I thought maybe when the Nazi murdered a member of Parliament in broad daylight it would put a damper on UKIP’s vile agenda. I thought the stark, ugly violence of that would shock or shame away some of the attraction of this scapegoating politics of resentment, dissuading our friends in the UK from voting to cut off their own noses to spite their face.
Not that I think all of the “Leave” voters share the bigotry and ignorance of the UKIP base — although many clearly do. I suspect that many of them just wanted to vote against the status quo — even by making things much worse. I would guess that a lot of folks also just voted to swing the wrecking ball because they thought it might be fun to see what happened. We could think of such people as Jesse Ventura Voters or as Arnold Schwarzenegger Voters or as Assholes Who Don’t Care If Vulnerable People Suffer Just As Long As They, Personally, Are Entertained. (To be fair, neither Ventura nor the Governator turned out to be as much of a disaster as the Brexit is likely to be. Or as much of a disaster as a President Trump will be if too many AWDCIVPSJALATPAE vote this way in November.)
This is gonna hurt. I don’t pretend to understand all the economic ramifications of this, but in the short run, they’re bad and in the long run they could get even worse. The UK has likely just volunteered to throw itself a recession, and those things tend to be contagious.
There’s much more to discuss here, but the sun’s up and it’s past my bedtime, so please consider this your Brexit open thread.
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