Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Conservatives Brexit, Conservatives broke it.
'It' being the UK.

The vote to leave the UK was along party lines, being overwhelmingly a vote by Conservatives both conventional 'mainstream' conservatives, and the more rabid UKIP crowd, comparable to our teabaggers and birchers. Conservatives not only were willing to cut off their noses to spite their faces, they were willing to slit their economic throats to express their hatred of immigrants.

Sarah Palin demonstrated her deep ignorance on financial and foreign policy matters, speaking as a surrogate for Donald Trump, peddling ridiculous conspiracy theories about the EU, and advocating even more ridiculous policy positions that are not even remotely similar, about the UN.  From FB

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another...
The UK knew - it was that time. And now is that time in the USA.
The Brexit referendum is akin to our own Declaration of Independence. May that refreshed spirit of sovereignty spread over the pond to America's shores!
Congratulations, smart Brits. Good on you for ignoring all the fear mongering from special interest globalists who tend to aim for that apocalyptic One World Government that dissolves a nation's self-determination and sovereignty... the EU being a One World Government mini-me.
America can learn an encouraging lesson from this.
It is time to dissolve political bands that connect us to agendas not in our best interest. May UN shackles be next on the chopping block.
- Sarah Palin
The WaPo covered it very well:
As the United Kingdom prepared to leave the European Union, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his resignation, the value of the pound fell and HBO had to assure worried “Game of Thrones” fans that future Northern Ireland film shoots were going to be fine, Sarah Palin came forth with her own take.
On Friday, the former Alaskan governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate congratulated the “smart Brits,” likening the June referendum to the Declaration of Independence. After all, as she noted in a Facebook post, the citizens of the United Kingdom may have avoided nothing less than the end of the world.
Palin, a Donald Trump supporter, applauded the “leave” voters for outfoxing “globalists” who would bring about an “apocalyptic One World Government,” she wrote on Facebook. That is because the European Union, in her words, is a “One World Government mini-me.”
Palin’s comments marked a public embrace of a conspiracy theory popularly known as the New World Order. Palin did not elaborate what, exactly, the apocalypse would look like. But the details of who or what make up the New World Order depend on the theorist — it is a secret organization of politicians, banks, the Illuminati, the media or, perhaps, lizard people. Distilled, the main goal of the organization is a totalitarian regime that will emerge from the shadows: One World Government to rule them all.
So far as I can discern, the whole one world order nonsense is reminiscent of J.R.R. Tokien's lines from the Lord of the Rings saga:
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Crackpot conspiracy theories like the One World Order play to the lowest, and basest common denominators of the ignorant, acting as propaganda to divert those it affects from rational and fact based thought to emotional thinking that ignores fact.  It plays as well on the worst tendencies and beliefs of those it affects, in this case promoting an evil form of nationalism and the worst of "Us vs. Them" thinking.  It is notably anti-immigrant, with people wanting to 'take back' their country from those bad brown people who are 'not like us'.

Beyond the political conservative vs liberal division, voters for Brexit were older, white, and less educated, and tended to be more rural, which has correlated with less educated generally.   In other words, the Brexit voters were the Brit equivalent of Trump supporters specifically, and more extreme right wing conservatives in the US generally.  They are the resentful and bigoted "I shouldn't have to know anything" scientist and other 'elite' hating folks.

What do I mean by 'breaking' the UK?  Financial decline, certainly.  The why and how of that is outlined here very well by the prestigious London School of Economics (and political science).

The British stock market has already faced serious losses, and foreign investors are talking about pulling out of the UK -- or at the very least, phasing out manufacturing and instead taking their new investment to the continental EU.  The Guardian article here addresses the example of the Japanese investors.

From the Guardian:
It echoed a plea in May by the prime minister Shinzo Abe for Britain to remain in the EU, pointing out that those Japanese companies employ around 140,000 people in the UK.
“There would be an immeasurable impact on their businesses” in the event of a victory for the Leave campaign, he said.

...Several Japanese firms have voiced alarm at the prospect of Britain leaving the EU.
Hitachi has said Britain’s membership of the EU had influenced its decision to open a train maintenance depot in west London last year.
“We built the plant because Britain is part of the EU and we are considering expanding into the EU,” the Asahi Shimbun quoted Toshiaki Higashihara, Hitachi’s president, as saying this week, adding that he opposed a Brexit.
Tatsuya Tanaka, the president of Fujitsu, whose information technology arm employs 14,000 people in Britain, has said that a vote to leave the EU would be “a huge negative” for the electronics firm’s business in the UK.
Abe has voiced support for David Cameron’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU, warning British voters that leaving could threaten Japanese investment and put more than 100,000 jobs at risk.
But more than that, Scotland where a close vote regarding independence failed, is looking at a new vote, with a change in support for leaving the UK now that the Brexit vote has succeeded.  Scotland voted overwhelmingly to stay in the EU.  Looks like they won't vote to stay in the UK however.

It has begun, as reflected in this news coverage from France:

EU leaders meet without UK for first time in wake of Brexit

Cameron flew back to London after Tuesday's summit, as Scotland's first minister headed in the opposite direction to test the waters in Brussels for her country joining the bloc as a separate entity.
And we have this about Northern Ireland wanting to stay in the EU - even if it means leaving the UK, which it happens was provided for in a 1998 accord between the UK and Ireland.

Then there is the post-Brexit vote news about Australia wanting to leave the Commonwealth, for their own economic reasons.  This underlines how Brexit makes the UK less influential and successful.

Palin got it so very wrong, as she always does. Apparently a lot of anti-Brexit voters want to take back their respective countries, not from the EU or the UN, but from the UK, because Brexit so badly damages the UK both politically and economically in the world.  It is clearly an attempt by those other parts of the UK to dump the dummies, the crazy conservatives, the petty and fearful bigots, to go their own way without the conservative baggage that is an anchor dragging them down, down, down.

Once again, conservatives demonstrate that they are poorly informed on factual, substantive matters,, and that they cannot, or will not (same effective result), participate in mature, responsible, informed democracy.  Rather conservatives act like petty children badly in need of a time out until they can conduct themselves properly.

Long term, Brexit will no doubt do for the UK what the conservatives would not do for themselves, resulting in a massive breakdown of the conservative side of the political spectrum, leading to a purge of the destructive controlling factions and eliminating their influence for a period of time.

We can probably expect the same thing as conservatives in the US implode with the nomination of Donald Trump destroys the existing GOP.

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