Brexit will make things worse. Is that why people voted for it?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/how-despair-made-voters-opt-for-brexit-even-if-they-didnt-think-it-would-help/

by nyodeneD • 10 years ago

1 2 10 years ago

washingtonpost.com

wsc981• 10 years ago

The article seems to only look at the economic picture. Also remember that the money Wales retrieves from the EU is contribution payed to the EU by the GB government. After all, GB, like many other North-European countries, was a net contributor to the EU.

Apparently the value of sovereignty is completely out of scope in this article.

I think GB made the right choice in the end. Just last week the Dutch parliament voted to allow the pension funds (the biggest of Europe) to move to other countries, with less strict regulation. Even though all major parties that voted for this deal state in their party programs that they would not allow this to happen. Some suspect in the future this money will be used for bailouts through legislation (e.g. EU regulation could require pension funds to spend a certain percentage on bad bonds from countries like Italy [0]).

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[0] http://www.wsj.com/articles/bad-debt-piled-in-italian-banks-...

token78• 10 years ago

This makes the second or third piece I've read this week to suggest that the populism we're seeing behind Brexit and the Trump phenomenon is at some level motivated by a desire to actually cause the harm seems so obvious to experts and the chattering classes. Mind you this guy added a new twist that this destructive intent might not have been a conscious.

Just to spell it out, this articles answer to the question posited in it's title is that maybe Brexit was an unconscious act of economic sabotage.

Seriously? Is that where we're at?

If people want to make sense of the populism surrounding Brexit or Trump, the first step is to stop making up bullshit and accept these many voters and activists are sincere, genuine and motivated by the hope of something better.

I think the reason that people don't get this, is because they inhabit an intellectual and an informational world where all those harms mentioned in the article are just freaking obvious.

So, in the UK, the US, and even in Australia we're witnessing these populisms that invite the connections everyone is making, they express the same fears, the same distrust of institutions and expertise, they share the same race-inflected dimension, and belief that Islam is a threat. They even share the same climate denialism, which is curious.

Now, while it may not sound as creative or cool as the masses unconsciously taking down the system. But it's worth mentioning that in Australia, the UK and in the US, our news media is characterised by the dominating reach and profound influence of News Limited / Fox News. Being the news outlet who's reputation is synonymous with its message on those same very fears and issues.

But that's just a coincidence right? No, we don't talk about that. It's not like a divorce between democracy and science, expertise and truth is something we should be worried about.

Yeah, my bad. Brexit was totally an act of unconsciously self-destructive class warfare, that makes much more sense for us to be talking about. That's some next level jungian collective unconscious shit right there.

Brexit will make things worse. Is that why people voted for it?

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