Trump Voters and the Dreams of Brexit Britain

My many posts about Trump supporters and the Brexit leave faction in the United Kingdom have been typically less than kind.  In both groups, I see hatred, resentment and a delusional longing for a past that is forever lost - if it ever even existed as viewed in their minds - that in the longer term will harm the proponents of Trumpism and the Brexit leave supporters. And yes, race does play a major role in the mindset of both groups whether spoken or unspoken, as does a sense of lost privilege both domestically and internationally.  The Brexit leave group still longs subconsciously for the days of the British Empire when Britain dominated the global economy and the sun truly never set on the empire.  For Trumpists, they long for a return of the immediate post-WWII and early 1950's when the USA was the unchallenged world hegemon.   The problem is that the policies they support cannot restore the lost world either group longs for.  Meanwhile, especially in the case of Britain and Brexit, the policies will ultimately make their circumstances even worse.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the Brexit mindsel.  The parallels with Trump supporters are profound.  Here are highlights:

The June 2016 Brexit referendum left Britain a divided nation. That much we know. But the referendum didn’t create division. It exposed something that was already there, latent. This was hard to see if you attended to people’s conventional political views about taxation or public spending; even the issue of immigration, by itself, wasn’t “it.” Nor was it to be found in something as vague as “feelings” or “emotions.” It lay elsewhere, in the realm of the individual political psyche, that blending of personal, family and nonacademic history, casually informed reasoning, clan prejudice, tribal loyalty and ancestor worship that forms the imaginative framework in which, as we represent it to ourselves, our lives relate to events in the wider world.

In that framework, the way our representation of the past relates to our representation of the present isn’t always linear. What may seem, rationally, to be dead, gone and replaced (or to have never existed) is actually still there, immanent, or hidden, or stolen. An empire. An all-white Britain. A socialist Britain. A country that stood alone against the Nazi menace. One’s young self. A word for this is “dreaming.”

The past week has laid bare the crisis in British politics. . . . . How this situation resolves remains anyone’s guess.

The major cause of this paralysis is the breakdown of the just-about-ruling Conservative Party — one faction prepared to compromise over Brexit, the other, a small minority in Parliament, eager to break absolutely with the European Union whatever the consequences. This makes sense only if you understand the hard-core Brexiteer minority as most in tune with the Leaver dreaming: that state of mind where it’s natural to talk about the Britons who endured the Nazi siege of the early 1940s as “we,” as if the present and the past, the dead and the living, were one and the same, bound to re-enact the slaying of a European dragon every few generations.

Remainers have their own rich dreams, no less fascinating, but I spoke mainly to Leavers, since they were the disrupters. . . . . I noticed three things.

One was a strong sense of oppression, of being censored, and an attendant resentment. There were several occasions when Leavers I spoke to left pregnant gaps that could only have been filled with anti-immigrant sentiments that they weren’t “allowed” to say. By no means all Leavers are racist, but I ended up with the impression that for many, casual racism is regarded as a lost patrimony; that as much as Leavers might oppose immigration, they are no less resentful of the “elites” rendering it awkward to categorize people along racial lines.

Another thing I noticed was the internationalism of Leavers — internationalism with a particular flavor: the nostalgia for Ian Smith’s Rhodesia by a Norfolk farmer and member of the European Parliament from the far-right U.K. Independence Party. . . . 

The third thing was the preoccupation with the state as defender of its people. This was literal — U.K.I.P. fliers boasting of how many extra aircraft carriers they would build in government — but also figurative, that it was the British government’s job to defend native Britons against immigrants; foreign competition; greedy capitalists; and, through the National Health Service, illness.

I used to be skeptical of the idea that Britain hadn’t come to terms with the loss of its empire. It was such a long time ago, and not a single one of the many Leavers I’ve had hours of conversations with over the years has explicitly expressed wanting it back. How could you? It would be ridiculous.

I believe now that a subliminal empire does persist in the dreaming of a large number of Britons, hinted at in a longing for the return of guilt-free racial categorization, in the idea that my country can be both globally open and privileged in an international trading system where it can somehow turn the rules to its advantage, in the idea of a safe white core protected from the dark hordes beyond by a mighty armed force. This idea, which begins to make sense only if your country happens to control a global empire, came from someone whose childhood dream was to be an official in the Indian Civil Service. It has been orthodoxy for four decades, not just in her own party but for a time, at least, in the main opposition. The bizarre and already disproved notion that the global free market might work as an avatar of Britain’s imperial power lies at the heart of the die-hard Brexit psyche. Propagating it was Mrs. Thatcher’s personal success, and that success, as we can now see, was her great failure.

Trump is Harming America More than Any Foreign Adversary

Traveling in France and the United Kingdom, the husband and I have found ourselves repeatedly having to explain that we neither voted for Donald Trump nor do support literally any of his policies. The French and British by huge majorities despise Trump and cannot understand what would make Americans vote for such a foul individuals.  Rather than get into a discussion of the racism and religious extremism that motivates today's GOP base, it is easier to say that we are working to defeat Republicans and elect Democrats to block Trump's toxic agenda.  It would be hard to stress how much damage Trump has done to America's image across the globe. The other irony is that there are distinct parallels between the decline and fall of ancient Rome and the decline of Great Britain and what is currently taking place in America.  In both of the aforementioned empires, bad domestic decisions aimed at showering wealth on the rich and maintaining privilege combined with a failure to invest in the future in terms of social policies and modernizing infrastructure played major roles in the collapse of empire. We see the exact thing happening now in America under Republican misrule.  While the UK has done much to rebuild its infrastructure, the Brexit vote motivated by racism and animus towards non-Christians will likely wreck havoc on the UK economy and reverse past UK economic promise.  Joe Scarborough has a column in the the Washington Post looks at the damage being done.  Here are excerpts:

Cataclysmic events often bring with them violent and abrupt endings to settled ages and long-established norms. Those absorbing the impact of these historical aftershocks rarely grasp the epochal changes in real time.

Who could have imagined during their commute home on the night of Nov. 21, 1963, that an event in Dallas the next day would shake the postwar order guaranteed by America’s victory in World War II? Even after Lee Harvey Oswald’s shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository, could anyone have foreseen the collapse of such an ordered age soon overtaken by the anarchy of Vietnam, the murders of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the race riots, Chicago, Kent State, Watergate, postindustrial rot and the cultural chaos set loose across the country by these events?

And could even the most insightful observer have foreseen — while staring at the billowing smoke set against New York’s brilliant September sky — the avalanche of strategic blunders set in motion by Osama bin Laden’s attack on the United States?

On Sept. 10, 2001, the United States dominated the world stage in a way no other country had since the height of the Roman and British empires. NATO’s long twilight struggle against the Soviet Union ended with Russia in ruins. The Japanese economic miracle, predicted by some to turn America into little more than a granary for Japan, had flatlined. And a rising China was still struggling with a multitude of internal security concerns and was eclipsed on the world stage by the Pax Americana. The United States deployed a dazzling display of both soft- and hard-power assets across the globe.

On the eve of bin Laden’s attacks, America’s gross domestic product was nearly 10 times China’s and 40 times Russia’s. The U.S. military machine was unparalleled, with the Pentagon spending more on national defense than the next 15 countries combined. And despite those staggering outlays, Washington was running a $125 billion surplus.

Seventeen years later, endless wars abroad and reckless policies at home have produced annual deficits approaching $1 trillion. President Trump’s Republican Party will create more debt in one year than was generated in the first 200 years of America’s existence. And while the United States has been mired in endless wars and bloody occupations over the past 17 years, China has used that same period to aggressively develop economic partnerships across Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa. Perhaps that is one reason China will soon overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy.

Any discussion of policy failures since 2001 must begin with George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq even though no evidence linked Saddam Hussein’s regime to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. . . . . That war cost nearly 5,000 American lives, $2 trillion and inestimable damage to America’s credibility across the globe.

The excesses of Bush’s military adventurism led to his successor, President Barack Obama, placing the United States in a defensive crouch for the better part of eight years. The commander in chief defined his foreign policy approach this way: “Don’t do stupid [stuff].”

Sixteen years of strategic missteps have been followed by the maniacal moves of a man who has savaged America’s vital alliances, provided comfort to hostile foreign powers, attacked our intelligence and military communities, and lent a sympathetic ear to neo-Nazis and white supremacists across the globe.

For those of us still believing that Islamic extremists hate America because of the freedoms we guarantee to all people, the gravest threat Trump poses to our national security is the damage done daily to America’s image.

“America is an idea. Strip freedom, human rights, democracy and the rule of law from what the United States represents to the world and America itself is gutted.”

Osama bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team 6 before he accomplished that goal. Other tyrants who tried to do the same were consigned to the ash heap of history. The question for voters this fall is whether their country will move beyond this troubled chapter in history or whether they will continue supporting a politician who has done more damage to the dream of America than any foreign adversary ever could.

Brexit and Britain’s - and America's - Delusions of Empire

The parallel's between those in Britain who voted for Breixt and white Americans who voted for Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, are remarkable.  In both instances, the two groups long for a perceived glorious past and a seek to reject modern economic reality and the fact that globalization and emerging economies make the days of "good old days" of yesteryear impossible to a bring back.  For the British, it's a longing of Imperial Britain on the eve of World War I when things may have been good for many whites in Britain proper, but not so wonderful for many of the subject peoples.  For Trump voters, it's the days immediately post World War II when America dominated the world, segregation at home maintained white privilege and minorities "knew their place" and gays, for their part remained largely invisible.  One irony is that America, with its crumbling infrastructure and disproportionate military spending is making the same mistake made by Britain post WWI when it failed to modernize its infrastructure and industries to remain competitive.  With China, India and other economies rising, going back to the late 1940's and 1950's simply isn't going to happen no matter what false promises Trump made to the gullible and .those motivated by bigotry.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at British delusions and indirectly makes the case for a wake up call by Trump supporters in the USA.  Here are excerpts:

[I]t’s Brexit supporters who may be in line for a real shock. Even beyond the coming “traumatic” loss of access to the E.U.’s market — as the Economist put it — the promise of a politically resurgent Britain is likely to fall flat.

Much of the rhetoric of the pro-Brexit crowd centers around the reclamation of British “sovereignty” from technocrats in Brussels. But Brexit proponents have also projected a nostalgic vision of Britain once more asserting itself as a dominant player on the world stage. May trumpeted the dawn of a new “Global Britain” earlier this year: a nation shorn of its continental commitments and capable of finding a new accommodation with other parts of the world — especially those it once colonized.

Brits are hardly alone in harboring delusions of empire — consider, for example, the colonial nostalgia of France’s far-right nationalists or the Ottomania of Turkey’s ruling party. But the fantasy of Britain’s past collides almost farcically against Britain’s present.

Never mind that Britain’s empire was a precursor to the forces of globalization and migration that the Brexiteers so profoundly resent.

Never mind that Brexit will “be a considerable blow to Commonwealth nations that export to Britain,” as the Financial Times reported: “Thirty-two Commonwealth countries, mainly in Africa and the Caribbean, are covered by free-trade agreements with the E.U. These states therefore enjoy duty-free and quota-free access to the E.U. for nearly all their goods. . . . Once the UK is out of the E.U., these countries will end up paying $800m a year in additional duties to access the UK market, according to an analysis by the Commonwealth Secretariat.”

The reality is that many Commonwealth nations simply don’t need Britain. Australian exports to its former colonial ruler amounted to just 1.4 percent of its total outgoing trade. Canada, which shares a huge land border with the United States, will always look south, not east. India, once the jewel in Britain’s imperial crown, has an economy already roughly the same size as Britain’s; Indian moguls now own some of Britain’s most iconic companies.

“In anglophone Africa, the game is already up,” British historian David Olusoga noted in the Guardian. “The motorbikes on the freeways of Accra and Lagos are Chinese, assembled by local mechanics from kits shipped direct from Shandong. 

“Brexit is rooted in imperial nostalgia and myths of British exceptionalism, coming up as they have — especially since 2008 — against the reality that Britain is no longer a major world power,” British academic Tom Whyman wrote in a withering column. “Those most under the spell of imperial nostalgia have now become the sorcerers themselves, having somehow managed to conjure up a mandate to transform Britain in their image.”

The myth of British exceptionalism.  Sound familiar?  America suffers from a similar delusion and myth making.  Clinging to myths and what allows one to avoid thinking  is not the answer to achieving prosperity and a just society. Brexit supporters and Trump supporters are both in for a rude shock and the economic pain will be self-inflicted. 

Why Does Gay Sex Scare Modern Muslims?

This blog has often noted that the raging homophobia in African nations reflects the ignorance of the populace as to true history of their own societies where homosexuality was accepted or at least tolerated.  A piece in The Daily Beast makes a similar case with Islam which in its so-called Golden Age was tolerant and strikingly different from the horrible thing it has become under Islamic fundamentalists.  The irony - as is the case with African nations such as Uganda - is that while fundamentalist seek to rebel from western values, homophobia was largely a British import.  It was Britain and the foul Christian missionaries that spread across the empire that brought homophobia to much of the world (American Christofascists now seek to maintain the bigotry as they lose power in America).  Here are article highlights:

LONDON — Half of British Muslims say being gay “should be outlawed.” Thus ran theheadline in London’s Sunday Times this week. Even more opposed gay marriage, while almost half thought it was unacceptable for a gay or lesbian to teach their children.

These findings from an ICM poll will be presented in a Channel 4 documentary, What British Muslims Really Think, airing this Wednesday. The show will portray the growing divergence between mainstream Britain and its Muslim communities.

Poll after poll of British Muslims has revealed statistically significant levels of illiberal opinion. Polling methodology and data may contain errors, as some critics note, but this is only scientifically rectified by more data, not by defensive posturing. A 2009 poll by Gallup found that 0 percent of Britain’s Muslims believed homosexual acts to be morally acceptable. What previous polls have shown us time and again is more of the same. This latest ICM poll asked a slightly different question, about whether homosexual acts should be legal rather than viewed as morally acceptable. Despite half saying no, this time 18 percent did say being gay should remain legal. Progress? Well, if our baseline was zero, there could only ever be progress.

Such numbers ought to prompt an urgent conversation about why Europe is having trouble integrating its Muslim communities. And it is likely that the answer, in part, relates to rising neo-fundamentalist approaches to scripture among Muslims.

There was a time when it was not like this.

Traditionally, Islam was open to exploring beauty and sexuality, especially when Islamic culture flourished and Europe was in what were known as the Dark Ages. The Prophet Muhammad taught that “God is Beautiful, and loves Beauty.” The 11th century Andalusian scholar Ibn Hazm wrote “The Ring of the Dove,” a treatise on the different stages of love, including some rather explicit real-life stories.

It is true that many early Muslim scholars condemned homosexuality, and cited scripture to justify their position. But the themes of love and sexuality have been debated and discussed by Muslim theologians and artists for centuries. The word “homosexuality” is not even used in the Quran. In fact, it did not exist in the Arabic language. The modern Muslim conclusion that homosexuality is “unnatural” is therefore not based on anything in scripture.

The chapter of al-Nur (Quran 24:31) specifically recognizes “men who are not in need of women.” As the context of the passage shows, these are men who are not attracted to women. They may have been gay or asexual, but, by definition, they were not heterosexual men. They are also not judged or condemned anywhere in the Quran. The Prophet’s own example shows that he accepted men living around him who were called “Mukhannath,” seen to be “acting like women.”

This subtle early recognition grew to a point where it was open within the courts of various caliphs in the Muslim Golden Age. Abu Nuwas (756-814) was one of the greatest classical Arab poets. He flourished during the start of the Abbasid era Golden Age (750-1258), based in Baghdad. 

As was normal during this period, sexual roles were only imagined in terms of active and passive participants, not as gay or straight sex, and what we would today describe as homosexuality was clear and present in this society.

Many other excellent classical Muslim poets wrote in homoerotic tones, including the Persian Ibn Dawud (868-909), Andalusian Ibn Quzman (1080-1160), and the Arab Sicilian Ibn Hamdis (1053-1133). Lovemaking manuals are also to be found, such as The Perfumed Garden (al-Rawd al-Atir fi Nuzhat al-Khatir) by the Tunisian Shaiykh Muhammad ibn Umar al-Nafwazi, between 1410 and 1434, and The Book of Respective Merits of Maids and Young Men (Kitab Mafaharat al-Jawari wa al-Ghilman) by the prolific al-Jahiz (777-869).  Later on still, Omar Khayyam (d. 1126) set the tone for sexuality in his Quartets(Ruba’iyyat), and Sa’di of Shiraz (1184-1291) graphically discusses his love of young men. 

But as prudish Victorian values spread from Europe to the Middle East through colonialism, and as 19th century neo-fundamentalist Wahhabism began to take hold in the Arabian peninsula, and as 20th century Islamism gained ground, spreading from Egypt around the globe, censorship, misogyny and homophobia began to spread among Muslims worldwide.

Despite this diverse history, homosexuality is forbidden today in almost every modern Muslim-majority country, while censorship, homophobia, and misogyny reach worryingly high levels.

Previous Orientalist assumptions that fetishized Eastern sexuality have given way to a new form of generalization that accepts as normal the overbearing religious conservativism that has swept across Muslim-majority societies.

For too long, populist demagogues, xenophobes and racists have been able to use coded language about intolerable Muslim intolerance to argue that Muslims have no place in Europe. We must begin to discuss these issues with courage and candor, rather than trying to pretend there is no problem, or shying away from the difficult conversation we all must have around the non-integration of Europe’s Muslims.

In this way, if we are able to bank the progress that has been made, admit to the progress that is yet to be made, and throw open the conversation for all to participate, perhaps, just perhaps, we will be able to pull the rug out from under the feet of populists who want us all to believe that the only good Muslim is a deported Muslim.

But the only way to achieve this is by owning the conversation, not fearing it, nor by ceding it to those who seek to use these depressing survey results for their altogether different aim.

Sadly, like conservative Christianity, much of Islam has come to celebrate and embrace ignorance as it tries to war against modernity and its own past (it wasn't until the 12th and 13th centuries that psychotic and mentally disturbed "Church fathers" began their war on same sex love). 

The Myth of American Exceptionalism Collides with Reality

The husband and I are devoted Downton Abbey fans and having been a history major in college (my emphasis was on British and Russian history), I see parallels between the story line in Downton and what's happening to America. Or perhaps, more to the point, I see parallels between (i) Britain's denial of reality on the brink of World War I and during the War's immediate aftermath and (ii)  where America finds itself today in the wake of the Afghanistan/Iraq fiascoes.   One hundred years ago, Britain still ruled one quarter of the world, giving rise to the boast that the sun never set on the British empire, and had the world's most powerful military.   Today, America's influence spans the globe and it has the world's most powerful military.  But as was the case with Britain, especially after World War I, things are changing rapidly in the world, America has bankrupted itself on military spending in foreign disasters, and too many Americans - especially those in the GOP base - cling to the myth of American exceptionalism and refuse to see that the rules have changed.  If America doesn't retool its industries, become a true a leader in new renewable energy sources, and maintain its middle class we will look like Britain in the aftermath of World War II.  It hasn't happened yet, but it will if America doesn't face reality.  A column in the New York Times looks at what is ahead.  Here are highlights:

The American dream, 2014 edition: Squirrel away nuts for a leaner tomorrow. The worst is yet to come, so insure yourself against it if you’re among the lucky few who can.

I was reminded of my conversation with him when I read last week about a fresh projection, from a branch of the World Bank, that the Chinese economy might overtake ours by the end of this year, finishing our century-plus reign as the world’s wealthiest nation. What a run we had! It was great while it lasted.

And it will probably last much longer than another few months. The projection relied on disputed arithmetic. These matters aren’t neat and clean.

But our slide to No. 2 nonetheless seems inevitable, so much so that most Americans think it has already happened. For the last six years, when the Gallup Poll asked them which country was the world’s “leading economic power,” more answered China than said the United States. This year, the spread was an astonishing 52 to 31 percent. Fewer than one in three Americans puts us on top, even though we actually remain there.

In a lengthy memo that he shared with Politico late last year, the Democratic strategist Doug Sosnik assessed what he called “a decade of anger and disaffection,” noting that for 10 years in a row, according to polling by NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, the percentage of Americans who believed that the United States was on the wrong track exceeded the percentage who thought it was on the right track. That’s a change in the very character of the country.

“At the core of Americans’ anger and alienation is the belief that the American dream is no longer attainable,” Sosnik wrote. “For the first time in our country’s history, there is more social mobility in Europe than in the United States.”

American bridges crumble. American trains crawl. American flights leave from terminals that pale next to many Asian and European counterparts.  . . . . We seldom build big things anymore. We just talk about building them and usually decide to take a pass or to wait, whether it’s a high-speed train in California or another tunnel between New Jersey and New York. And while each of these demurrals has a reason, the sum of them has an inescapably defeatist bent. We’re tentative. Timid.

My Times colleague Nicholas Kristof wrote about America’s rank on a new “social progress index” that includes 132 countries. We’re 39th in basic education, 34th in access to water and sanitation — access to water and sanitation! — and 16th over all, just two spots above Slovenia.

Can a nation so long defined by its faith in an expansive frontier accept limits so easily? If we become convinced that the pie won’t grow, do our politics degenerate into endless squabbling over the slices? And isn’t pessimism a self-fulfilling prophecy?

It is not inevitable that America must follow Britain's path, but to avert that fate, things need to change, particularly the no tax mantra of the GOP which is causing our infrastructure to crumble even as we overspend on the military.  So too we must embrace new industries and new energy sources rather that try to mere squeeze more out of fossil fuel industries that are ultimately bound for obsolescence.