Trump Supporters and Brexiters: the Same Ugly Mindset

As noted numerous times on this blog, in my view the mindset of Trump supporters and those in the United Kingdom who continue to support Brexit - a form of national economic suicide - remains very much alike.  Both groups long for a past that was never as ideal as they now fantasize and, rather than embrace change and work for a better future, they are willing to destroy everything out of anger and bitterness, and especially, their hatred of racial minorities.  If Britain does end up leaving the European Union, the economic consequences will be catastrophic - a fact the Brexiters refuse to face as they long for lost empire.  Here in the USA, Trump supporters cheer the destruction of America's leadership in the world, tariffs and economic policies that are not saving jobs as promised, and which are poisoning the environment and shredding the social safety net.  All that matters is that they feel good lashing out and patting themselves on the back for their "patriotism," although one has to question how patriotic it is to harm ones country and seek to demonize millions of one's fellow citizens.  An op-ed in the New York Times looks at the disaster that is the Brexit movement in the UK and the mindset that accompanies it.  The parallels with America are profound (not to mention that both groups were manipulated by Russian cyber attacks aimed at fomenting political chaos).  Here are excerpts:

It’s not just our political life that feels suffused with the toxicity of Brexit, but also our cultural and even personal lives, too. At dinner with friends and family, on our couches in front of the television, even in our attempts at cinematic escape, there is only one subject of conversation: our departure from the European Union, the need to either oppose it or enact it. As we walk the supermarket aisles, speculating as to the continuing availability of our favorite foods, as we sit with our European loved ones and try to convince ourselves of the security of their stay, as we lay out the day’s medicines and fret about the continuing viability of their procurement, Brexit is inescapable.

Brexit is not just an event, it is a feeling — suffocating and dispiriting and freighted with gloom. With no refuge from that feeling, we seek solace in another: national pride.

We’re the world’s fifth-largest economy and likely to sink to seventh this year. Industry and finance are falling over themselves to flee. Nor am I convinced that anyone should be “rightly proud” of a country in which, according to the homelessness charity Crisis, the number of people sleeping on the streets has risen 140 percent since 2010; in which over a million emergency food packages were given to those struggling financially in the 2017-18 financial year; in which over 4 million children are living in poverty; and in which local councils in England face an £8 billion financial black hole by 2025, endangering not only their upkeep of communal spaces, but also their ability to provide adequate care for children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

So here we are, facing more delays and uncertainty. The Defense Ministry reportedly is hunkering down in a nuclear bunker, preparing for “no deal,” a crash headlong into a future from which we mistakenly thought our past would protect us. We are pathologically unable to say what needs to be said: that nostalgia, exceptionalism and a xenophobic failure of the collective imagination have undone us. This is not a time of national pride, it is a moment of deep and lasting national shame. We are unable to lead yet determined never to follow. We have nothing of note to say and yet still refuse to listen. The very forces that have shored up our self-regard and poisoned our place in history are about to erode us from within, and unless we find in ourselves the humility we’ve always abhorred, we face a brutal and potentially permanent humbling.

Cups of tea will neither turn back time nor show us, in their cold and increasingly bitter leaves, the future we’ve failed to imagine: a future in which what limited achievements we might have been proud of — our system of social care, our commitment to protecting the people least able to protect themselves — lie in ruins, and all we can do is sit in the dark, paying our favorite celebrities to chant to us, over and over again, our tattered mantra of virtue.