The Imperial Myths Driving Brexit - and Trump Supporters

A blimp depicting Boris Johnson hovers near a statue of Winston Churchill.Simon Dawson / Reuters).

As noted in prior posts, the parallels between pro-Brexit voters in the United Kingdom and Trump voters are considerable. Both groups long for a glorious mythical - and much whiter - past and seem willing to commit economic and national suicide in order to chase after a past that never quite was as they would remember it.  Both groups are also obsessed with a myth of their respective nation's exceptionalism which typically means they do not want to work with other nations and they seemingly never are open to learning from other nations.  Worse yet, only a sanitized version of the past is remembered and past misdeeds and horrific mistakes and failures are ignored as if they never occurred. A piece in The Atlantic looks at Brexit and the myth of British exceptionalism that in so many ways tracks what one sees among those wearing MAGA hats and attending Trump rallies.  Here are highlights:

For more than three years, the world has watched Britain attempt to act on the result of its 2016 referendum and leave the European Union. Yet while the causes of the Brexit vote were complex, the causes of the catastrophic handling of the Brexit process might be familiar to anyone versed in imperial and post-imperial history.

They stem from what appears to be a belief in British exceptionalism: the idea that Britain is inherently different from, and superior to, other nations and empires.

Margaret Thatcher asserted British exceptionalism with regard to the EU in a 1988 speech, and each of the past three prime ministers has approached the EU from that standpoint—believing that Britain deserves preferential treatment and more-than-equal status.

They have all also believed in their own personal exceptionalism. . . . Now Boris Johnson is voluntarily manufacturing a crisis over no deal—in which Britain would leave the EU without any agreement on the rules and regulations governing how it would trade and work with the bloc—that could send damaging shock waves through Britain, Ireland, and the rest of the EU.

There has been much discussion of the roles of history and memory in relation to Brexit. It may be easy to overstate a simplistic, literalist connection between the empire—imagined as glorious, and unjustly lost—and the impulse to leave the EU. Yet it is hard to avoid the sense that embedded in Brexit is a form of “Make Britain great again.” Sharper parallels are perhaps drawn between Britain’s collective recollection of its part in World War II, heavily mythologized as the moment it stood alone against Adolf Hitler, and the attitude of Brexit supporters to the isolation and hardship Brexit may bring.

While the myths constructed around the history of empire and World War II reinforce British exceptionalism, they are contradictory. The first casts Britain as a superpower; the second as a lone, plucky underdog.

Brexit is a public withdrawal from a voluntary union; Suez [Canal crisis] was a covert invasion of a sovereign state. They are wholly different. Yet there is a familiarity to the grand aspirations undercut by slapdash and delusional strategic planning; to the frantic rush to act, even as it becomes clear that most or all of the options are damaging; to leaders fixated on a path that many can see will probably end badly.

In general, Britain remembers Suez as a blip in what is widely viewed as a mostly well-intentioned and competent imperial policy. Far from ending British exceptionalism, the disaster has been used to reinforce it. Suez can be framed as a unique aberration if it is blamed on what is erroneously held to have been a betrayal by the United States, and on the folly of one man, the physically and mentally exhausted Prime Minister Anthony Eden. That heads off more troubling questions about whether there were deeper problems with cabinet decision making, military advice, foreign policy, the political culture as a whole, and even the nation’s understanding of itself.

Exceptionalism is again visible in what was by most metrics a far bigger disaster than Suez or Amritsar: the partition of India and Pakistan, which left between 1 and 2 million people dead, created 10 million to 20 million refugees, and established a hostile relationship between successor states that threatens global security to this day.

The last British viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, has been blamed ever since for speeding Britain’s exit deadline up. What he achieved by that was to ensure that most of the fallout did not happen on Britain’s watch. . . . . Only in the days and weeks after partition did the shocking reports of death and destruction ramp up, and so British exceptionalism was able to remain unscathed. The British could sigh sadly at the appalling outcome, and murmur “après nous, le déluge.” The writer Pankaj Mishra has described a “malign incompetence” common to Mountbatten and the Brexiteers.

A British leadership that wanted to deliver Brexit safely and was not in thrall to exceptionalism might have learned from past mistakes. Suez might have taught it to prefer reality over fantasy, compromise and conciliation over arrogance and vaingloriousness. Partition might have taught it to respect and understand complexity rather than oversimplify difficult problems, to make a plan before setting tight deadlines. Both might have taught it that you should never, ever imagine you’ve had enough of experts.

But to learn from mistakes you must confront them, and exceptionalism means you never do. . . . Brexit is exposing flaws in the British political system and culture, but they are not new. Exceptionalist thinking has long helped insulate that system from the criticism and reform it needs.

For advocates and critics of Brexit alike, it may be tempting to imagine a golden age in which Britain was competent, reliable, stable, and sensible. Looking at its history, though, if it turns out to be none of those things, we shouldn’t be surprised.

So much of this likewise describes the United States.

Democrats Are Their Own Biggest Enemies Going into 2020

I have given this rant before, but it bears repeating as the Democrat field of would be presidential candidates becomes increasingly crowded.  The short form of the message: nominate someone electable to top the Democrat ticket and then get behind the nominee whoever it may be.  Wonderful policies and wonkish command of facts and figures mean NOTHING if the candidate cannot get elected.  Sadly, this basic message which ought to be seared in every Democrat memory after 2016 when some holier than thou Democrats refused to back Hillary Clinton and thereby handed the election to Donald Trump.  We - and the nation - cannot stand another such debacle that could end up re-electing Trump, the most foul, anti-democratic and vile individual to ever occupy the White House.  A piece in Politico looks at the danger of Democrats defeating themselves through an intra-party civil war that loses sight of the ultimate goal. Moderate advances under a Democrat are better than more Trump, yet some do not grasp this simple concept.  Here are article highlights: 

I’ve lived through a Democratic Civil War before. In fact, I’ve been in the middle of two of them. The first was in 1968, when I was the research director for Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign. The second was in 1980, when I was Jimmy Carter’s policy director.

Both times, I watched pressure from the party’s liberal wing tear the party apart and bring down a Democratic presidential candidate. Both times, the Republicans took the White House. Both times, liberal dreams were shattered.

Today, I fear it could all be happening again.

As President Donald Trump moved the Republican Party sharply to the populist right, early entrants to the Democratic Party presidential contest have veered sharply to the left, along with several energetic new Democratic members of the House. The left’s new avant-garde has properly identified the need to confront serious national challenges, from rising income inequality and inadequate health care coverage to climate change.

But successfully dealing with these problems demands pragmatic solutions that can gain support from a majority of Americans and do not play into Trump’s false narrative that Democrats are socialists. Speaking from experience, by demanding the moon, their proposals will crash on the launching pad and lead to nowhere good.

Humphrey’s challenger from the left, Senator Eugene McCarthy, who had castigated Humphrey for the Johnson administration’s handling of Vietnam, didn’t get the nomination that year. But McCarthy failed to reconcile with his fellow Minnesotan and led his supporters back into the fold only after it was too late. Richard Nixon exploited the divisions in the party and the country and was elected by the thinnest of margins in November. His election led to an extension of the war Humphrey would have ended; during the next four years another 21,000 American soldiers were killed. Carter showed what moderates can accomplish. But, throughout his four years in office, Carter never got full credit for this record. He was criticized by women’s and civil rights groups, social welfare advocates and the party’s union leaders for not doing enough. Consumer groups failed to mobilize for him even though he appointed many of their leaders to regulate big business. The “greenest” president in American history got little credit from environmentalists even as he doubled the size of the national park system, made conservation a centerpiece of his energy policy and championed solar energy, even installing a solar panel on the White House roof.

But the big sticking point for the liberal wing of the party was health care. To obtain support from liberal labor unions in the primaries in 1976, Carter agreed to broad principles for national health insurance, but in office refused to accept Senator Ted Kennedy’s single-payer, government run bill at a time of raging inflation. Over many days of negotiations I had with the senator in his Capitol office, we came close to agreeing on a bill that would have substituted a government-run program for a privately managed program and full coverage phased in over many years. But in the end, Kennedy bowed to labor’s demands and refused to back Carter’s own bill, which looks much like Obamacare today: employer-mandated insurance, health care for children, catastrophic coverage for major illnesses and a major expansion of Medicaid. By asking for too much, health care reform stalled for decades.

In 1980, Kennedy decided to challenge Carter from the left. The senator’s liberal supporters gummed-up the 1980 convention with more than 50 minority floor amendments to the party’s platform, demanding more and more spending and full-blown national health insurance. Kennedy lost, but the damage was done. His challenge irrevocably split the party. Will the liberal wing this time around realize the damage a similar split will do to Democratic chances of regaining the White House? Maximalist ideology is a prescription for division and defeat. It would be better to focus on policies that can gain broad public support: Expand health care under the framework of Obamacare, encourage more investment in low-income neighborhoods, endorse affirmative action based on socioeconomic need, offer more government contracts to minority companies, repair the shredded social safety net, increase funding of Head Start for poor children and elementary and secondary education in poverty-stricken districts, and broaden Pell Grants to help make college affordable. It is a misreading of last November’s midterm elections to believe the House was flipped to Democratic control by the election of a few arch-liberals, most of whom displaced centrist Democrats. The greatest gains were made by moderate Democrats capturing Republican districts. A successful Democratic presidential candidate might take a leaf from Carter’s playbook, even more successfully accomplished by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, to appeal to both sides of the party’s coalition to attract and hold moderate Americans tired of partisanship—Americans who want the highest ethical standards in the White House, who will respect and strengthen the institutions that represent our values—from the FBI to the press to our public schools. A successful candidate will eschew identity politics and want to unite Americans rather than divide the country into warring tribes, will strengthen, not weaken, our worldwide network of alliances, and will recognize there is a big country with its own problems that must be addressed between the two coasts. The Democrats must iron out their differences and present a united front against Trump, who will have the advantages of incumbency, a positive economy and the support of a united Republican Party. If these progressives keep their eye on winning in 2020, they can be part of a broad coalition to shape their politics into laws which tackle the problems they have identified—which is why they took up arms and won their way to Washington in the first place. Otherwise, we could witness another divided Democratic Party leading to another Republican victory. And the progressive left will have accomplished nothing.

Very well said.  Frighteningly, I suspect the message will fall on deaf ears among those in the far left of the Democrat Party.

Jeb Bush's Middle East Policy No Different from Idiot Brother's

For almost 15 years now, America has been plagued by a never ending disaster in the Middle East that was launched for the most part by the lies and deceit of George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.   In short, they and their advisers took America to war in Iraq based on deliberate lies and a fantasy world view of how their fool's errand would play out.  Thousands of Americans - and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis - paid with literally their lives and/or ruined lives and America was partially bankrupted.  Enter Jeb "Jebbie" Bush and his ego driven desire to be president.  Terrifyingly, Jebbie's view of the Middle East and his would be policies would likely be a carbon copy of his idiot brother's disastrous policies.  Jebbie and the recycled advisers he has assembled from his brother's failed regime have learned nothing from the last 15 years.  This alone disqualifies the man from ever occupying the White House.  The Washington Post looks at the concern of even Republicans who revel in killing Muslims have over Jebbie's would be policies.  Here are excerpts:

When Jeb Bush stepped up onto the fabled soapbox at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, fairgoers pelted him with questions about the legacy of his brother, a former president. And his father, another former president. And one of his foreign policy advisers, Paul D. Wolfowitz, the architect of his brother’s war in Iraq. And about the war itself.

Under a blazing sun, Bush expressed irritation with what he called “the parlor game” of focusing on Wolfowitz and other past Bush administration advisers who have resurfaced for this Bush campaign.

This was supposed to be the week when Bush would finally lay out his own thoughts on how to combat the Islamic State terror group and put Hillary Rodham Clinton on the defensive — and wrest himself from his family legacy in the process. But over several days, it has become evident that his ideas on the subject are remarkably similar to George W. Bush’s ideas and that he firmly believes that Democrats — not his brother — deserve the blame for the unrest in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

His new struggles with the issue also come as he is fading in polls and being drowned out by the angry outsiders dominating the race.

According to Bush this week, the removal of Saddam Hussein from power “turned out to be a pretty good deal.” The 2007 troop surge was “an extraordinarily effective” strategy. By the time his brother left office, he said, the “mission was accomplished” in Iraq because security had been restored.

Bush also said he won’t rule out waterboarding in the interrogation of terrorism suspects, although he added, “I do think in general that torture is not appropriate.”

He said it might be necessary to deploy more U.S. forces to both Iraq and Syria — and that troops already on the ground should be embedded more closely with local forces.

Democrats are eager to exploit Bush’s remarks this week to remind voters of his family ties. During a town hall in Dubuque, Iowa, on Friday afternoon, Clinton took aim at Bush’s criticism of her, noting that his brother signed an agreement as president to withdraw combat troops from the country by 2011.   I do think that it’s a little bit surprising to hear Jeb Bush talk about this,” she said. “He expects the American people to have a collective case of amnesia.”

Most Americans still believe the Iraq war was a mistake and are opposed to new military engagement — making Jeb Bush’s approach to national security risky.

Carl Owens, a hog farmer, stood off to the side taking in the scene.  “I don’t know if he’s like his brother and dad or not,” said Owens, 59. “I wasn’t too happy with them. Mr. Bush, the last president, look at the mess he got the United States into over there where we shouldn’t have been. Kind of like the Vietnam War. We shouldn’t have been there.”

Mr. Owens, the hog farmer has clearer vision than Jebbie.  And if anyone is playing "parlor games" it is Jebbie and his delusional advisers - except their games involve throwing away more American lives.