Worldwide The Spillover Is To The Right

While Hillary Clinton wiped the floor with Donald Trump in their first presidential debate, moderates and progressives need not become too overjoyed. The Trump phenomenon is not isolated to the United States. The spillover of refugees, especially as it affects Europe, is turning nations strongly to the extreme right, spawning Trump like movements here there and everywhere. In other words, Trump, win, lose or draw, is at the center flow of current world politics, a kind of flow that is not likely to change soon, if ever.

It comes down to the simple fact that the earth is a finite space, and like rats in an overcrowded cage tensions rise and things get nasty as the world’s human population reaches toward critical mass. When humans come under such pressure they fall back upon their tribal impulse — my family, race and country first, last and always. It is a right-wing leaning impulse of exclusion rather than a generous spirit of inclusion — a get those “other” people out of here reaction.

Trump hit the bull’s-eye when he led off his campaign with Mexicans coming to the US are dangerous rapists and murderers. Not true, but in politics perception is everything, and a good demagogue knows how to stir hatred and fear of the “other.”

So as the world continues to grown ever more crowded and relatively low level wars (relatively low level only as compared to the potential of a nuclear WW III) keep pumping out millions of refugees — spillover — to places they are not wanted, then right-wing tribalism, Trump style, must continue to grow with dire consequences at the end of the road. Meaning that liberal democracy is in serious peril, if not all life itself.