26% of the population (or 37% of the electorate) isn’t a majority.
Brexiteers don’t understand what they voted for, because leaving the EU is complex and since no one else has done it before then no one really knows what it will look like or entail. It’s not like we were given five different versions of Brexit and all voted for the same version.
No, Farage made clear that if the vote had been marginal the other way round then he would have pressed for another referendum. This is classic Brexiteer self-victimisation.
Curiously, I know several people who are running profitable small businesses within 4 years of starting them up. So you’re simply wrong about this.
Curiously, all of them are concerned that without free access to the single market both their suppliers and their customers will be affected and hence their businesses are likely to make less money post-Brexit than they are now. So you’re simply wrong about this too.
Describe Brexit in detail.
No, they said it should go to a vote in the House of Commons, which it did, and who voted for it. You said you wanted to take the power back - what do you think that looks like? Running a poll in the Sun newspaper and then the government just does whatever the poll says?
It wasn’t a democratic vote.
More Brexiteer self-victimisation…
Basically, you believe a load of crap in tabloid newspapers and than by supporting Brexit you’re somehow going against the establishment and hence must be some kind of victim and rebel. It’s nonsense. The Tory party (the establishment) wanted this and are going ahead with it.
The whole ‘democracy’ narrative on Brexit is under theorized.
First, we know that less than half the population voted for it, so to insist that it is what the people want is at best dubious: it’s what some minority of people want, and a sufficient portion of the population was either indifferent or uncertain, so that that minority constituted a plurality of voters.
Second, a single referendum doesn’t even tell us very much about what those who voted want. We know that at least some people would vote differently today than they did at the time. If it’s the case that another referendum would have a different result, isn’t it more democratic to do what people want now instead of what people wanted last year?
Third, as Michael Jackson notes, Brexit is super complicated, it isn’t at all clear that this is the kind of thing we should be putting to popular wishes. People who spend their lives trying to figure out what something like Brexit would do are uncertain what the effects should be; of what value, then, is the opinion of a group of voters who have almost no understanding of the whole picture of what it means? If someone is just wrong about what will happen as a result of Brexit, then it is actually false when they say, “I want Brexit”.
Globalization shall certainly fail. The reason is that there is no deep-hearted longing for it nor traumatic threat of it not existing. One, if not both, is absolutely required for its survival.
The EU is in a similar situation. It is conspicuously contrived, grasping the coat tails of Globalization and attempting extortion to ensure its fantasy, using technological surveillance as its security.
Britain is another story … not all together altruistic, but certainly founded in deep-hearted resolve. True Britain’s will persevere beyond the contrivances of modern technologically surveilled Man. Regardless of any voting, commandments, rebellions, or justifications, in the long run, the British shall not bow to the EU. Unlike the USA, the EU has no soul - a Frankenstein of its time and just another failed attempt of Man to supplant God (aka. the fundamental Principle by which all things exist and are maintained).
“We, the living with heart and soul, care too little for you, thus…”
Globalization has been an economic and humanitarian boon to the world. It’s reduced war, increased living standards, increased technological development and global output significantly. For the significant portion of the world’s people who have benefited from globalization (which admittedly doesn’t include the working classes in wealthy nations), globalization is absolutely longed for as a path out of suffering.
And for everyone, it not existing absolutely presents a traumatic threat, in the form of the levels of interstate violence that existed before it. Nationalism, trade protectionism, us-vs-them mentality, all threaten to renew global warfare in the place of globalization.
Finally, the nation as a source of identity has been weakening for decades, and we have every reason to think that will continue. Communities are frequently no longer local and no longer territorial bound. People increasingly question why a person born ten miles away across an imaginary line, but with whom they interact every day online, should be subject to different laws, different standards, different opportunities.
It is the nation that is no longer longed-for, and whose absence no longer represents a traumatic threat.
This comparison is a little ridiculous. The US was not immediately a coherent whole, it coalesced by necessity against outside threats, and it still divided against itself in civil war not a hundred years after its founding. It was kept together only through the violent suppression of an attempted secession. It is still deeply divided, and its future unity isn’t at all assured.
And if the US is a young nation, the EU is still in its infancy. Its benefits for its constituent countries has been significant, and we have many good reasons to believe that leaving the EU will be disastrous for the UK (the fact of the matter remains to be seen, assuming Britain actually manages to complete the process). But turmoil in the early years of a federation is to be expected, local customs need time to adapt, language needs time to shift. Give it at least a generation or two before you pronounce it unworkable.
The UK is pretty likely to split up as a result of Brexit, and some part of it is pretty likely to rejoin the EU. So both in terms of its deep-hearted resolve, and in terms of bowing to the EU, there’s good reason to doubt your claim. Fortunately, it will be tested soon enough.
Get Out The Vote? How is that relevant? Voting can be encourage through deception, as many suggest it was for Brexit. Simply convincing someone to vote does not increase their value as a voter or their ability to accurately predict the implication of a major change in the world order.
Nor does failing to convince someone to vote tell us anything about how that person feels (again, maybe indifferent, maybe uncertain, maybe blase).
How is this responsive to Michael Jackson’s points? Am I misunderstanding what GOTV stands for?
K: Globalism has not failed and in fact, it has already won the battle…
we just need to adjust our political institutions to match this Globalism victory…
I work in a supermarket… and during the winter months, we continue to get fresh
fruits and veggies… but how? its winter… we get them from Chile… yep, we
get most of our stock of fruits and veggies during the winter from Fricking Chile…
that is how globalism has already won… economically, we already have
a global economy… political we are still in the 18 century and that will hurt us…
the EU is an attempt to get the political to match the economic… those who attack
the EU have failed to understand how your political idea’s have already been
overrun by the economic realities… in other words, you need to get your ideologies
up to speed in the 21 century… you have 18 centuries political ideology in the 21 century
we must get our political ideology to match the economy reality of the times…
and the EU was one such attempt and there will be more because you can’t fight
a 21 century war with 18 century tools and weapons and that is exactly what you
doing… fighting the 21 century reality with 18 century ideologies… catch up to
the times…
and as far as your thought that man supplanted god with man…
you can’t even show us how that god even exists… it is hard to think something
exists that has absolutely no evidence for it… no evidence of any kind except for
the faith, the believe of its followers… just another example of people holding
ancient beliefs that worked back 2000 years ago but no longer meet the reality
of the century… match your ideologies to the realities of today and you will be far
better off…believe in god worked thousands of years ago, but the new reality
says, join the 21 century and believe in the only reality that does exist… and that
is life, humans, the things of this world and not the next…
Unsurprisingly, the hardcore self-victimising Brexit supporter completely avoids all questions and counterarguments.
No, I have not heard of GOTV. Now explain to me, in precise details, what Brexit is going to look like. Otherwise you do not know what you voted for. Simples.
For what it’s worth I think it was a referendum with two bad options, presenting a complex issue in a simple, binary way and one side slightly edged it. If you had another referendum now on the same terms you’d probably get a different result, which would also be a bad outcome.
I did not vote to stay in the EU, I voted against my country become more reactionary, petty, militaristic, nationalistic, spiteful and self-victimising. Because it was clear after 6 months of the campaign that those were the real terms on which we were voting, since it was a non-binding referendum anyway. I think the EU is 95% a crock of shit but that doesn’t mean I want to put Daily Mail readers in charge of the country (they are approximately 98% a crock of shit). Now we have a government who are openly appealing to the worst elements of the British public, pretending that the only people who voted for Brexit voted because they are reactionary, petty, militaristic, nationalistic, spiteful and self-victimising. That said, while all the other aspects are debatable I’ve yet to meet a Brexit supporter who wasn’t self-victimising. Just like I’ve yet to meet an alt-rightist who didn’t make out he was somehow the victim even though his guy is in the White House.
This is one of the problems with people thinking they are anti-establishment - they all have a huge chip on their shoulder/persecution complex. Doesn’t matter if it’s left or right, liberal or conservative, conspiracist or whatever. They all have this same mentality.
As someone who spends a huge amount of his time actually confronting the establishment and who is probably on every ‘list’ the government has, I don’t give a fuck. I’m not a victim, I’m a guy doing what he thinks is right. That’s the difference, I’m not looking for excuses for my own failings, I’m actually trying to get something done.