Another aspect that I think is part of the issue is simple projected authority and certainty. Mr. Trump, our Mr. Farage and, well quite a lot of our UK government take care to speak with certainly and assurance about simple solutions.
When an awful lot of the hand life’s dealt you is ‘random’ and completely out of your control (as a lot of life is), that’s tempting - I’m not strongly responsive to the authoritarian approach, but I can see that “The problem is “x”. And also “y”. And we can fix that by “a”, and “b” - then “c”! And then everything will be just fine again - I mean it!” is bloody tempting.
The problem is that if the counter is to say “that isn’t that simple - here’s lots of detail that combine to show that’s not even slightly true”, well that’s not what people want to hear and all those qualifying details don’t sound as authoritative and warm, and certain. They want to hear that it’s simple and easy and here’s the fix… Well, the world isn’t like that, we know, but in debunking all that, the emotional hook isn’t there.
…it’s that use of language that sings to people, that we need to push back against, on both sides of the Atlantic.
(The ‘authoritiarian’ personality idea harks back to Bob Altemeyer’s work with Carnegie.
And there’s a written-to-be-accessible summary at
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ - for the interested.)
