A Changing World

I did write about how we seem to not be willing to make our elected officials accountable for their promises. All elected officials are her to serve the people who voted them in. I believe most of the upsets we have seen over the last year are because these elected officials are not listening and more important, are not keeping their promises. Below is an extract from the book 'A World in Disarray' by Richard Haass. It does help explain why we are in the position we find ourselves now. It does not give the answers but more the reason.

'The 2016 presidential campaign, underscored this judgment by highlighting multiple divisions within the American society that are both long-standing and deep. 

One result of the election is greater uncertainty over the future trajectory of U.S. foreign policy. As the subtitle of this book suggests, support for the old order has crumbled, the result of heightened economic anxiety at home (often associated with globalisation, free trade, and immigration) and growing doubts about the costs and benefits associated with what the United States has been doing abroad, including fighting several open-ended wars in the Middle East and supporting allies in Europe and Asia. It is significant that Donald Trump, the winning candidate, called for putting America First. 

The rest of the World has taken note. Assumptions about the willingness of the United States to continue doing what it has been doing in the world are being questioned as never before by friends, foes, and everyone in between. 

All this, along with an in box best described as daunting in the quantity and quality of the challenges filling it, is what awaits the forty-fifth president, who, like his predecessors, will enjoy great latitude in matters of national security. It is of course impossible to know what sort of foreign policy will emerge from the United States and how other countries and entities will react. Still, it is difficult not to take seriously the possibility that one historical era is ending and another beginning. 

On June 23, 2016, a narrowly majority of those British citizens who went to the polls voted in favour of a referendum that called for an end to their country's membership in the European Union. Those voting for "Brexit" may have wanted to voice their frustration with low levels of economic growth, anger over immigration, fears of unemployment, or unhappiness with a portion of their taxes going to an institution based in Brussels that often seemed remote in order to support countries that often seemed to be profligate. Some voters may simply have wanted to register a protest against the politicians ruling the country. But whatever the motives, the results were profound, affecting not just the future of the United Kingdom and Europe but that of the United States and the entire world as well. 

If Brexit actually happens, depending on its terms it could lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom and a partial unraveling of the EU. If this was to occur, the historic project of European integration born in the wake of the Second World War, an accomplishment that has brought unprecedented prosperity and stability to a continent that had all too often known war, would be placed at risk. Also at risk would be the so-called special relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom, often America's closest and most important partner and ally in the world. 

But even if Brexit or the worst of it is somehow avoided, that it garnered the support it did in a country such as the United Kingdom tells us that there are fewer givens in the world than many of us-indeed, most of us-assumed.'

We do live in changing times and I believe there will be more protest votes to come and then some. Politics and government as we know it will change, hopefully be more accountable and perhaps, the most important change will be honesty.