Right World

It's a conservative world after all:

In Europe and America, the pandemic interrupted the movement opposing the left. It was short-circuited as fear (much of it unfounded, as it turned out) was used to maintain control and squelch the nascent populist movements. Economic shutdowns, forced school closures, and mandates for vaccines that didn't prevent disease, which resulted in tens of thousands of workers losing their jobs for refusing the jab, put a cork in the bottle, at least for a while. The scales have now fallen from the people's eyes, and the left is being soundly thrashed at the polls across the industrialized world.

Across Europe, where economic growth has largely stalled, conservatives and populist right-wing parties are making unprecedented gains. Three-quarters of governments in the European Union are either led by a right-of-center party or are ruled by a coalition that includes at least one. The shift is set to continue. Canada appears poised to kick out a deeply unpopular progressive prime minister and Germany is expected to dump its center-left government. Polls show the top two parties in Germany represent the center-right and the far-right. Part of the shift is the normal pendulum of politics swinging back and forth between established parties on the left and right. The difference this time is a strong strain of populism and a growing rejection of traditional parties.

The left-wing governments, which have largely ruled for 50 years, sought to implement their social agendas at the expense of ordinary people's sensitivities and livelihoods. They tried to use economic policies to effect massive social changes regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion in their societies. They sought revolution instead of evolution. And they're finding out that the masses of ordinary people who work, pay, live, and die in their countries never wanted a revolution. They're discovering that changing societies to reflect their own image of "justice" needs a consensus. And the left has lost that consensus.

The world is shifting on its political axis...