A British Artist in Texas on the Big Brexit Hangover

by Richard Patterson June 26, 2016

 

humpty-dumpty

 

(Richard Patterson, an English artist living in Dallas, wrote this the day after the Brexit vote count.)

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.

    Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”

    “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

    “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

– from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (1872) 

Tony Blair picked up on my point about the absurd demonizing of politicians, economists, and journalists as “experts,” as if ordinary jobsworth cockney wankers down the pub somehow always know best. You can look to America for a precedent, and it started with the service industries. It’s a the customer is always right attitude; it’s the give-everyone-an-unpalatable-confusion-burger-in-a-gimmicky-bar-with-a-craft-beer-list, because that’s where the demographic seems to be taking us. Because the “customer is always right.”

Respect for knowledge, skill, advice, a credible viewpoint—all of this is giving way to the idea that the tosser at the pub who’s five lagers up apparently knows best. It’s part of the America Fuck Yeah! syndrome, only it has led to an official unraveling in Britain (shockingly) before it might unravel here in the U.S.

What strikes me is that the British are essentially a polite (and at times violent), tolerant and ultimately cautious country, but who have never had a modern European-style bloody revolution. For various reasons, the British have never had to “rise up,” although it’s not been without civil unrest. It has excelled, mostly, in resolving complex social and economic issues politically. However, regrettably, one aspect of Britain that we all know—the whining, the complaining, the sardonic and ironic pub pundit, the armchair critic pub bore—all of these people who have traditionally blown off steam down the boozer, all of these people with passive political angst and high opinion do not usually coalesce into a meaningful political force. Until you give them a referendum.

The referendum gave equal voice to every individual who wanted to use their vote, and the politicians and media made their best effort to explain the gravity of the issues in serial debate long before the vote, but in so doing the nation unleashed an emotional outpouring that may not have always addressed the issue at hand. How many voters became power drunk with entitlement after feeling for too long unheard? How many voters conflated old-school grievances and relocated them in the wrong ballot? It was like using a “reset Safari” button by mistake and erasing your entire history when you just meant to lose a couple of emails.

I think people have become used to “having a say”—Tweeting, Facebooking—sounding off privately, etc., and there never being any consequences. So I believe that many of the people who voted for Leave probably did so thinking that actually nothing would be affected. They simply wanted to vent, to get it off their chest. They had not truly considered the consequences. They may have secretly wanted to remain but to have the perverse pleasure of being able to later say Well I voted against this whole thing—this isn’t what I wanted. That would have given them something else to truly complain about. But to their own surprise, their votes carried the day, and now they will see it all nose dive, and as it does, they’ll blame whoever else they can—whichever new “expert” is at the helm—for screwing it up for a second time. It’s a spiral of retrogression. As things get worse (but there are fewer immigrants to blame) then you pin it on something and someone else.

This of course sounds entirely patronizing, as though I think that people tend to be stupid, ignorant, irrational and so on, and that they don’t say what they mean, or mean what they say. But unfortunately it would appear that a huge swathe of Britain has just proven this to be the case. Already there is evidence of voters saying, “I didn’t realize this would be the outcome; if I could vote again, I’d reverse my vote.” Certainly different people voted to Leave for different reasons (it wasn’t just one demographic), and many who voted to Leave really meant it, but you look at English football supporters drunk in pubs in Marseilles, and you have to know that there is a supreme disconnect at times between a sentimental view of what they think they want England to be—”victorious, glorious” and so on— and the grimly sardonic understanding that their team will probably lose, because they generally do. It is the fundamental default setting of an aspect of the British psyche: the dour entertainment potential in getting your hopes up in order that they can be dashed, in order that you can get legless and then smash up the port and get yourself banged up in jail overnight. It is a form of sadomasochism that so many in Britain practice as entertainment. It manifests as a catharsis that is politically ugly and has traditionally invoked jingoism and nationalism (albeit with a degree of wit).

The columnist Marina Hyde referred to the “suitably nostalgic, sub-Pearl & Dean [an old-fashioned advertising group that did the promos in British cinemas of yore] production values… [which] depicted a place of Spitfires and the battle of Britain and the Queen’s coronation.” Britain for decades has ironically (and unironically) traded on its own memories, proudly and fondly, but sadly too, knowing much of it is past, redundant, from another time. Some of it is kept around as a theatrical sentiment to be sung at soccer matches, like a form of music hall. Even Blair’s “Cool Brittannia” in the ‘90s was an attempt to reignite and repackage at least some of the vestige of this cultural identity into modern Britain. The opening ceremony of the London Olympics probably did it better and more succinctly.

And suddenly, recently, it has become all too real, as if half of the population think that the Spitfires and Lancaster bombers are a still a way of life. As John Oliver said last weekend, the bar for entry to even be considered “English” seems to be a monocled badger named Reginald who lives inside a shepherd’s pie.

And now it has played out massively in the political arena, as if the whole thing is one giant European Cup tournament, and the perception of the way to win is to just get rid of all the other teams—a bit like the way America invented American football for itself. America always wins at American football, because no one else can be bothered to play it.

So, with Boris Johnson’s encouragement, some of the British population might have invoked the pub-bore everyman approach to politics as a conflation of the ‘keep it local’ and the global populist contemporary condition. The notion that somehow Britain’s culture will now be more distinct (again) is something of a mirage, because now every tosser in the entire western world (and beyond) uses the same iPhone, drinks craft beer at a bad bar with shipping-pallet tables, seems to be slightly overweight (despite all the almond milk), and doesn’t know much about world events despite staring at screens all the way home on the train while never looking out of their own carriage window. The culture of populism has become ubiquitous in the sense that most everyone has become equally deluded by the narcissism of the manner in which they process information.

There will surely come a point soon where the medical profession and politicians alike will conclude that we have become meaningless information junkies to the point where any processed information has become the equivalent of junk food. Too much information without creative application, or accountable action, becomes a form of unhealthy bingeing and meaningless, directionless indulgence. You’d hope that anyone seen staring at a screen, surfing the internet and social media, is surely educating themselves. But really the information intake may be so garbled, and so undirected or misdirected, that the digestive system of our brains and political consciences have given up the ghost and have made us intellectually obese, unhealthy, and stupid.

I think Britain is the first modern country to have become punch drunk on information and assumed that if all information is equally questionable, then no information can be truly accurate, and so therefore sense, common sense, sensibility—none of these count for anything any more other than a kind of post-pub gut reaction to things. The same kind of gut reaction that comes in from the pub drunk late at night and says, “Fuck it, I’m gonna bust up the kitchen and rip off some cupboard doors and throw a chair through the window,” and then wakes up the next morning and has to phone a guy to come in and fix it all at great expense.

22 comments

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22 comments

Annette Carlozzi June 26, 2016 - 12:05

Thx, Richard. Glad to hear your response to this shocking collision of values.
Commit to vote, people! It could so easily happen here.

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Michael Corris June 26, 2016 - 12:09

Some random thought by a person who lived in the United Kingdom (that is: England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) for nearly 20 years. During that time, I witnessed the rise of right wing parties like the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in England and the rebirth of the National Front in France. After the Balkan War of the mid-1990s and the admission into the EU of formerly communist Eastern European nations, nativism experienced a resurgence matched only by the nationalist zeal that swept through Europe after World War One. Like history itself, the issue of national sovereignty was complicated. To some of us living in Texas, this attitude might seem quaint, as familiar as we are with the pluses and minuses of globalization. But sometimes the media is good at making connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. Reading The Guardian in the days leading up to the glorious 23rd of June (the date of the Referendum), I was amused to read about the nativist Texan Daniel Miller and the campaign for an independent Texas. The Guardian liked the sound of “Texit” and it made for good copy-fodder and hilarious comparisons when placed side by side with the UK “Brexit” campaign. It was a good laugh; but about 16.5 million people in the UK are not laughing now, including my daughter, who was not old enough to vote but will suffer the consequences of this “know nothing” decision. It’s fantasy to think that Texas could secede, but nativist sentiments given voice by populist groups and politicians continue to shred history and generate

Richard makes a good point about “information”, which shouldn’t be confused with knowledge or know-how. The kind of information I believe Richard is talking about may be defined as knowledge shorn of its context, its history, and its logic. This is the same oafish barroom logic being spouted by the pub-bores Richard describes so colorfully. We can point to the same sort of logic in our own backyards. A student of mine created recently a project around the Daughters of the Confederacy. She called them up and asked them about the Civil War. The reply was that the Civil War was about states’ rights. Who could argue against states’ rights? It’s enshrined in the Constitution, is it not? Ah, but the phrase itself is pure “information”: a mantra (or meme, if you prefer) floating in the blogosphere.

Nigel Farage, UKIP leader, in his “victory speech” the day after the Referendum, referred to June 23rd as UK Independence Day. Now, the UK would have its “rights” affirmed and restored. Aside from the fact that the UK is already a sovereign state, Farage continues to evoke the spectre of sovereignty. Not only is this political line wildly misleading, it’s crypto-racism and, if we press a bit harder, crypto-fascism. I recall a conversation with a London cabbie—a pure Cockney, born and bred within the sound of the Bow Bells. He was a jovial fellow, as many London cabbies are; we talked politics frankly. He said he and his wife moved from the East End to the suburbs, and that the problem was immigration. But he stopped short of supporting Nigel Farage, because he was very familiar with UKIP’s links to the old British National Front. Yet, there was no recourse, in his mind, to the problem. It seemed to be all or nothing, black and white. Just like the choices supplied to clients and consumers: “Leave”, “Remain”; “Like”, “Not Like”.

The imbecile David Cameron gambled that the voters of the UK would “see” the benefits of the EU, without once considering the experience of this London cabbie. Cameron was also derelict in his duty to explain clearly how the UK’s involvement in Europe highlighted its relative impoverishment against France and Germany. All he had was austerity, cuts in education, and the support of London’s Financial elite. He’s out, and good riddance. Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labor Party, is also facing a vote of no confidence, thanks to his pathetic performance as the key individual to educated Labor supporters to vote to “Remain”. Boris Johnson, however, who is just beginning to realize the enormity of his mistake, and may yet be Prime Minister and leader of the Tories. But with a BIG HANGOVER.

It would be folly to suggest that the 17 million plus voters who checked the “Leave” box could be persuaded by a rational array of the pros and cons of EU membership, but I am saying that the complexity of the situation for the British was never fully investigated or explained, so that the large number of “undecided” voters were effectively left to their own devices. This is what comes of politicians treating the electorate like “clients”.

Personally, the saddest outcome of all is that one particular politician — Labor MP Jo Cox — was brutally murdered on June 16th by a UK nativist crank. This guy made his own gun, thanks to literature sourced from a US-based neo-Nazi organization. When asked by the magistrate at the arraignment for his name in court, he replied: “Death to Traitors. Free Britain.”

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Janet Kutner June 26, 2016 - 13:24

Richard,
You should circulate this articulate commentary as widely as you can and encourage your friends to do so as well. The danger of going with the flow is getting swept by a riptide. It’s not a game of chance. The “me too” attitude can have dire Consequences.

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David June 28, 2016 - 11:31

I believe the Brexit vote was much, much more than the whimsical, thoughtless impulse you portrayed, and with which you slandered it. There seem to have been at least two, quite major, reasons for the vote outcome.

1. Britain’s economy — for example, its fisheries, its farmers, and other manufacturing businesses — were frequently put to major economic losses by the Brussels bureaucrats of the EEU; that is, for example, Britain having “lost control of its own waters”, with its fisheries then having incurred major economic losses due to the EEU. See the quite informative (and, actually, quite interesting) crowd-funded motion picture, “Brexit — the Movie”. Vimeo (and Google/ YouTube, if it hasn’t chosen to censor it) should find them for you. Those farmers, manufacturers and other businesspeople farmed or made things, sold them, and made money. EEU restrictions imposed by Brussels appear to have put many of them out of work, in their own country, and out of their own livelihoods.

2. Britain’s culture and social fabric appear to have been undergoing significant change, and stress. One very recent example should illustrate: The order, by the new London Mayor, Mr. Sadiq Khan, that advertisements henceforth show women in a covered-up, “modest” state of attire, and not scantily-clad. Although the Brits do tolerate in their legal system more restrictions upon free speech than do the Yankees, an artist — or anyone else, British or American, who believes in free speech and creativity — ought to be offended by this imposition. In addition, I suspect that at least some British (and other) women find this imposition upon womens’ free choice to be insultingly repressive.

Ultimately, the Brexit vote appears to have been an expression by Britons of a desire to get back control of their own economy and culture. As Mr. Nigel Farage, the British representative to the Brussels “Parliament”, said just this morning (Tuesday, June 28), “…Upheavals in politics can actually be a pretty good thing…” And, as the current person holding the office of U.S. President has said, “Elections have consequences.” Yes, indeed , they do.

And freedom, and self-determination, are priceless.

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Michael Krone June 29, 2016 - 15:14

Thank you for your post. My reply to Mr. Patterson’s article was “in moderation” earlier, but I suspect it may be in moderation for a long, long time. I have a suspicion that I was not “moderate” enough.

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chuck parker July 1, 2016 - 05:50

Your grasp of those aspects of European reality that underlay the ‘Leave’ vote will ever remain beyond the public ken of the Establishment, which simply cannot conceive of the extent to which they’ve screwed over their own countrymen; in part, no doubt, because their allegiance is to the other members of that Establishment, rather than those same countrymen.

The current ascendance of Donald Trump isn’t the first time that we’ve peacefully thrown the bums out on this side of the pond, you know. It’s past time to once again tramp through the White House with our muddy boots, breaking the furniture as we go, as happened in Andy Jackson’s day. When corruption has rooted itself within a society, it’s best to tear those roots out, before it approaches Roman or Byzantine dimensions.

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chuck parker July 1, 2016 - 06:02

Perhaps the clearest proof that it IS past time to do so is the success of Hillary Clinton. This feckless nonentity, whose public career is an almost uninterrupted campaign of mendacity and petty avarice, should have been vomited out by a healthy electorate.

That her personal hero, the subject of her senior thesis at Radcliffe–when she had full access to the stacks at the affiliated Harvard University–was one of the two individuals most responsible for the success of the Eugenics Movement, Margaret Sanger, speaks volumes. Personally, I do not share my heroes with Adolf Hitler, who cited her work as the inspiration for his conception of the ‘Final Solution’, which he formulated first while in prison, when writing “Mein Kampf”.

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charissa terranova June 29, 2016 - 07:30

As with the US, it seems many here, people of all creeds, colors, and origins, have voted against their economic (and greater) interests. I spoke to a very nice Hungarian taxi driver in Cambridge who was a brexiteer. He did not seem to understand it was a vote against his own ability to be in the UK. News reports show interviews with Indian, Pakistani, African born Brits who voted brexit.

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Billy Kirkland June 29, 2016 - 12:38

I want add my own thanks to you Richard!
(Small aside to Ms. Carlozzi, we must be careful who we encourage to vote, or it REALLY could happen here.)

Richard, you have bravely made clear that we progressives need to cease and desist with our well meant but flawed concern for, and pandering to, the working class. Clearly, these besotted pub crawlers are mostly all corrupt, both morally and intellectually. They ARE wankers, one and all, and they are endangering the progress of rational society. As Obama has noted, our own jobsworth tossers are nothing more than bitter clingers, holding progress hostage with their retrograde beliefs, superstitions and grievances. We must of course continue to be cognizant of the need to provide them with a decent, minimum standard of living, but we must dispense with the notion that they have a right to self-determination. As Ms. Terranova has so accurately pointed out, they can’t be trusted to recognize and vote their own best interests. Uneducated men and women, who have little time or inclination to be well-versed on the issues, have no business having an equal voice with men and women who do have the education and the ability to discern the best path of action. Merchant/Ivory and Kazuo Ishiguro laid this bare with piercing, remarkable elegance…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Tm3AT543YE&spfreload=10

James Traub, the wealthy heir to the Bloomingdale’s chain, has written an article in Foreign Policy that tracks with the majority of sentiments here on Glasstire and is worth the read…

“…It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that “elitist”? Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history…”
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/28/its-time-for-the-elites-to-rise-up-against-ignorant-masses-trump-2016-brexit/

Now, some right proper naughty geezers have also warned us time again about the problem of our uppity proles…

‘The public must be put in its place…so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.’ – Walter Lippmann, explaining in his book ‘Public Opinion’ (published in 1922) that controlling the minds of the masses is essential to the proper functioning of a modern democracy.

“In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play…. All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called ‘co-operative,’ i.e., to do exactly what everybody is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them..

Except for the one matter of loyalty to the World State and to their own order, members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous and full of initiative….

On those rare occasions, when a boy or girl who has passed the age at which it is usual to determine social status shows such marked ability as to seem the intellectual equal of the rulers, a difficult situation will arise, requiring serious consideration. If the youth is content to abandon his previous associates and to throw in his lot whole-heartedly with the rulers, he may, after suitable tests, be promoted, but if he shows any regrettable solidarity with his previous associates, the rulers will reluctantly conclude that there is nothing to be done with him except to send him to the lethal chamber before his ill-disciplined intelligence has had time to spread revolt. This will be a painful duty to the rulers, but I think they will not shrink from performing it.” — Bertrand Russell, “The Scientific Outlook”, 1931

As Zbiggie has pointed out, we ignore these truths at our own peril…

“For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive… The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination… The worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening… That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing… The nearly universal access to radio, television and increasingly the Internet is creating a community of shared perceptions and envy that can be galvanized and channeled by demagogic political or religious passions. These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches…

The major world powers, new and old, also face a novel reality: while the lethality of their military might is greater than ever, their capacity to impose control over the politically awakened masses of the world is at a historic low. To put it bluntly: in earlier times, it was easier to control one million people than to physically kill one million people; today, it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people…” – Zbigniew Brzezinski, speaking at CFR Montreal — May 18, 2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEHsUojUgzk&spfreload=10

Thankfully, it now seems that Brussels is not about to let a rabble of mugs have a bubble on them…RIGHT ON!!!…

“It appears The Brits may have dodged more than a bullet in their decision to leave The EU. The foreign ministers of France and Germany are reportedly due to reveal a blueprint to effectively do away with individual member states in what is being described as an “ultimatum.” As The Express reports, the shockingly predictable final solution to Europe’s Brexit-driven existential crisis is an apparently long-held plan to morph the continent’s countries into one giant superstate. The radical proposals mean EU countries will lose the right to have their own army, criminal law, taxation system or central bank, with all those powers being transferred to Brussels…”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-27/eu-officials-unveil-ultimatum-blueprint-final-solution-european-super-state

God Save the Queen!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTC-xPTuPR8&spfreload=10

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chuck parker July 1, 2016 - 06:09

When the Elites have run things solely for their own narrow and selfish interests, going on at least forty years, it’s past time that they sod off. Their expertise at self-dealing is no longer an asset to the Nation or its People.

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Michael Krone June 29, 2016 - 12:53

It’s interesting that you begin by invoking the name of Tony Blair, a degenerate war criminal, to bolster your “point” about “the absurd demonizing of politicians, economists, and journalists…as if the ordinary jobsworth cockney wankers down at the pub somehow always know best.” Really?? Oh, please don’t be too critical of our betters, the “experts”, who guide and deliver the correct information meant for our own good. You proceed further with “a respect for knowledge, skill, advice, a credible viewpoint…giving way to the idea that the tosser at the pub who’s five lagers up, apparently knows best.” Then comes “the armchair critic pub bore”, who, when gifted with a referendum, “became power drunk with entitlement after feeling for too long unheard.” I know that these people exist, but your entire focus here seems to be a smear against 17 million Leave voters who don’t agree with your idea of Britain’s place in the universe. So where’s the knowledgeable and creditable information here that might persuade these drunken, soccer-crazed, pub-crawling sots to reach a better understanding of the situation. Your characterization doesn’t jibe with any of the Leave voters whom I have contact with. Before and immediately after the vote, came a bombardment of the epithets “RACISTS, XENOPHOBES!!” Propaganda designed for the purpose of divide and conquer is over the top. Now targeting “old white people” has been added, as the young and enlightened have taken to the streets, some carrying signs that “old people should die”. What’s up with this?? You had David Cameron and EU officialdom throwing out all the scary scenarios of the calamities that would befall Britain if the vote didn’t go in favor of Remain (even to the extent of “ISIS gonna gitcha” if you vote Leave). How insane!! Talk about “wankers”! At least now, our worst fears are confirmed–Britain has been destroyed by racist, xenophobic, ignorant, soccer-crazed, elderly white, pub-crawling sots—we should have listened to those sane, kind, intelligent leaders of Remain in the name of “the greater good”. Perhaps the Leave voters aren’t as stupid and befuddled as you seem to suggest. I think the majority of them are concerned about the true nature of the EU as a consolidating force to form the Super State, undemocratic, no individual rights, basically a gargantuan police state I’m posting one of several articles on the latest developments with the EU. God knows, I hope I didn’t choose the wrong information. You know how the Internet is. I hope you’ll soon post another article explaining the virtues of the EU. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-27/eu-officials-unveil-ultimatum-blueprint-final-solution-european-super-state .

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Michael Krone June 29, 2016 - 15:59

The comment, “ISIS gonna gitcha” if you vote Leave” should have read “if you vote Remain”.

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Michael Krone June 30, 2016 - 11:10

Sorry, actually the ISIS mention was correct as originally posted.

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David June 30, 2016 - 16:04

In my previous post, I gave two specific examples to show reasons why I believe the Brexit vote was successful: History of negative effects of the EEU upon Britons’ incomes and economy, and negative changes in British society and culture. (By the way: “Brexit-The Movie” can be found at https://vimeo.com/166378572 )

Since the publishing of my post, the subsequent posts (Incidentally, one which was dated two days prior to mine, but which first showed up after mine) did not contain any evidence, let alone not speaking to my examples. Instead, we were treated to insults including:

— ordinary jobsworth cockney wankers
— this “know nothing” decision
— oafish barroom logic
— it’s crypto-racism and…crypto-fascism
— their retrograde beliefs
— “As Obama has noted, our own jobsworth tossers are nothing more than bitter clingers, holding progress hostage with their retrograde beliefs, superstitions and grievances”

All of those prove nothing — except the lack of an evidence-based argument. The examples I gave still stand.

In addition, the two very lengthy comments appearing since my prior post, both on the adverse side to my own comment, appear to demonstrate a well-known concept: If you’ve got an argument that has merit, it often doesn’t take a whole lot of words to make it.

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Christina Rees June 30, 2016 - 20:21

The comments under this op-ed have been published in the order they’ve been received.

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Michael Krone July 1, 2016 - 11:51

David, please help me out here. I take it that you’re referring to the posts of Mr. Kirkland and myself. I believe that you must have misread both our posts. Actually, I liked your post and thanked you for posting it. Why do you say that we “adversely” intruded on the points you were making?? You said, “I believe the Brexit vote was much, much more than the whimsical, thoughtless impulse you portrayed, and with which you slandered it. There seem to have been at least two, quite major, reasons for the vote outcome.” Okay. “Thoughtless”, yes. Whimsical”, no–I found nothing “whimsical” about Mr. Patterson’s article. Perhaps a few intermittent props to the British people and history, but I think it centered entirely on trashing 17 million Leave voters in the worst possible way. As far as your focus on “insults”, I have no idea what you’re thinking. The insults were in Mr. Patterson’s article. That’s what I was addressing. Since the comments text is in “mouse-type”, perhaps the quotation marks were not that legible and were confusing the reading. I was only quoting descriptions used in the article. I don’t claim to be a writer, but with that said, I don’t think there should be that much confusion in my words and their gist. Besides, I don’t think subsequent posts were required to amplify your two points. I said what I had on my mind whether it amplified your points or not. The ZeroHedge article I posted at the end, I think, would add some amplification about the control-freak extremist nature of the EU governing body. (not nice people-1984, Brave New World-type people)

As for Mr. Kirkland’s comments–my take was an illustration of the mindsets of the ruling elites who view people as just part of their herd. Mr. Kirkland was not advocating their positions, but through a tongue-in-cheek, satirical manner, exposing their thoughts and attitudes about their elevated sense of entitlement. I really don’t understand quite how you jumped to the conclusions you did. If you wish, I would urge you to reread those two articles in this light. I’m out of words for now–all the best to you.

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joel sampson July 1, 2016 - 03:36

David and I must be the only non-liberals on this site. Not surprising. The Brexit vote will be good for England in the long run. You are not a country if you don’t have control over your borders. It’s the uber-rich and so called elite liberals that are complaining. The same thing is going to happen November in the U.S. — by a landslide.

Personally, I’m making money on it – I bought stock in evil U.K. and other European oil producers Monday. It’s a good time to visit England and buy U.K. goods.

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Michael Galbreth July 1, 2016 - 07:58

I share the frustrations of the writer if for nothing more than my hatred for the term “Brexit.” It’s a contracted language emoji for the illiterate. Kwik Sak.

Coincidentally, coinciding with the Brexit vote was the largely ignored death of Alvin Toffler, the formally famed writer of “Future Shock.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/books/alvin-toffler-author-of-future-shock-dies-at-87.html The two events are related on many levels.

No man is an island. Once again, the forest is hiding in plain sight behind the trees.

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Horace Jeffery Hodges July 3, 2016 - 14:33

“What strikes me is that the British are essentially a polite (and at times violent), tolerant and ultimately cautious country, but who have never had a modern European-style bloody revolution. ”

Wasn’t there some sort of civil disagreement in the 17th century, just a little thing in which a king’s head got chopped off?

Jeffery Hodges

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