So here we have two different countries which share significant cultural traditions and histories, both once steeped in rule of law and democratic governance, both now floundering under mind-boggling partisanship, greed, and incompetence. What's up with that?
I can trace each torturous step of the U.S. slide -- following a pattern that Eisenhower could predict decades before -- and yet I'm still surprised at the disintegration that led to Trump's presidency and the inability of our system to right itself, even if ponderously. And as for the UK, Brexit is just gobsmackingly impressive as a nationwide clusterfuck. It could be just co-incidence, I suppose, that both nations are shattering simultaneously, but I tend to think there's a larger wave that ties all of these events together.
Just as the Enlightenment swept thru Western civilization and inspired people, we seem to be experiencing the wide sweep of an anti-Enlightenment. There's a dearth of idealism and purpose, of reverence for science and intellect, and I wonder if capitalist greed has edged out higher principles, or the lack of higher principles has left a void that capitalist greed is exploiting. Maybe we've hit the hard limits of humanity's ability to scale governance so far beyond the tribal level. Maybe we're simply glutted and drunk on an excess of stuff that surrounds us, stuff to be grabbed and hoarded, the way a monkey will grab more bananas than it can possibly eat. Mine! Mine!
Lord knows we live in calm and prosperous times compared to past ages, but we're just now at the edges of direct living memory of WWII, which surely ranks as one of the horrible of times for our species. Maybe what we're feeling is exacerbated by the shift away from the generation of hard lessons learned. I just feel like we're hurtling toward a dark tunnel. Not there yet... but you can feel it just up ahead....
The collapse in Britain is pretty surprising, too. There have been a whole series of missteps and bad decisions that have led to this mess, and what makes it even more surprising is that Brexit didn't really feature on the political radar as an issue for most people. David Cameron originally backed the proposal for a referendum thinking he'd win it, and that it was a good way to placate, and eventually silence, Conservatives who were defecting in droves to UKIP because they were unhappy with both Cameron's leadership and the way the Lib Dems in the Coalition Government were preventing him carrying out several Conservative policies. Cameron didn't expect, in fact, to have to deliver on it, since he expected that, if he wasn't defeated, then he'd need to form another coalition and the Lib Dems would refuse to support the referendum and thus kill it as part of the price for their support.
Then John Bercow unexpectedly allowed the Queen's Speech to be amended, which forced Cameron to bring forward his referendum legislation (which he'd hoped to avoid) and the rest is history. Since then, we've had a whole series of mistakes and unforced errors (most dramatically, the 2017 election), largely attributable to Theresa May, though any MP who voted to submit the A50 notification without first agreeing on the British side's aims and objectives most also take responsibility, which have all gone to make a bad situation worse.
Both the Referendum and the 2016 US elections were, of course, marked by massive interference from external actors via social media. That's certainly something both have in common, and I think it's probably fair to say that, over the last 10 years or so, the Russians -- who have been quite open about they're doing -- have been very successful in disrupting what they see as the hostile and anti-Russian project of political liberalism, parliamentary democracy and rules-based international trade and relationships, without us noticing until it's too late.
This article from last year about Ivan Ilyin, the Russian fascist philosopher now very much rehabilitated as Putin's court philosopher, casts a worrying light on what's been happening in Europe and the USA over the last 10 years or so:
New York Review of Books: Ivan Ilyin, Putin’s Philosopher of Russian Fascism
ETA: Hugo Rifkind in The Times suspects he sees Nigel Farage's hand in leaking the Ambassador's cables:
Let’s make Farage ambassador to North Korea Hugo Rifkind There aren’t many funny things about the Brexit Party leader, but his obsession with being taken seriously is one of them Try to imagine the ho...
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