Is Political Arrogance dragging Europe to the Right?

[Husar]

It seems to me that what the elected 'elites', on average, are first and foremost elites in, is the understanding of their party's platform and ideology, not how to run the country the best - neither in the short nor long term.

So do you agree that all the idiots mostly just elect other idiots or would you perhaps say you're generalizing a bit and there are politicians who work hard to do their jobs well and those who don't?
I wasn't the one who called them elites by the way, I was going with other peoples' terminology.
And if you're saying that politicians should be willing to try things that are not part of their platform, then I guess Merkel is the perfect politicians, but then why are her voters going to the AfD? Perhaps the voters want those party ideologies? Perhaps voters always complain about the status quo and then vote against change? And we're right back to the stupid plebs, you see...

I don't see much of a reason to assume a priori that the average citizen's gut feeling about the right course of action is less wise than the ideologically correct and much more elaborate course of action proposed by the average elected representative, though the latter may of course be much easier to translate into action given the political system in place.

You also don't see radio waves...

This reasoning may appear sound at first glance, but it is not warranted without further evidence to back it up as there are other models that can explain the voting pattern.

Examples:

People vote conservatively - for what they know. If people are familiar with a multicultural society, they may vote for its continuation and/or expansion. If they are not, they will vote against it.

I agree, people may not be able to cope with change, which is what I said...they have this arbitrary fear of change and vote based on that...
"Fear is a bad advisor" is an old German idiom...

People may dismiss out of hand that there are issues with the society or place that they live in if it goes against their experience in everyday life.

For example, if 1 in every 25,000 inhabitants in city A has been robbed at some point in their lives compared to merely 1 in every 250,000 in city B (10 times fewer), the average inhabitant of city A might still reject any notion that it is more dangerous to live in their city compared to city B, because the vast majority of them have indeed never been robbed.

If no statistics existed, it would also be difficult for even observant inhabitants to accurately compare the two cities in terms of robberies; certainly so if the differences are relatively small (e.g. a 20% difference rather than 1,000%).

This reasoning may appear sound at first glance, but it is not warranted without further evidence to back it up as there are other models that can explain the crime pattern.