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Brexit finally got done at 23:00 GMT on 31st December 2020 when the UK's Withdrawal Agreement with the EU finally expired. A "trade deal" between the UK and EU was agreed on 24th December. The Alt-Wrong finally got their prize of freedom, democracy and British sovereignty.
What did they actually win? Chaos at the ports, thousands of tonnes of fish that can't be sold, tariffs, duties, and all sorts of things which were once Project Fear and the undemocratic, treasonous lies of the Liberal Metropolitan Elite, Socialists, Marxists, quislings, traitors, lefties and people who hate their country. Socialism, Marxism, EUSSR, Venezuela, toilet paper!
We are on the third week of this glorious new future of sunlit uplands with no downsides, only upsides with much more to look forward to. And Donald Trump is going to give us a fantastic trade deal with the USA straight away.
Over at the Guardian, Polly Toynbee has an excellent summary entitled Brexiters are waking up to the damage they've done.
As Brexiters turn on each other, Brexit politics move fast. Until now the Tories planned to move on, only reviving “Brexit done” triumphalism to re-arouse the captured red wall at the election: Labour just wanted to bury the whole issue.
The Westminster system has failed us (the UK). We are now looking at Irish Reunification and Scottish Independence. Gibraltar has already got its own deal where it gets to join Schengen.
We have Taken Back Control(TM).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 19 2021, @02:02AM (24 children)
...and they are going to get what they wanted, good and hard. This is the end of the UK and the end of England as anything other than an historical curiosity.
I want to know who was behind this. I'd bet good money, if I had any, that this is another part of Putin's long game of dissolving NATO and/or that the Chinese had something to do with it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @02:57AM (9 children)
Shocking how well timed these phenomena were, very much seems like an attack on the western cultural hegemony.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday January 19 2021, @03:26AM (1 child)
Biden's Pyrrhic "victory," Brexit, Merkel Stepping down not to return, and the death of Benjamin de Rothschild all are not attacks on Western cultural hegemony but rather removal of the obstacles holding it back for the past 10 years. Now lets hope that the Antifa/BLM, COVID, and climate hoaxes are next to fall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @03:50AM
Blah blah blah you're a racist troll we know
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @06:09AM (6 children)
This is so unbelievably ironic. Do you know the USSR lost? The nominal reason given is that they ran out of money and so we out-cold-warred them, but there was something much more fundamental. Soviet citizens envied the US: our freedom, our culture, our capitalism, and our ability to live, grow, and express ourselves in a way that was impossible in the USSR. When your own citizens envy your enemy, you're going to lose.
The USSR was "woke", hardcore. All of the precepts of wokeness from identity politics hovering about race and sexual identity, to the equity for all, cultural cleansing, and censorship of wrong-think - these were all key precepts of the Soviet Union. The sexual identity stuff was rolled back under Stalin, but all other aspects remained for the breadth of the Soviet Union's brief flicker of an existence. And the people hated it.
I think this is similar to what's happening in the US today, and even to a lesser degree within the EU. Our "cultural hegemony" is not being killed off by outside actors, but by ourselves. "Wokeness" rapidly trends towards self depreciation, censorship, intolerance, and ultimately - authoritarianism. It seeks to "purify" culture and does succeed in that - by destroying/suppressing it.
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Ultimately there's some great irony. The only reason you might think the deterioration of our "cultural hegemony" must be being driven by outside forces is because we are now collectively censoring and attacking anybody who dares to speak out against it. And so, in mainstream discourse, you are presented a false picture of relatively homogeneous views. But reality is quite different. Censoring and suppressing views does not make them disappear, it only evangelizes the people who are oppressed and drives them to discourse outside the public eye. And so when people push back you now suddenly have no idea where this all could have come from, leading to absurd conclusions like "It must be Putin!"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @08:02AM (1 child)
Also abortion rights were rolled back by Stalin. We should be highly suspicious of these Republican commies that want to roll back Roe v. Wade.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @04:26PM
On these sort of divisive issues, it's unlikely either party would actually pull the trigger. A large chunk of republicans are pro-choice and similarly a large chunk of the pro-life contingent is pro-life only in certain circumstances (e.g. - after second trimester or whatever).
They tease the pro-life stuff to get the evangelicals to show up. If they actually passed it not only would they alienate a pretty sizable chunk of their party, but they'd need to come up with a new gimmick to get the evangelicals. Similar to the DNC with reparations or similar hand-outs. The vast majority of people, including democrats, oppose reparations and so there's not a chance in hell they'd ever pass it. They just use it to try to sustain the usually 90%+ black vote which has been slipping in recent years.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @06:30PM (3 children)
Ya lost me when you started babbling about wokeness, wake me up when you have a real point instead of assumptions about mine.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @07:16PM (2 children)
I'm not saying you are "woke"; an absolutely negligible percentage of people are. What I am saying is that the reason our cultural hegemony is fading into nothingness is because notions of freedom, entrepreneurship, expression, and achievement have been replaced with wokeness whose sole existence is persisted only by an adoption by corporations alongside the political establishment of which they are part.
And wokeness will inevitably spur on its own collapse, as has been shown time and again, so looking for external causes when we have blindingly obvious internal causes is nonsensical. We're basically simply playing early 20th century world history over again, except we've decided to take on the role of the losing side.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Wednesday January 20 2021, @01:29AM (1 child)
Are you still pissed off that Lincoln got elected by the woke folks and all that led to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Awakes [wikipedia.org]
Considering that you seem to believe the Hollywood propaganda machine claims about America, I'm left wondering what other propaganda you've swallowed wholesale.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday January 20 2021, @03:36PM
Wokeness in its modern form is a pattern carried out in various countries that have tried to implement Marxist ideals - most notably (though not the only) would be the Soviet Union and China. Whereas Marxism is (in theory) the notion that everybody should be economically equal, wokeness is the cultural equivalent. It achieves the pursuit of cultural equality by arguing that any preexisting culture was wrong (by some interpretation or another) and then thus destroying it to be replaced with the new homogeneous culture. Hence statue tumbling, 'purification' of 'problematic' references to the past, Google promoting 'unthanksgiving day', and so on.
China's cultural purification was much more overt since they had leadership that were able to freely express their ideology. So see things like Destruction of Four Olds [wikipedia.org] campaign. The "Four Olds" in this case: were old culture, old habits, old customs, and old ideas. It started off similar to own with little more than renaming campaigns and the occasional toppling of a statue or whatever, but by the end they were engaging in widescale "purification" of China's thousands of cultural heritage sites. It was not a travesty not only against the Chinese people but the world. China has a direct history far longer than anywhere in the western world with a continuation going back thousands of years. This "purification" destroyed an unimaginable amount of not only their cultural heritage but really of *our* cultural heritage as humans.
And then we get into things like struggle sessions [wikipedia.org] which are likely coming to America soon under the guise of justice. And that is "wokeness" for you.
The problem with wokeness is what happens with any ideology that lets people think themselves 'holier than thou.' I think people are generally, inherently, good. But let them become self righteous and convince themselves that they're fighting the devil, and they will all too happily turn into the very monsters they've convinced themselves they're fighting against.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @03:47AM (1 child)
Some supposed American whose name means "fart" in English slang.
yes, see above.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @03:10PM
Mr Shartwell [washingtonexaminer.com] works for China, not Putin.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by khallow on Tuesday January 19 2021, @05:33AM
I'd guess Germany and Greece, since they were the prime drivers behind the EU migrant crisis from 2014-2019.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @05:33AM (3 children)
Your words belie a lack of knowledge of what the 'UK' was. The British Empire used to lay claim to about a quarter of the world's population. They were one of the most far-spread and powerful empires in existence, all supported by a Navy unlike anything the world had ever seen. Britannia died at the end of World War 2. They were on the winning side but it was, for them, a Pyrrhic victory. The British Empire was ravaged and bankrupt. They were left to "liberate" nearly all of their territories and they rapidly transitioned from a world spanning megapower to America's little sidekick or 'that weird little country that bans everything'.
The decline of the British Empire was humiliatingly rapid and remains in the living memory of many Brits alive today.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 19 2021, @07:56AM (2 children)
Which factoid, even if true (which I doubt), is completely irrelevant in the world today.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:29PM (1 child)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday January 20 2021, @02:06PM
The fact that I doubt it is an expression of personal opinion over a fact that is irrelevant in the context Azuma tabled:
Note the verb tense and the "here/now" implied but "This".
As for:
Even assuming that all the "Brits over the age of 75" all voted Brexit, they alone are not enough to explain the outcome.
In your terms "there are not enough Brits over the age of 75" (5.4 million people [ageuk.org.uk] - about 10% of a voting population of 52.7 million [ons.gov.uk])
Even more so if one takes into consideration that, to have on object for their nostalgia/resentment, they should have lived for a while under a glorious British empire. Which makes their age, at least the age of Queen Lizzie - shall we say around 95 years?
'Cause for the ones born at the very end of WW2, their life start was one of severe privation... war debt... bread rationing [wikipedia.org]
I doubt the UK's extent and influence massively declined in the last 70 years, most of the decline happened during WW2 and shortly after.
Since 1965, UK experienced an almost continuous economic growth [economicshelp.org] at least until til 2013 [economicshelp.org]; post-WW2, that's the only dimension in which a country could exercise influence that makes a difference to its population.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday January 19 2021, @08:15AM (2 children)
That's probably an easy bet [ted.com], given what the few remaining investigative journalists like Carole Cadwalladr have found out since Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election.
The bigger, more serious problem is that Facebook and other social control media have even stronger footholds in other countries than they have had in the UK. There social control media are actively brewing even worse discontent and, possibly, on the verge of fomenting violence, but keeping it just below the surface so that standing politicians can turn a blind eye to it until it is too late. Only a small number are tuned in, the rest are twitting away and having sessions in Facebook video and so on, feeding the very beast which will soon kill their institutions, and possibly the politicians themselves also.
Thererefore it is very important that the "Schrems II [techcrunch.com]" case go forward, even though it is mostly about privacy and the integrity of personal data.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:44PM
Where did those half a billion pounds come from? Then she talks about her scientific study of asking a few people around town and characterizing the whole population from that.
Just because one is standing near a sports center doesn't mean that one got a piece of the sugar.
So in other words, the talk is being done in darkness too. We have to take her word that things happened like she claimed they happened.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:46PM
Keep in mind that a fair number of those other countries badly need a cull of their institutions.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 19 2021, @01:46PM
We need a clown world [summit.news] mod, funny doesn't do these justice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday January 19 2021, @07:37PM (2 children)
It seems to me that the vote wasn't exactly a majority voting to exit, nor was it supposed to be a binding vote?
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Wednesday January 20 2021, @01:41AM
Exactly, the failure was treating a non-binding referendum which resulted in basically a tie as a binding vote that resulted in basically Constitutional changes that can't be easily undone.
Most countries have a way higher bar for Constitutional level changes, a super-majority in the voters, or in a Federal system, likewise a super-majority or at least a couple of votes.
The question that was asked was unclear and at the minimum should have been followed up with another vote on the exit deal, and should have required a clear majority to pass.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:33PM