Some of the Oldest, Whitest People on Earth *Voted Against

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Jun 24, 2016 at 1:18 PM

Quote:

Some of the Oldest, Whitest People on Earth *Voted Against Monsters in Their Heads

*THAT'S the parallel to be drawn with the Trump supporters. LOL!

A few words on Brexit.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUN 24, 2016

You may notice that this is the very first discussion of the U.K.'s possible departure from the EU that we've had in this shebeen. This is partly because I didn't know enough about the issue–or about U.K. politics in general–to comment intelligently.

This is also partly because I never quite saw what all the fuss was about. This was an advisory referendum. More serious than most, I will grant you, but not, it seemed to me, that different in practical kind to all those antiwar referenda that popped up on statewide ballots during Vietnam or, later, during C-Plus Augustus' excellent adventure along the Tigris.

Now that the U.K. electorate has chosen (narrowly) to hock a big old loogie at everyone from international bankers to the "scary brown people" who the electorate apparently believes are at last preparing to launch Operation Sea Lion, I guess we should have something to say about it.

As to my first concern, insofar as this is a demonstration of panicky xenophobia, the Triumph of the Leave is an altogether deplorable political development.

Some of the Oldest and Whitest people on the planet leapt at a chance to vote against the monsters in their heads.

They may have tanked their economy in the process. It was quite amusing to follow along on the electric Twitter machine as members of The Political Revolution on this side of the pond rejoiced at the result as some kind of ensemble rejection of the globalized financial system that indeed nearly did blow up the world.

Without the accelerant of pure racism–the existence of which among the British comes as no surprise to those of who descend from involuntary members of their old Empire–this thing never gets off the ground.

In addition, I'm less concerned than some of my fellow citizens that the vote in the U.K. is a premonition of a He, Trump groundswell over here. This is because He, Trump makes British space villain Nigel Farage sound like Talleyrand. Lay his genius on us,

Washington Post:

"I think it's a great thing that happened," Trump told reporters shortly after his helicopter landed at Trump Turnberry. "People are angry, all over the world. People, they're angry." "When the pound goes down, more people are coming to Turnberry, frankly," Trump added during an afternoon press conference. "For traveling and for other things, I think it very well could turn out to be a positive."

He, Trump, of course, said this at Turnberry, which is in Scotland, which voted quite strongly to Remain. In fact, the Scots appear to be ready to Leave the U.K. rather than follow it out the door.

(The same thing may be true in Northern Ireland.)

Shut up now, please.

As to the second point, it seems to me that there are several ways for the Remain crowd to eventually win the day, especially if The Elites are as powerful as the Leave gang thinks they are.

If they think they could stand the gaff, they would simply ignore the results entirely; the balloting was close enough that they could be tempted to do just that, although it might require tossing David Cameron into the Channel, which might just be a unifying moment.

They could bury the question in Parliament until the silver anniversary of the coronation of King George VII, who is presently growing teeth in some palace or another.

The procedure for departure from the E.U. is untried, so it probably could be monkey-wrenched into infinity, or until a large portion of the Leave constituency goes off to glory, which ought to be any minute now.

I do not minimize the powerful symbolic effect of the referendum on both sides of the question, nor do I minimize the immediate economic consequences of the vote, nor do I minimize the political potential of those people and forces gifted at creating panic for their own dubious ends. Those are very real concerns and they require a mature, informed electorate to withstand them.

Oh, god.

If anyone wants to school the landlord here about why he's wrong about all of this, feel free. Otherwise, the last thing I'm going to say is that, wherever Charles Stewart Parnell is at the moment, watching the U.K. wrench its guts out over what is essentially a question of Home Rule, he must be guffawing so hard the brandy goes up his nose.

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