'elites' that will look everywhere to understand political and economic problems…except that is, in a mirror.
If you are going to quote Taleb to support your argument, here are a few of his more recent comments on this subject.
On the establishment:
"The ‘establishment’ composed of journos, BS-Vending talking heads with well-formulated verbs, bureaucrato-cronies, lobbyists-in training, New Yorker-reading semi-intellectuals, image-conscious empty suits, Washington rent-seekers and other "well thinking" members of the vocal elites are not getting the point about what is happening and the sterility of their arguments."
On why people are voting for ‘populists’:
"People are not voting for Trump (or Sanders). People are just voting, finally, to destroy the establishment."
On his own preference:
"I far prefer Bernie Sanders to Trump but absolutely no Hillary."
Finally, on the ‘bloodless common sense of…Hillary Clinton’:
"No SHillary"
Hillary Clinton is not ‘bloodless’ Mr Ganesh. She is self-serving, fork-tongued, and as bent as a nine-dollar note, or even a bottle of chips…but bloodless? No. Only where her relationship with honesty is concerned – and there is nothing common-sensical about that. Common sense would suggest that Mrs Clinton should invest in mirror. You might do the same before you next try to wrap up what’s happening in a nice neat box called ‘random’