The Brexit Arms. A friendly place for anyone wanting to chat about Brexit.

[surferjet]

Pull up a chair and relax.....

Time4chocolate - absolutely correct. The assumptions made about the motives of voters are quite astounding. I am reading these threads with increasing unease for this very reason. I have little will to participate because everyone seems to already know the reasons why someone voted as they did and it seems pointless to tell them otherwise. This is no longer a 'discussion' but a re-education of 'bad' people.

I am not a Trump supporter, I have explicitly said that several times on these threads.

Just because a poster is not following the mn party line by condemning Trump and leaving it there, it does not mean that they are a 'supporter'.

The rot is far deeper & wider than Trump - Trump is the convenient bogey-man, the public face of the rot.

His edicts are only possible to implement because of the lawful structure which was already there.
He was democratically elected.
His actions are entirely consistent with his words.

If we are going to condemn, then let's go further than 'Trump is a bad man' - Trump as president is the physical incarnation of what many American people wanted - why?

Posters keep saying 'learn from history' - well yes - I agree.
Hitler was not voted into power because the German people were horrible, nasty people - he was voted in because the ordinary German people at that time were desperate.

Simply piling onto a bandwagon of condemnation and doing the modern day thing of 'comments for likes', such as making sweeping statements about most Leavers being 'motivated primarily by racism' (fakename) etc does not stop the rot and actually ignores the wider context.

And Time4 is spot on too.

Instead of virtue-signalling on here, go onto American social media & 'educate' the poor backward people about how they are nasty racists and we Brits are so much more enlightened than them.

Totally disagree semi. Politicians like this fascists don't just reflect their society, they go further by using the prejudice already there, magnifying it, exploiting it and then take over. For example, a noticeable percentage of the British population have been in favour of the death penalty for decades. It only takes a political leader to exploit that and it becomes "the will of the people". Why hasn't it happened here that a political leader reflects that "rot"? Oh, wait, isn't it what Nuttall is now advocating, promising a referendum on bringing back hanging?

Also, whilst I'm on a roll...

This is one of the reasons why I would hate to become a republic and have a president.
Identity politics flourishes in that environment.
And, for all its flaws, first-past-the-post is what keeps our political system free from populist politics too.

If our PM was wildly signing off on things a la Trump, and becoming unhinged in any way it is relatively simple for our parliament to oust them.
Not so with a president.

"Instead of virtue-signalling on here, go onto American social media & 'educate' the poor backward people about how they are nasty racists and we Brits are so much more enlightened than them."

Why would anyone want to do that? The issue here is that by cutting ties with our neighbours we are putting ourselves in the position of needing to cosy up to a vile, mentally unstable, would-be dictator, elected with the help of a hostile foreign power, who under the direction of white supremacist Bannon is busily dismantling the democratic institutions of the US while sowing immense discord amongst the American people.

And for what? So we can sell off the NHS? Import steroid-filled and chlorinated meat? Does this really look like sovereignty to you?

The only explanation for some of the attitudes on this thread is that posters have never studied history. How fo they think fascist regimes became possible? Mussolini was hugely popular because he was clever throwing crumbs to the people while pursuing a more ambitious take over. Fascism in the 30s took years of normalising the unacceptable, just like now.

I agree with every word Time4 ans Semi have just posted.

I'm not a Trump supporter. I'm not racist. It's all going a bit 24th June on here isn't it?

If we don't want this country to go the way America has and start electing someone like Trump, perhaps people need to allow that people who voted leave did so for just as valid and well-intentioned reasons as others voted remain. And stop with the "if you don't accept absolutely everything I say you are a deplorable and a fascist sympathiser". It's the road to division and disempowering people - not a good way to go

Why hasn't it happened here that a political leader reflects that "rot"? Oh, wait, isn't it what Nuttall is now advocating, promising a referendum on bringing back hanging?

I xposted with you jaws5, sorry.

To answer your above, that's what i covered in my last post - it hasn't happened here because our PM is just the head representative of the party in power.
They are answerable to govt, parliament & the people - the post is bigger than a person.

UKIP would have had far more MPs if the had PR, but FPTP keeps extremism out in the cold.

This is interesting:

www.nationalreview.com/article/444370/donald-trump-refugee-executive-order-no-muslim-ban-separating-fact-hysteria

Lady, that's pretty much in line with the more pragmatic critiques I've been reading.

Sadly, most of the mainstream media rely on rehashing twitter streams rather than actually reporting the hysteria-free reality.

This is no longer a 'discussion' but a re-education of 'bad' people

Spot on Fourmummy.

I have mentioned before but will again, there is a very real movement that believe only people with the right level of education should vote etc. We really really need to be vigilant about this. There is a strong theme running through threads on here and out in RL on this - re education. Its terrifying.

I don't think that's true at all. You may be misinterpreting a wish for people in general to be better educated about our political processes and, indeed, about decision making. The whole Brexit referendum highlighted across the population (on both sides) massive ignorance about our democracy, the rule of law, the role of the EU, the difference between referenda and general elections etc.

I think it would be tremendously helpful for a broader citizenship curriculum to be essential in schools. At the moment school curricula still focus on knowledge acquisition and retention, whereas, as Brexit and the US elections have shown us, in this age of mass online information from multiple sources, we need to be educating young everyone more about assessment of sources, verification of facts, weighing up differing opinions. If we just read the Guardian or just read the Daily Mail, our view of the world and what people think is massively skewed. If we don't read any MSM where do we get our news from and how reliable are those sources? That is the kind of 'better educated' we need for everyone.

Watching various news things & reading various social media yesterday & today something has struck me.

With no apparent trace of irony, the self same people are advocating both of the following, completely diametrically opposed positions:

1. The referendum: voted through by parliament, rigorously held to voting standards & followed a campaign for each side, and in which 46.5 million people registered a vote.

"17.4 million people should be ignored as the vote was advisory only" "there should be a second referendum" "Only a third of the country wanted this, therefore Brexit shouldn't happen"

1. An online petition: signed by just over a million people, unverifiable and unregulated.

"Yes! The people are speaking! Ban Trump from a state visit!"

What the actual fuck?!

The whole Brexit referendum highlighted across the population (on both sides) massive ignorance about our democracy, the rule of law, the role of the EU, the difference between referenda and general elections etc

You mean because Brexit was the wrong result They could have been re educated out of it.

But I do agree Politics and Philosophy need to be taught ( in a balanced manner) to all pupils.
( and money management).

Well, you're right that I do think that, and I also think Trump's victory was the 'wrong' result. But I also really think that people on both sides voted without understanding what they were really voting for and, on both sides, believed things that were untrue, either because they had no way of judging whether they were or not or because they fitted their preconceived ideas. I think it's easy for everyone to fall into accepting certain things because of who said them. It's the same at every General Election where often tribalism overrules any kind of considered thinking about the current policies of the party.

But I also really think that people on both sides voted without understanding what they were really voting for

The thing is that no-one will ever know how much or how little people really understood. For all we know, a significant proportion of the voters may have done extensive research/reading up on concepts and processes. Whole swathes of the population are being judged and stereotyped without ever being able to discover whether these stereotypes (thick voters) are genuine. If you were to discover that a significant proportion of Leave voters did their research and were perfectly happy with their informed standpoint, what will you do then?

Well, I'm a well-educated person who did quite a lot of research and I don't understand all the ramifications of the financial structures of the various EU organisations, so I don't see why many people would - not because I think that there aren't plenty of people who voted both ways who are cleverer than me, but because even the most well-read general punter hasn't got the many years required to understand all of the very complicated issues involved in leaving or remaining. That's got nothing to do with which way they voted.

Unfortunately you haven't read what I wrote and are choosing to interpret it according to your preconceptions. Which is what I was writing about.

To continue on your theme Semi I think it's a wider issue that the more finger-jabby remainers seem to have very little ability or inclination (don't know which it is) to examine their own conduct, and how often they are doing the very same thing they accuse the leave campaign and/or leavers of. Examples:

-appealing to emotion over reality (all the hideous linking of everything good to remain and everything bad to leave, Godwinning like nobody's business etc)

• stereotyping

• name calling

• disregarding "facts" when they are not convenient ( all the "leavers googling what is the EU crap - just look up the facts, or apply brain and question how exactly we know they were leavers ffs. Another example, all the twisting of the polls about the demographics of referendum voting, so a correlation becomes everyone with a degree/job/brain voted remain (exaggerated for literary effect ). There is a correlation between sex and height - it doesn't mean all women are short and all men tall).

• stoking division and "them and us"

• failing to treat democracy with the respect and tlc it needs, when they don't get their way.

All things some remainers accuse leave of with absolutely no sense of irony.

And I completely agree with what you have said Semi about failing to look at the bigger picture.

For some, It's like we have suddenly landed where we are, with another fairly right-wing conservative government after years of austerity from Cameron and Osborne and absolutely no credible opposition and a Labour party which is just a shambles, and President Trump, and it all just happened because of the forces of evil, and is absolutely nothing to do with how the left and liberals have conducted themselves over the last few years.

There seem to be very few on the remain side questioning any of this. It's all just blame the others which is very unpleasant to witness/experience but the worst of it is it just won't work. They can get shriller and shriller but until people actually start thinking and questioning a bit more, they will get nowhere.

Ontop No, I did understand what you wrote and I was using the more generic 'you'. I completely agree with ongoing education and learning, and we actually don't do too badly in this country, although there's always room for improvement. I'm very curious of the apparent inability of some Remainers to feel comfortable with the idea that there is no absolutely 'right way' to vote - it is what it is, and it suits the people who voted Leave. That's all there is to it. To suggest otherwise is to go down the Blair route - certain people should not be allowed to make decisions.

What I said was I didn't give a shit about people being held up in a warm comfortable airport being fed and looked after. I've been stuck in airports myself for hours. It's inconvenient yes, but it's not comparable to being gassed to death.
DT is putting America first and carrying out an election pledge - he doesn't give a toss what a load of lefties in the UK think of him.
It's his country not yours, if he wants to ban the countries identified by Obama as a risk to the U.S then who the hell are you to argue?
It's a temporary travel ban.
Get real.

wrong, your last post has highlighted exactly why we are in this predicament now; the vote to leave the EU or not was not about changing or protesting about British politics.

Why do you think voting Leave was ever going to change the face of British politics?

Nice try at back peddling there surfer

Back peddling on what?