It should be obvious to the status quo that the crisis has arrived. Brexit, for all its drama, was a warning. The real collision is close ahead.
The basic demand is for a moderation, if not a reversal of the centralizing tendencies. It’s a brief for less immigration, less political correctness and less government.
Unfortunately conceding to these demands this is like reversing the Titanic. There’s so much momentum, it’s hard to stop. But they have to stop. The Iceberg looms ahead. All Brexit has done is give the warning.
From now on, the countdown begins. Can the elites turn the ship in time?
8 thoughts on “Quote of the Day (Brexit Edition)”
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Congrats to Dearieme and his countrymen on, IMO, a step in the right direction; a step toward individual freedom and away from a more corporate / dystopian future. Money really isn’t everything.
Re: can the elites turn the ship around: the elite are more likely, to paraphrase US naval hero David Farragut[sp?] as he prepared to attack Mobile Bay, say “damn the iceberg, full speed ahead.” For them to “turn the ship around in time” would be to admit they were wrong. I don’t think that is in their nature.
“The big winners of the night are Nigel Farage and of course Britain.”
I’m not sure UKIP is the winner as their issue has now submerged. If he can move on, he will be successful but this is not the end, Of course the referendum could be overturned as has happened a couple of times already.
The wild scenes in Calais, as we witnessed last fall, have probably done much to affect the vote.
I expect Boris Johnson will meet with Trump at some point while he is over there. A trade agreement will be promised.
The status quo is defeated. It’s a good problem to have, but now the issue is transitioning from rebellion to leadership. Isolation has never been an option for England, and it won’t be now. If anything, it’s much easier to withdraw from the world when part of a big union. On its own, a smaller independent political unit will have to face the world and deal with it.
What will happen is Britain will now be free to establish policies and negotiate agreements in its own interests separate from the unaccountable dead weight Eurocracy. That’s the problem with autocratic blocs. The only winners are apparatchiks, cronies, and groupthink. One on one and mano a mano, on the other hand, allows for hammering out the best terms for both parties.
Trump could select Boris as his VP candidate; NY-born, is Boris.
Yesterday the pro-Remain parts of England were pelted with a huge downpour, accompanied by thunderclaps and lightning. God was cross.
This morning, after the result, we got a sunny summer’s morning. Presumably the old boy was a happy bunny.
A break in the clouds indeed. A good sign for England and the rest of the civilized world.
My own personal suspicion is that this is just the bleeding edge.
Historical forces are in a tidal reverse.
We are in the 3rd Economy — the first was the Agricultural Economy, with the Feudal Enclave, Land, and its Lords and Ladies and Handfast Men as its organizing forces.
The second was the Industrial Economy, with Corporations, Factories, Presidents and CEOs and “Middle Managers” as its organizing forces.
The third economy — the one they called “Postindustrial” in the 60s, is, we now understand, an IP & Services Economy.
As with the other two — it can be expected to have its own organizing forces which will be different from those of the first two — but — and this is a big but — While the first two were inherently hierarchical in nature, inherently centralizing, I claim to you that the IP&SE is a loose networked, decentralized economy.
Information flow is central to the generation of wealth in the IPSE. Anything which retards the flow of information is a brake on the economy, and forces will act to remove said brakes. A hierarchical system is filled with intentional and accidental bottlenecks, as info flows uppp the chain and then back dowwwwn the chain. Then reverses course and flows back up and then down again. Any one of those people acts unsuitably and blocks the flow — either willfully, as bureaucratic infighting, or accidentally, by not realizing the importance of a key piece of data — is an impediment to proper function.
How does this come into play in the context of this thread? Because a loose network is not a tightly coupled organization like a nation state. The IPSE favors smaller groups, more nimble and ephemeral, able to form, break apart, and reform in a completely different configuration on short notice. This suggests that the trend towards bigger bigger bigger is, for the most part, going to reverse. Smaller is better. Not atomic, but molecular, for sure.
And this works geopolitically, too. The big fat nation state is a magnet for grievances by the millions, with a giant target on its back and lots and lots of soft points to hit at.
A loose confederation of city-states may well be a lot more functional in the coming age.
Thoughts?