＂The Great Realignment＂
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185.34674
Summary
Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and he is a man of many talents. He is a good communicator, a good intellectual, and a good man, and I think we're long overdue for something of a more highbrow populist politician.
Transcript
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i think and i hope that boris johnson becoming prime minister of england is going to be a really
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positive step forward in what i like to call the great realignment i don't like using the word
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populism populist uprising that sort of stuff because it just has all these kind of ill-defined
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icky connotations right now but by the great realignment what i mean is that we're increasingly
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living in an era where the opinion of the sort of elite gatekeepers you've got the media you've got
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academics those sorts of individuals the people in the government institutions their views are
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increasingly at odds with the overwhelming vast majority of the people now boris johnson he's an
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interesting individual because he's been compared to donald trump in sort of style and manner and i
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think it's a fair point in terms of just his sort of braggadocio and so forth but he's cut from very
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different cloth i mean we talk about we talk about donald trump as a populist figure doug ford somewhat
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sitting in that in that sort of broader realm boris johnson a little different though he actually
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comes from the upper crust he's a bit of an intellectual himself an elite figure he worked
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for the spectator which was a right-wing publication he was the editor of the spectator but it's also a
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very uh more sort of highbrow publication he has art historians in his family i mean this is a guy
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who it's going to be a bit more difficult for the elites to sneer at it's going to be a bit more
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difficult for them to just dismiss the sort of great realignment views he has for instance his
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pro-brexit views which he is very very in favor of i mean part of the challenge with theresa may's
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leadership is she was tasked with implementing brexit but she wasn't one of the leading brexiteers so it
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was all right always an odd fit always a very bizarre fit to have her leading the charge in
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all of that and quite frankly we're long overdue for something of a i don't want to say a more
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highbrow populist because it really doesn't matter what one's background is or what one's resume is and
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class and all that kind of stuff but but someone who is going to really articulate these sort of
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issues in an incredibly precise way because one of the frustrations about someone like donald trump
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is he issues these tweets and these statements and then they're they're kind of vague so you have
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a lot of people saying oh he means this this horrible thing this is the worst thing since sliced bread
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and then his defenders say well no what he actually means is this that and the other and you get into
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these fact wars because donald trump leaves things rather ambiguously and he could certainly benefit
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from being a more precise speaker and a more precise tweeter well boris johnson he doesn't have that
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problem he's a very articulate individual and that's what advocates for for populism or the great
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realignment sort of getting things getting things cleaned up and sort of the views of what the regular
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people feel in a democracy and how the gatekeepers the elites the managerial class how they should be
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responding to those issues that's what you need you need a great communicator in all of that great
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communicator that's what they called ronald reagan we haven't had someone since reagan really who
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was able to take the sort of the inchoate feelings of a lot of regular people and sum them up
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articulately in relatively brief sentences and paragraphs hopefully that's what boris johnson will
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do obviously there's been people who have failed to deliver on issues like this before maybe boris
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johnson will end up being one of them but maybe he will succeed and he can be something of a role model
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for other people who also want to see something of a great realignment move forward in their part of
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the world in their country maybe even here in canada