Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

Isle of Dreams

Zac Beauchamp provides a good summary (though lengthy) of the impossible twist of the knickers the Brits have gotten themselves into. The Brexit referendum only passed in the first place because its proponents lied to the voters. Even so, it depended on xenophobia and racism to attract a majority. Because it was premised on lies, it is literally impossible to produce the result that proponents promised, and are still pretending to demand.

I don't want to belabor the details here, some of which I have discussed before. The Ireland-Northern Ireland border problem is insoluble, as is the problem of British citizens living on the continent and continentals with indispensable jobs in Britain. So is the problem of not having trade agreements in place that will allow commerce to continue after March 29, and the "just in time" inventory practices of British manufacturers, and a whole lot else. But the posturing of Brexit proponents is driving the country toward catastrophe -- not to mention dissolution. The secession of Scotland is a likely outcome as well.

Astonishingly, the Brexit proponents are continuing to pretend that everything will be just fine on March 29. The mentality of people who stand on the beach and insist that the tide will not come in is incomprehensible to me. Reality will occur on that date. This is comparable to the insistence of U.S. wingnuts that Robert Mueller's got nuffin. Actually what we already know is plenty, but there will be an empirical test of what else he knows pretty soon. What profits it a person to pretend to know what is almost surely false?

3 comments:

Don Quixote said...

Carl Jung said, "People cannot stand too much reality." The tangled web that Brexit and Trump supporters have woven is so thick, gnarled and toxic that it is impossible to unravel it all at once. The Mueller investigation must be made public, and the Brits must be willing to save their collective ass instead of letting themselves be led further into the web of lies that their "conservative" politicians have woven. Jung also said that a lie would make no sense unless the truth were perceived to be dangerous.

So we've allowed ourselves, on both of the pond, to be led by fearful scoundrels.

Time to reclaim the path of truth, the only one worth traveling, the only one that leads to true freedom.

Mark P said...

Maybe god has had decided that his little experiment with the English-speaking peoples was a bad idea, and he and is going to let someone else run the world for a while. I suspect they will be speaking Chinese.

Don Quixote said...

If that is the case ... I agree with god! I just hope they're Chinese WOMEN. As a matter of fact, I think it's time to let women everywhere run things. Let guys do what they're good at: fix stuff, hang out, play sports. Let competent people run things, people who know how to communicate and cooperate.