Yesterday’s CNN poll had Donald Trump in the number one spot at 22%, and Dr. Ben Carson second at 11%. After that, the numbers pretty much drop off to next to nothing. The only interesting addition is Carly Fiorina’s rapid climb in the polls to the #5 slot. It’s a fascinating thing to watch – the accession of people with no political experience whatsoever, over those with a lifetime of experience in politics.
What is causing this?
You can read lots of opinions on why this is happening, but let me suggest something else.
Technology.
In 1346, King Edward III of England was pissed off.
He was pissed off because Philip VI, King of France, was sitting on his territory. The fact that the territory was in France was of little concern to Edward, who was determined to get it back.
Edward put together an army to cross the Channel and take back his land.
(Stick with me on this – it’s going to be very interesting when I get done).
France had the biggest professional army in the world – professional being knights in suits of armor, their horses, their grooms, the whole support mechanism. England had next to nothing, but Edward had a cool new piece of high tech (high tech for the 14th Century – the long bow). Edward had equipped his whole army with the new long bow – the iPad of its day. Philip had an army of 40,000 knights – the biggest and baddest and best equipped army Europe had ever seen. Edward crossed the Channel with only 8,000 men. No suits of armor – tights and long bows.
The two armies met outside the French village of Crecy.
The French army, lo0king at the pathetic rag-tag English in their tights and bows and arrows must have had a good laugh. This would be over by lunch, they must have thoughts, and they began a massive charge – 40,000 knights in armor thundering down on the little band of English.
The English must have wondered what the hell they were doing there. But Edward held fast. When the French army got close, he let fly the arrows.
The long bows took down the horses, and the knights in their heavy suits of armor were trapped on the ground, in the mud, unable to move. The English then dispatched them with curved knives – can openers, more or less.
The English suffered 300 casualties at Crecy. The French, 4,000.
That battle marked the end of knights and armor. But it also marked the end of something else – it was the end of ‘professional’ soldiers. The long bowman had been Yeoman, the peasantry. Until Crecy this was just unthinkable. Crecy turned the world upside down. The professionals had been beaten, not by superior armor, but by the new technology.
OK, now back to Trump et al.
The technology here is not the long bow, but the Internet and social media.
The ‘professional’ politicians may decry and despise the ‘amateurs and the outsiders’ like Trump and Carson and Florina, but they can’t stop the Internet and Social Media and the blogosphere from giving an endless supply of oxygen to the campaign fires. Tis a technology that conventional candidates really don’t understand and view with fear and mistrust. But it is real.
And just as the technology of the long bow wiped out the ‘professional’ class of Knights (something I am sure the Knights found almost impossible to believe), so too will the Internet and social media make the class of professional politicians (of which we have as many as Philip had Knights) an artifact of history.
