Britain’s Ominous Portent for Democrats

Some would argue that one cannot draw parallels between the politics of the United Kingdom and the United States. Different facts and circumstances apply the argument goes, yet I believe there are parallels that need to be heeded, especially since the motivations of the pro-Brexit forces in the UK and Trump's base are very similar.  What are these? First, there is an abiding hatred of foreigners and non-whites.  Second, there is a contempt for globalization and those they consider the elite - often those who are educated and take a more progressive view.  Third, there is a misguided desire to restore a past that can never be recreated.  The age of the globe circling British Empire will never return, nor will the 1950's America and the white privilege that it embodied.  Given these and other parallels, a column in the New York Times argues that the disaster suffered by the Labor Party in the UK ought to be a wake up call for U.S. Democrats, especially those on the far left of the party.  Will they get the message, probably not, especially among Sanders and Warren supporters.  Here are column highlights:   

When Britain flummoxed and flabbergasted the world by voting in 2016 to leave the European Union, it seemed like a one-off: An unexpected gamble by a normally prudent country, but nothing that signified a profound shift beyond the United Kingdom and Europe.

Donald Trump’s election a few months later proved otherwise. Brexit was a portent, not a fluke. The British electorate may have been incautious, but it was ahead of the trend. The desire, however misplaced or ugly, to “take back” control of a country from supercilious political elites was a global phenomenon, not a local event.

Don’t think it can’t happen again, in much the same way.

That’s a lesson Democrats ought to draw, quickly and clearly, from the thumping victory Boris Johnson won for the Conservative Party on Thursday. As recently as September, some left-wing pundits and politicians were glibly writing off Johnson as a “failed prime minister,” peddling a “fantasy” of a renegotiated Brexit and facing “political disgrace” after losing his majority in Parliament.

Today, . . . . the Tories have their largest majority since 1987, and Labour has sustained its worst defeat since 1935.

How did he do this? In four ways, each of which has parallels with Trump.

First, Johnson was fortunate in his political foes. He ran against the most avowedly leftist frontbench the Labour Party has put forward since the early 1980s. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn proudly calls himself a “socialist.” He rails against a “rigged system” that supposedly exists for the benefit of a handful of billionaires. His campaign promised free college, dramatic increases in health spending, a hike in the minimum wage, massive infrastructure spending, new taxes on the rich, and a “new green deal.”

Sound familiar? It’s the Warren-Sanders manifesto, only with £ rather than $ signs attached.

Second, Johnson was forward looking. He ran as the candidate of Brexit — not, as Theresa May had, as its reluctant and dutiful custodian, but as its persevering and happy warrior. Brexit wasn’t just about unyoking the U.K. from the E.U. It was also a statement of British self-belief, self-reliance and capacity for self-rule.

If impeachment — which I support as a matter of constitutional duty but fear on political grounds — winds up helping Trump get re-elected, it will be for similar reasons. That is, Democrats got so wrapped up in trying to bring the president down by legal and legislative means that they forgot to bring him down by ordinary political ones. The main job of any competent opposition is to fight the next election, not relitigate the past.

Third, Johnson was attuned to the moment. The prime minister is an ideological opportunist, not a purist. This upsets his critics on the right, who dislike some of his big-spending promises. And it confirms the view of his critics on the left, who see his political plasticity as being of a piece with his moral plasticity.

What matters more is relatability, reliability and results. Does the candidate get people like me? Will he keep his political promises? And has he achieved something that directly and tangibly benefits me?

This is Trump’s calling card, as it is Johnson’s. Are there equivalent figures on the left in the U.S. or U.K. willing to shake free from their party’s increasingly tightfitting, ideological straitjackets?

Finally, Johnson has benefited from critics whose mode of analysis is that anything and everything he does is dumb, dishonest, wretched and ruinous. Lately, they warn that he will bring about the end of the country itself. Similarly in the United States, some anti-Trump pundits have been forecasting economic decline and doom for three years straight as the economy continues to grow and unemployment plummets.

Bad things can — and, inevitably, will — happen. In the meantime, what we have is a trans-Atlantic case of boys crying wolf. Does it ever occur to the critics that, by constantly inferring or predicting the worst about either man, they make their less-than-worst moments look good, and their good ones seem positively great?

Like Johnson, Trump is a formidable incumbent. To oppose him with Corbynite candidates and progressive primal screams is to ensure his re-election.

To me, much to the likely screams of left wing Democrats, I suspect the columnist is right on target. 

Trump’s Deranged Thirst for a Clash of Civilizations

If one looks at Donald Trump's business career, other than inherited wealth, his rise has depended in considerable measure in lying, cheating others, threats, seeking confrontation, being a bully, skirting the law and dealing with undesirable personages ranging from Mafia figures to Russian Mafia figures. Contracts mean nothing to the man - and by extension, the same seems to hold for international treaties - and his word means little.  The only thing that can be relied upon is that he will lie and boast about himself while feeding his insatiable ego.  Now, thanks to the dereliction of its duty by the Electoral College, Trump finds him holding the office of president of the United States and he seemed poised to bring all of his distasteful repertoire to the world stage.  Compounding the toxicity is his apparent embrace of the Christofascists' desire to impose their beliefs and "culture" on the rest of the world.  His current trip to Poland and the G20 summit is no exception.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Trump's alternate universe and thirst for conflict.  Here are highlights:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” wrote the poet Alexander Pope. Three centuries later, Pope’s aphorism perfectly — and dangerously — describes President Trump’s understanding of history as a zero-sum clash of civilizations in which “the West” can triumph by imposing its will.

The speech Trump delivered Thursday in Warsaw’s Krasinski Square might have been appropriate when Britannia ruled the waves and Europe’s great powers held dominion over “lesser” peoples around the globe. It had nothing useful to say about today’s interconnected world in which goods, people and ideas have contempt for borders.
 Trump added what he probably thought of as a Churchillian flourish: “I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken. Our values will prevail. Our people will thrive. And our civilization will triumph.”

Triumph over whom? Trump mentioned “radical Islamic terrorism” as one of the enemies posing “dire threats to our security and to our way of life,” but he didn’t stop there. He went on to add Russia and — weirdly — “the steady creep of government bureaucracy” to the list.

But what does Trump mean when he speaks of “the West” and its civilization? “Americans, Poles and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty,” he said. “We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.

If the president read a few history books, he’d know that for most of the past 2,000 years, China and India were the world’s leading economic powers and Europe was a relatively primitive backwater. He’d know that Europe rose to dominance not by erecting walls but by opening itself to the rest of the world — its resources, products and people.

There is nothing pure about Western civilization. Its ability to absorb and incorporate outside influences has proved a great strength, not a weakness. Imagine Italy without tomato sauce, a gift from the New World — or the United States without the high-tech companies founded by immigrants, gifts from the Old.

Of course Trump is right to call for a united front against terrorism. But the solution, in a globalized world, cannot be to hunker behind walls . . . . Global issues, such as nuclear proliferation and climate change, demand global solutions. Like it or not, we are all in this together.

The correct response to the terrorism threat, which is real, is to isolate it as an abomination that is as much a grievous insult to Islam as to any other faith — and that has taken the lives of far more Muslims than non-Muslims. The wrong response is to posit that “the West” is besieged by, and therefore at war with, a hostile civilization.

But viewing the fight against terrorism as some kind of civilizational Armageddon is wrong. Trump seems to view himself as the West’s defender against 1.6 billion Muslims, almost all of whom want only to live in peace. We need a capable president, not a crusader in chief.

George W. Bush saw the Iraq War as a crusade of sorts.  In the end, it ended little better than some of the failed Crusades of the 11th and 13th Centuries but had one thing in common with the: thousands lost their lies needlessly.  One can only cringe in fear of what batshitery Trump may unleash.  

Germany: In light of Trump, Europe Must Be Self-Reliant

Two opposing trends are taking place in Europe.  On the one hand, as reported by the Washington Post, in recognition of the reality that under Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, the United States can no longer be deemed a dependable ally, Europe must move toward being self-reliant, both economically and militarily.  Meanwhile, through Brexit, Britain (which is more inclined to follow GOP style trickle down economics) is withdrawing from the European Union and will be isolating itself and in the view of many harming its economy by exacerbating problems that have made it increasingly less prosperous than France and Germany.   The Brits, like far too many Americans, seemingly embraced racism, bigotry and xenophobia and closed their eyes to the fact that they were voting against their own economic interest.  It may feel satisfying to look down on and denigrate "Those People," but as a piece in the New York Times lays out, the cost for that fleeting sense of self-satisfaction will be painful.   Let's hope the push by German and France for more unity and strength are successful.  Many of the British will likely find themselves twisting on the rope they placed around their own necks.  First highlights from the Post piece:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday declared a new chapter in U.S.-European relations after contentious meetings with President Trump last week, saying that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.”

It was the toughest review yet of Trump’s trip to Europe, which inflamed tensions rather than healed them after the U.S. president sparred with the leaders of Washington’s closest and oldest allies on trade, defense and climate change.

Merkel, Europe’s de facto leader, told a packed beer hall rally in Munich that the days when her continent could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”

The comments came as Europe watches Britain preparing to leave the European Union and faces antagonism from Washington.

Merkel said that Europe’s move toward self-reliance should be carried out “of course in friendship with the United States of America, in friendship with Great Britain and as good neighbors wherever that works.”

Although relations between Washington and Europe have been strained at times since 1945, before Trump there has rarely been such a strong feeling from European leaders that they must turn away from Washington and prepare to face the world alone.  . . . . Although her message was partly aimed at her electorate, it was a measure of how badly relations have deteriorated with Trump’s United States that hitting Washington might win votes, while working with it could be perilous.

The remarks were a clear repudiation of Trump’s troubled few days with European leaders, even as Merkel held back from mentioning the U.S. president by name. 

“The belief in shared values has been shattered by the Trump administration,” said Stephan Bierling, an expert on transatlantic relations at Germany’s University of Regensburg. “After the inauguration, everyone in Europe was hopeful that Trump would become more moderate and take into account the positions of the G-7 and of NATO. But the opposite has happened.

[M]any European leaders emerged from their meetings with Trump filled with fresh worry. Trump was far more solicitous toward the autocratic king of Saudi Arabia earlier in the week, telling him and other leaders of Muslim-majority countries — many of them not democratically elected — that he was not “here to lecture.” Days later in Brussels he offered a scathing assessment of Washington’s closest allies, saying they were being “unfair” to American taxpayers.

[A]s Merkel positions herself ahead of the election, the message could be the signal of a shift away from the United States, perhaps even one that could outlast Trump’s time in office, and that would weaken U.S. global power over the long term. European leaders are developing plans to deepen military cooperation independently of the United States. They are also reaching out to economic partners in Asia that Trump has spurned. All of those shifts will have consequences that extend years, analysts say.

As noted, meanwhile, Britain continues its path to self-inflicted harm.  Here are excerpts from the piece in the New York Times:

An observer of Britain’s “Brexit” debate would be forgiven for thinking that the country’s economy is one of the European Union’s star performers. Brexit’s advocates rarely pass up an opportunity to claim that the European Union economy is the world’s weak link, and that Britain’s reformed, dynamic and flexible economy has little to risk, and much to gain, from leaving it. The reality is rather different. And Brexit threatens to make matters worse.

Britain’s economic performance relative to the other big economies in Western Europe — including France, Germany, Italy and Spain — does not stand out as impressive, at least once the different prices of goods and services across these countries are factored in. . . . . British economic growth between 2000 and 2015 lagged behind Spain and Germany.

Sustainable increases in living standards require economies to combine land, labor, capital and technology in more efficient ways; Britain has made a poor job of this, helping to explain why Britons’ wages have risen by much less than their French and German counterparts over the last 15 years.

If the country’s overall performance looks mediocre, note that it is also highly skewed by London and the southeast of England. . . . . since 2000, poorer regions of Britain have not been catching up with the richer regions of the European Union. Instead, they’ve been falling further behind.

So, why has the country’s performance been so poor? . . . . Britain is generally perceived as a liberalized economy, and by some measures of labor market performance this is no doubt true: Non-wage labor costs, such as employer contributions, are low and it is easy to lay off workers, which reduces the costs of taking them on in the first place. But a successful labor market requires more than easy hiring and firing; it needs skilled workers, access to housing and good quality infrastructure. By these measures Britain has some real weaknesses.

A significantly higher proportion of British 18- to 24-year-olds suffer from weak literacy and numeracy than those in France, Germany, Italy or Spain. . . . . the country has invested less in roads, railways and air travel than other large European Union economies over the last 20 years.

A Britain outside of the European Union will inevitably be less open to trade with member states, which will curb competition and productivity growth. Tax revenues will fall, further squeezing infrastructure investment and education spending. That’s why, far from liberating Britain to conquer world markets as a buccaneering trading nation, Brexit threatens to make its mediocre economic performance even worse.

In many ways British voters who supported Brexit are like Trump voters: an unfounded belief in exceptionalism, opposition to spending on projects for the common good such as infrastructure and education.  Add in the rank racism and bigotry and the parallels are complete. 

The Growing Reactionary Trend Can No Longer Be Ignored

In a very lengthy piece in New York Magazine Andrew Sullivan looks head on at the growing forces of reaction that are asserting themselves not only in America but also in Europe and other parts of the world.  His message is that this trend must be resisted because of the threat it poses to humanity and democracy in particular.  One must never forget that a major factor in the fall of the Roman Empire was Christianity - as well as military over extension which America is seemingly replicating - and we see signs of this battle against modernity and knowledge most markedly among the conservative Christians (and their Muslim counterparts embodied by the Taliban and ISIS).  As a piece in the Washington Post, right wing Republicans and self-styled leaders of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians - Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., and hate group leader Brian Brown are but examples - are increasingly enamored with Vladimir Putin and Russia's autocratic government.  And then, of course, we have Der Trumpenführer himself who may have colluded with Putin to win the 2016 presidential election.  None of this bodes well for humankind or America in the long run. Rejecting science and knowledge while embracing racism, xenophobia and authoritarian rule cannot end well for most people.  Here are highlights from Sullivan's piece:

Look around you. Donald Trump is now president of the United States, having won on a campaign that trashed liberal democracy itself, and is now presiding over an administration staffed, in part, with adherents of a political philosophy largely alien to mainstream American politics. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has driven his country from postcommunist capitalism to a new and popular czardom, empowered by nationalism and blessed by a resurgent Orthodox Church. Britain, where the idea of free trade was born, is withdrawing from the largest free market on the planet because of fears that national identity and sovereignty are under threat. In France, a reconstructed neofascist, Marine Le Pen, has just won a place in the final round of the presidential election. In the Netherlands, the anti-immigrant right became the second-most-popular vote-getter — a new high-water mark for illiberalism in that once famously liberal country. Austria narrowly avoided installing a neo-reactionary president in last year’s two elections. Japan is led by a government attempting to rehabilitate its imperial, nationalist past. Poland is now run by an illiberal Catholic government that is dismembering key liberal institutions. Turkey has morphed from a resolutely secular state to one run by an Islamic strongman, whose powers were just ominously increased by a referendum. Israel has shifted from secular socialism to a raw ethno-nationalism.

We are living in an era of populism and demagoguery. And yes, there’s racism and xenophobia mixed into it. But what we are also seeing, it seems to me, is the manifest return of a distinctive political and intellectual tendency with deep roots: reactionism.

Reactionism is not the same thing as conservatism. It’s far more potent a brew. Reactionary thought begins, usually, with acute despair at the present moment and a memory of a previous golden age. It then posits a moment in the past when everything went to hell and proposes to turn things back to what they once were. It is not simply a conservative preference for things as they are, with a few nudges back, but a passionate loathing of the status quo and a desire to return to the past in one emotionally cathartic revolt. If conservatives are pessimistic, reactionaries are apocalyptic. If conservatives value elites, reactionaries seethe with contempt for them. If conservatives believe in institutions, reactionaries want to blow them up. If conservatives tend to resist too radical a change, reactionaries want a revolution. Though it took some time to reveal itself, today’s Republican Party — from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Revolution to today’s Age of Trump — is not a conservative party. It is a reactionary party that is now at the peak of its political power.

The reactionary impulse is, of course, not new in human history. . . . Its darkest American incarnation took place after Reconstruction, as a backlash to the Civil War victory of the North; a full century later, following the success of the civil-rights movement, it bubbled up among the white voters of Richard Nixon’s “silent majority.”

What are this generation’s reactionaries reacting to? They’re reacting, as they have always done, to modernity. But their current reaction is proportional to the bewildering pace of change in the world today. They are responding, at some deep, visceral level, to the sense that they are no longer in control of their own lives. They see the relentless tides of globalization, free trade, multiculturalism, and mass immigration eroding their sense of national identity.

This notion of a national culture, rooted in, if not defined by, a common ethnicity, is even more powerful in European nations, which is why Brexit is so closely allied to Trumpism. In the case of Britain, the question of race is framed within a euphemism used by the British government itself: a “visible minority” versus an “invisible one.” “Since 2001, Britain’s ‘visible minority’ population has nearly doubled, from 8 percent to 14 percent today,” Benjamin Schwarz, the national editor of The American Conservative, noted last year. “It is projected to rise to about 38 percent by mid-century.” Is Britain changing so fast that it could lose any meaningful continuity with its history and culture? That is the question now occupying the British neo-reactionaries. Prime Minister Theresa May has not said many memorable things in office, except this: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.”

Things didn’t start going wrong in the 1960s or under the Progressives. Yarvin believes that the Western mind became corrupted during the Enlightenment itself. The very idea of democracy, allied with reason and constitutionalism, is bunk: “Washington has failed. The Constitution has failed. Democracy has failed.” His golden era: the age of monarchs.

And is it any wonder that reactionaries are gaining strength? Within the space of 50 years, America has gone from segregation to dizzying multiculturalism; from traditional family structures to widespread divorce, cohabitation, and sexual liberty; from a few respected sources of information to an endless stream of peer-to-peer media; from careers in one company for life to an ever-accelerating need to retrain and regroup; from a patriarchy to (incomplete) gender equality; from homosexuality as a sin to homophobia as a taboo; from Christianity being the common culture to a secularism no society has ever sustained before ours.

This, of course, is not to defend the neo-reactionary response. Their veiled racism is disturbing, and their pessimism a solipsistic pathology. . . . how can you seriously regard our political system and culture as worse than ever before in history? How self-centered do you have to be to dismiss the unprecedented freedom for women, racial minorities, and homosexuals? Or the increased security for the elderly and unemployed, and the greater access to health care by the poor and now the working poor? Compare the air we breathe today with that of the 1950s. Contrast the religious tolerance we take for granted today with the enmities of the past. Compare the racial integration of today, incomplete as it may be, with Jim Crow. Observe the historically low levels of crime compared with the recent past — and the absence of any world wars since 1945.

Reaction can be clarifying if it helps us better understand the huge challenges we now face. But reaction by itself cannot help us manage the world we live in today — which is the only place that matters. You start with where you are, not where you were or where you want to be. There are no utopias in the future or Gardens of Eden in our past. There is just now — in all its incoherent, groaning, volatile messiness. Our job, like everyone before us, is to keep our nerve and make the best of it.

Sullivan diagnoses the ultimate root of reactionary politics and society: being self-centered.  This applies to whites how oppose racial equality.  They want to forever maintain their white privilege at the expense of racial minorities.  The Christofascists similarly ultimately seek to hang on to their age old habit of persecuting and harming those who hold to different beliefs or threaten to make them think about the myth and legend basis for the house of cards religious beliefs. They perhaps more than anyone save perhaps Islamic extremists are at war with modernity and The Enlightenment's values.  In their rush to restore a supposedly mythical, wonderful era, they utterly overlook the horrors that era wrought on so many.  Self-centered doesn't adequately describe the selfishness and - if one still believes - un-Christian conduct.

Dallas Morning News Endorses Clinton, the First Democrat in 75 Years

The last time the Dallas Morning News endorsed a Democrat candidate for president of the United States was over 75 years ago.  That changed yesterday when the newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton.  Earlier in the week it issued an editorial taking Donald Trump to task and arguing that he was not even a real Republican, noting as follows:

Individual liberty? Trump has displayed an authoritarian streak that should horrify limited-government advocates. This impulsive, unbridled New York real estate billionaire and reality-TV star wants to deport people who were born in the U.S. and don't meet his standard for loyalty. He has proposed banning all Muslims from entering the country, even those escaping Islamist rule, and won't rule out creating a database of Muslims already living here. His open admiration of Russia's Vladimir Putin is alarming.

Trump doesn't reflect Republican ideals of the past; we are certain he shouldn't reflect the GOP of the future.  Donald Trump is not qualified to serve as president and does not deserve your vote.

While that editorial trashed Trump and made the case as to why Republicans and conservatives should not vote for him, yesterday's editorial made the case for voting for Clinton.  Here are editorial highlights:

There is only one serious candidate on the presidential ballot in November. We recommend Hillary Clinton.

We don't come to this decision easily. This newspaper has not recommended a Democrat for the nation's highest office since before World War II — if you're counting, that's more than 75 years and nearly 20 elections. The party's over-reliance on government and regulation to remedy the country's ills is at odds with our belief in private-sector ingenuity and innovation. Our values are more about individual liberty, free markets and a strong national defense.

We've been critical of Clinton's handling of certain issues in the past. But unlike Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton has experience in actual governance, a record of service and a willingness to delve into real policy.

Resume vs. resume, judgment vs. judgment, this election is no contest.  

In Clinton's eight years in the U.S. Senate, she displayed reach and influence in foreign affairs. Though conservatives like to paint her as nakedly partisan, on Capitol Hill she gained respect from Republicans for working across the aisle: Two-thirds of her bills had GOP co-sponsors and included common ground with some of Congress' most conservative lawmakers.

As President Barack Obama's first secretary of state, she helped make tough calls on the Middle East and the complex struggle against radical Islamic terrorism. It's no accident that hundreds of Republican foreign policy hands back Clinton. She also has the support of dozens of top advisers from previous Republican administrations, including Henry Paulson, John Negroponte, Richard Armitage and Brent Scowcroft.

Those are real shortcomings. But they pale in comparison to the litany of evils some opponents accuse her of. Treason? Murder? Her being cleared of crimes by investigation after investigation has no effect on these political hyenas; they refuse to see anything but conspiracies and cover-ups.

We reject the politics of personal destruction. Clinton has made mistakes and displayed bad judgment, but her errors are plainly in a different universe than her opponent's.

Trump's values are hostile to conservatism. He plays on fear — exploiting base instincts of xenophobia, racism and misogyny — to bring out the worst in all of us, rather than the best. His serial shifts on fundamental issues reveal an astounding absence of preparedness. And his improvisational insults and midnight tweets exhibit a dangerous lack of judgment and impulse control.

For all her warts, she is the candidate more likely to keep our nation safe, to protect American ideals and to work across the aisle to uphold the vital domestic institutions that rely on a competent, experienced president.

Hillary Clinton has spent years in the trenches doing the hard work needed to prepare herself to lead our nation. In this race, at this time, she deserves your vote.

Britain Post Brexit - A Cautionary Tale for America

With many pundits and talking heads swooning and saying that the Breixt vote in the United Kingdom might be a clue for a Donald Trump victory in November, one would think that the pro-Trump forces and the forces of bigotry and xenophobia might want to spend a few moments considering what leaving the European Union could likely mean for Great Britain.  Besides the huge negative economic impact, the nation now faces renewed signs of splintering as Scotland plans to hold a new vote on exiting.  Even Northern Ireland is no longer a safe bet at remaining and there is a  stampede of Britons who are seeking Irish passports since it would allow them the benefits of remaining in the EU.  The right wing may be "taking back their country," but that country is likely to be much diminished and the poor even worse off than under the EU.  A Pyrrhic victory at best.  A piece in The Economist looks at more of the possible self-inflicted harm that awaits the UK - or what will be left of it.  Here are highlights:

Britons have benefited from a global version of the QWERTY syndrome; our ancestors defeated the French in the battle for European control of North America. Not only did this establish English as the global language, but the natural alliance with America helped Britain win two world wars. The use of English and the country’s geographical position has made Britain a natural base for international business and finance. By being on the “right side” of those wars, English people grow up with a fairly benign view of their role in history and are shocked to find that the Irish (let alone the Scots) and citizens of the countries we invaded have a much more jaundiced impression. In a sense, then, modern Britons were “born on third base and think they hit a triple.”

It was not always thus. Just 40 years ago, Britain was a mess. As a teenager I recall doing homework by candlelight in the power cuts of 1972, the three-day week, endless strikes and a widespread sense that Britain was ungovernable. It was a shabby, dirty country; when my mum hung out the washing in Peterborough, the soot from the brick chimneys made it dirty again. There was widespread racism; “Paki-bashing” was a favourite sport of teenage boys. In the late 1970s, more people were leaving Britain than immigrating;London’s population fell by a quarter between 1939 and the early 1990s. Slowly but surely, Britain changed. Was it the EU? Was it Margaret Thatcher’s reforms? Was it North Sea oil (another lucky break)? Whatever the reason, Britain became more confident, more vibrant, more multicultural. . . . The British economy was no longer the “sick man of Europe”, especially in the run-up to 2008. Yes, there was too much debt and too big a bet on financial services; but these were not the only areas where Britain was doing well. The car industry has been revived under foreign ownership; aerospace remains important, as does pharmaceuticals; and Hollywood calls on Britain’s creative and technical expertise. The sense of national decline had gone; people flocked to live and work in London as one of the world’s great cities.

Not everybody, of course, welcomed these changes. And I understand that it is easier for a middle-class Briton to feel more secure about it than for someone on the minimum wage. Workers in the developed world felt that the benefits of globalisation were passing them by. Still, Britain has had rather more success, post-2008, in driving down its unemployment rate than France, Spain or Italy.

Now in the space of a week, there is a sense that all that has changed. The referendum campaign seems to have awakened some “rough beast” within the British public; never mind a halt to immigration, some people think existing immigrants are about to be forced out. There are widespread reports of racist incidents and attacks.

Yes, of course, the 17m people who voted Leave did so for a wide variety of reasons, from sovereignty through to the hope that more money would be spent on the NHS. The Leave campaign was always an odd coalition between slightly eccentric back-bench Tories (who were also climate-change sceptics) and UKIP’s nativist instincts. Part of the reason for the post-referendum chaos is that there was no coherent plan for what a post-Brexit Britain would look like.  

[T]the country looks more like the Britain I remember from the 1970s and less the kind of country that I can feel proud about. And that matters because my children may soon lose the right to live and work in the rest of the EU, an insurance policy against nastiness at home. And if I feel that way, how many more talented, more mobile people, who came to Britain because it seemed like an open tolerant place, might decide to leave?  To illustrate the point, here is a tweet from an Italian living in London

Many international professionals already thinking of leaving London and move elsewhere. Not bc of legal status, bc they no longer feel home

And as they go, the people in this video will feel like they have won.

Do Americans want to suffer a similar economic free fall just so racists can feel good about themselves? 

Brexit Economic Disaster Ought to Be Cautionary Note to Trump Supporters

There are significant parallels between British voters who favored leaving the European Union and the low information, low education supporters rallying to Donald Trump's sound bit of >Make America Great Again."  Trump, of course has no specifics as to how he would deliver on the campaign promise.   Neither did those advocating Britain's exit from the European Union.  Like Trump they offered platitudes and sound bites and now that the leave vote has prevailed, they are already changing their tune on what they had promised.  Meanwhile, a slow moving catastrophe is overtaking the British economy thereby showing that feeling good about one's self or wanting "change" doesn't necessarily translate into something good or viable.  Will Trump supporters be chastened by what is happening to Europe?  Probably not.  Their xenophobia, racism and fantasies about restoring a lost past will likely overwhelm rational thinking.  The New York Times looks at some of what this "feel good vote" is wreaking on Great Britain.  Here are excerpts:

A few weeks before Britons voted on whether to remain part of the European Union, Michael Gove, one of the leaders of the Leave campaign, was asked why he should be trusted over the overwhelming number of economists and international authorities who opposed Brexit. “People in this country have had enough of experts,” he replied.

Experts are, of course, known to make mistakes. But in this case, the people who voted for Brexit will pay a big price for ignoring economic expertise. The harmful effects of this vote are both immediate and lasting.

Britons are already worse off. The pound has — so far — plunged by nearly 9 percent against the dollar, slashing the value of British assets, with higher import prices likely to follow. The stock market has also taken a hit. The prices of property, most British people’s main asset, are almost certain to fall, too. While Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, has already pledged 250 billion pounds (about $345 billion) to support the financial system and has said he could offer more if necessary, central bankers cannot protect against an enduring economic shock.

Now, a country renowned for its political and legal stability is descending into chaos. The future prime minister is unknown, as is the direction his or her policies will take. The favorite to replace David Cameron, Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London who opportunistically campaigned for Brexit, styles himself as pro-market and pro-globalization, but in the lead-up to the vote he said he supports curbs on European Union migration, tariffs on Chinese steel and higher public spending. The future terms on which Britain will trade with both the European Union and all the countries with which it has negotiated trade deals on Britain’s behalf are uncertain. Domestic regulations on everything from finance to environmental protection may change.

All that uncertainty is amplified by the prospect of a second referendum on Scottish independence, which may this time be won.

The resulting downturn will cause the government’s budget deficit, already large, to swell. The pound’s depreciation, which might have been expected to boost exports, is unlikely to do much to cushion the blow. Its huge decline in 2008 failed to boost exports and Brexit will dent them.

This unpredictable situation will not be brief. Once triggered, the formal process of leaving the European Union is supposed to take two years. But extricating the union’s second-biggest economy from 43 years of European Union legislation is a daunting task.
Brexit’s supporters are deluded when they argue that Britain could cherry pick what it likes about the European Union and discard the rest. Since exports to the European Union (13 percent of G.D.P. in 2014) matter much more to Britain than exports to Britain (3 percent of G.D.P. in 2014) do to the European Union, the European Union will call the shots. Other governments have every incentive to be tough, both to steal a competitive advantage and to deter others from following Britain out the door.

The young, the higher educated and city dwellers, the most dynamic members of Britain’s economy, voted to Remain. They were outvoted by the old, the less educated and non-urban English, who often rely on taxpayer largess. With economic opportunities stunted, everyone will suffer for Leave voters wrongly blaming hard-working, taxpaying European migrants for everything they dislike about modern Britain and wrongly trusting economic charlatans like Mr. Gove.

Again, look at the British voters who voted to Leave and you see mirror images of Donald Trump's base.  They seek to do the same damage to America that the proponents of Leave have inflicted on Britain.  And, like Gove, Trump is a charlatan. 

Evangelical Christians and Brexit

In my view, evangelical Christians are a toxic and dangerous element in America's civil society and political realm.  Almost by definition, evangelical Christians in America are at war against modernity and a diverse, knowledge based society.  Anything or anyone that threatens their childish, myth based belief system must be destroyed.  And if they resemble anyone in the New Testament, it is the Pharisees - those that Christ purportedly roundly condemned.  In short, they are a nasty group and a threat to decent and knowledge based society.  Indeed, they celebrate ignorance and idiocy.   In the wake of the disastrous Brexit vote in Britain, it should come as no surprise that evangelical Christians strongly supported leaving the European Union.  A piece in The Economist looks at  and this foul element and it support for a revolt against diversity and modernity.  Here are excerpts:

IN NORTHERN IRELAND, where a majority of citizens voted to remain in the European Union, there is a small but still significant share of the electorate who will be rejoicing over the result on religious grounds. Among some devoutly evangelical Protestants, the referendum has been viewed as a playing out of religious prophecy. The most widely quoted chapter is Revelations 18, in which an angel cries triumphantly that the evil empire of Babylon has fallen after "all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." The verse on which preachers have focused is Revelations 18:4.

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying: "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues."

In April, as campaigning for the referendum got underway, a conspicuous slogan urging people to vote for Brexit in the name of that verse appeared on a gable in Tigers Bay, a loyalist area on the north side of Belfast. In a small market town in the west of Northern Ireland, an evangelical group took over a premises on the main street and covered the front in posters urging people to vote "leave" or risk their souls by opting for a political institution which plainly stood for the Antichrist, an impostor whose appearance is a harbinger of the final battle before all earthly things come to end.

Using the eschatological parts of the Bible to denounce pan-European institutions is a long-standing trope in Ulster Protestant rhetoric. It was a recurring theme in the sermons of Ian Paisley, the preacher-politician who dominated Ulster Protestant politics for decades before striking a peace deal with his declared adversaries. He often alluded to Revelations chapter 17, which describes a depraved woman, the whore of Babylon, sitting upon a horrific, multi-headed, multi-horned scarlet-coloured beast. In Paisley's imagery, the Catholic church was the whore, and the European Union was the beast.

Such language is heard in ultra-Protestant circles elsewhere in the world, but Northern Ireland is probably the only place where it has come anywhere close to the political mainstream. 

Brexit- A Referendum Against the Modern World.

After finishing the previous post, I came across this column in the New Statesman that looks at the pro-Brexit forces and the take away is that the mindset that is rallying low information and poorly educated Americans to Donald Trump is nearly identical to that of those who voted for Britain to leave the European Union.  Taken as a whole, the mindset is one of opposing modernity and the modern world in general.  Yes, it may feel good in some ways (I'm sure Christofascists and white supremacists "feel good" when they hear Donald Trump's rants), but it is not a realistic means of facing the future.  Like it or not, the world and society are changing and one can either adjust to the changes and move forward or stand in opposition and eventually find one's self on the trash heap of history.  Read the entire column and you will see that it applies just as equally to Donald Trump supporters as to those who voted to leave the EU.  Here are highlights:

This morning, I woke up in a country I do not recognise. David Cameron’s big gamble – the future of Britain against his personal political ambitions – has backfired so badly that we’ve blasted clean out of the EU. By the time I’d put the kettle on, the stock markets were in free fall, Scotland was debating a new independence referendum, Sinn Fein was making secession noises, and the prime minister had resigned.

There’s not enough tea in the entire nation to help us Keep Calm and Carry On today. Not on a day when prejudice, propaganda, naked xenophobia and callous fear-mongering have won out over the common sense we British like to pride ourselves on. Not on a day when we’re being congratulated by Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and nobody else. Well done, turkeys. Santa’s on his way.

Nigel Farage, the rich, racist cartoon demagogue, boasts that this victory was won “without a single shot being fired”. Tell that to the grieving family of Jo Cox, the campaigning Labour MP gunned down last week. Farage promised that unless something was done to halt immigration, “violence will be the next step”. It looks like we’ve got a two-for-one deal on that one.

This was never a referendum on the EU. It was a referendum on the modern world, and yesterday the frightened, parochial lizard-brain of Britain voted out, out, out, and today we've all woken up still strapped onto this ghost-train as it hurtles off the tracks. Leave voters are finding they care less about immigration now that their pension pots are under threat. Maybe one of the gurning pundits promising them pride and sovereignty should have mentioned that, but they were too busy lying about the NHS. The curtain has been torn away and now we all have to look at the men behind it. They are not good men.

Anyone feel like they’ve got their country back yet? No? That, after all, was the rallying cry of the Leave campaign – the transatlantic echo of "Make America Great Again". There’s a precedent for what happens when svengalis with aggressively terrible haircuts are allowed to appeal to parochialism and fear in the teeth of a global recession, and it isn’t pretty.

It says something about this campaign that I’m no longer at all worried about risking hyperbole or unoriginality when referencing all that Nazi history they made us study in school. I’m just frightened. I’m frightened that those who wanted "their" country back will get their wish, and it will turn out to be a hostile, inhospitable place for immigrants, ethnic minorities, queer people – everyone and anyone who wasn’t included when Farage proclaimed victory for "ordinary, decent people" this morning in front of a posse formed entirely of angry-looking, whey-faced blokes in suits.

But the thing is – I want my country back too. . . . A country where people – all people – can feel at least a little bit safe. I want to rub the sleep of neofascist nightmares from my eyes and find myself in a country where we do not respond to the killing of a politician by voting against everything she stood for. A country where we are polite to our neighbors. A country where we have dealt like adults with the embarrassing fact that we once conquered half the world, instead of yearning for a time when our glory was stolen from enslaved people a convenient ocean away and large parts of the map were the gentle pink of blood in the water. I want to go back to a Britain where hope conquers hate; where crabbed, cowed racism and xenophobia don’t win the day; where people feel they have options and choices in life and are less likely to press the big red button to bring the house down on top of us. I want my country back.

 

This morning it looked like Britain had shot itself in the foot. By lunch time, with two political parties imploding and the stock markets crashing, it appears our aim was higher above the knee. This was not just a vote against Europe, but a vote against Westminster and the entirety of mainstream politics. Every political party campaigned hard for a "Remain" vote – but Britain still chose to Leave, even if we’re regretting it this morning.

In the meantime, the cackling clown-car drivers rolling this catastrophe over the wreckage of civil society are already cheerfully admitting that they lied about their key campaign statements. No, there won’t be £350m more to spend on the NHS, whatever Vote Leave wrote on its battle bus. It turns out that the reason you can’t get a GP appointment isn’t because of immigration, but because the Conservatives have spent six years systematically defunding the health service and cutting public spending to the bone. Brexit will mean more of that, not less.

This was a working-class revolt, but it is not a working-class victory. That’s the tragedy here. The collective howl of rage from depressed, deindustrialised parts of the country bled white and reckless by Thatcher, Blair and Cameron has turned into a triumph for another set of elites. 

All I see is a lot of racist crowing on the internet and campaigners being told to go back where they came from. I’ve already had people telling me it won’t be long before a new Kristallnacht, and people like me had better go back – where? I was born in London. Perhaps the city can secede. That’ll do wonders for house prices.

Britain, like everywhere else, has always had its cringing, fearful side, its cruel delusions, its racist fringe movements, its demagogues preying on the dispossessed. Those things are part of us as much as beef wellington and bad dentistry. But in happier times, those things do not overwhelm us. We do not let bad actors reading bad lines in bad faith walk us across the stage to the scaffold. We are better than this.

This type of post mortem will apply to America if Donald Trump and the Republicans are not resoundingly defeated in November.   When I see neighbors supporting Trump, I cannot help but ask myself, "are they really that stupid and/or bigoted?"

Syrian Refugees - The Moral Failure of the World

There is plenty of blame to go around in terms of who is responsible for the plight and needless deaths of Syrian refugees fleeing civil war and/or religious extremism in the form of ISIS.   That blame extends to world leaders - especially those of the Gulf nations - and to other religious leaders of other faiths.  Here in America, conservative Christians have spent - and continue to spend - millions of dollars to deprive LGBT Americans while pushing a form of religious extremism not far different than that of ISIS except for the level of violence and willingness to commit murder to further one's religious agenda (something Christians did with a vengeance in past eras).  As a column in the New York Times much of the moral bankruptcy in the west is a refusal to have empathy for those who have a different skin color, hold a different faith, and have different customs.  

In my own case, my grandmother's ancestors were French Arcadians who settled in New Orleans after being thrown out of Canada by the British. My father's parents left Austria-Hungry on the eve of World War I.  Other ancestors  fled Ireland during the hard years of the Potato Famine and its aftermath.  Other than Native Americans, every one of us traces our ancestry back to either immigrants or refugees.  How often we forget that but for a fluke of birth, we could be among the refugees now trying to find refuge in Europe and elsewhere.  This is a reality the lunatics of the GOP base and Tea Party ignore.

Here are highlights from the Times column:

WATCHING the horrific images of Syrian refugees struggling toward safety — or in the case of Aylan Kurdi, 3, drowning on that journey — I think of other refugees. Albert Einstein. Madeleine Albright. The Dalai Lama.

And my dad.

In the aftermath of World War II, my father swam the Danube River to flee Romania and become part of a tide of refugees that nobody much cared about. Fortunately, a family in Portland, Ore., sponsored his way to the United States, making this column possible.

If you don’t see yourself or your family members in those images of today’s refugees, you need an empathy transplant.

Aylan’s death reflected a systematic failure of world leadership, from Arab capitals to European ones, from Moscow to Washington. This failure occurred at three levels:

■ The Syrian civil war has dragged on for four years now, taking almost 200,000 lives, without serious efforts to stop the bombings. Creating a safe zone would at least allow Syrians to remain in the country.

■ As millions of Syrian refugees swamped surrounding countries, the world shrugged. United Nations aid requests for Syrian refugees are only 41 percent funded, and the World Food Program was recently forced to slash its food allocation for refugees in Lebanon to just $13.50 per person a month. Half of Syrian refugee children are unable to go to school. So of course loving parents strike out for Europe.

■ Driven by xenophobia and demagogy, some Europeans have done their best to stigmatize refugees and hamper their journeys.

António Guterres, the head of the U.N. refugee agency, said the crisis was in part “a failure of leadership worldwide.”

“This is not a massive invasion,” he said, noting that about 4,000 people are arriving daily in a continent with more than half a billion inhabitants. “This is manageable, if there is political commitment and will.”

We all know that the world failed refugees in the run-up to World War II. The U.S. refused to allow Jewish refugees to disembark from a ship, the St. Louis, that had reached Miami. The ship returned to Europe, and some passengers died in the Holocaust.

Aylan, who had relatives in Canada who wanted to give him a home, found no port. He died on our watch.

Bravo in particular to Icelanders, who on Facebook have been volunteering to pay for the flights of Syrian refugees and then put them up in their homes. Thousands of Icelanders have backed this effort, under the slogan “Just because it isn’t happening here doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”

Then there are the Persian Gulf countries. Amnesty International reports that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates haven’t accepted a single Syrian refugee (although they have allowed Syrians to stay without formal refugee status). Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s bombings of Yemen have only added to the global refugee crisis.

We Americans may be tempted to pat ourselves on the back. But the U.S. has accepted only about 1,500 Syrian refugees since the war began

There has been a vigorous public debate about whether the photo of Aylan’s drowned body should be shown by news organizations. But the real atrocity isn’t the photo but the death itself — and our ongoing moral failure to save the lives of children like Aylan.