E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

The WWII soldiers did have a map. It was the wrong map, but it was a map. The Brexiteers don't even have a map. They're not even bothering to make any sense. They have neatly turned Brexit into an Abilene Paradox: everybody is convinced that they have to go through with this because democracy and the will of the people etc. It's not even about what the idea was anymore; let alone whose idea it was or whether it was a good idea.

The Brexiteers have got what they wanted; it is now just a gullible electorate selling to itself the idea that there is an idea, because the alternative is admitting that it was conned into voting for a cliff dive.

 

Yes they had a map but that was just a physical manifestation of sensemaking, it could have been their leader telling them he knows what he's doing, a star in the sky, a butterfly, or anything that seemed to make sense of a complex and confusing situation that their own brains couldn't make sense of.

Talking about being conned it certainly seems like there's been foul play what with CA getting hold of 1M FB users and Vote Leave facing potential legal action over their breaking of electoral law.

 

Sure India is going to love being referred to as part of the Anglosphere or being a central part of some Tory backbencher's wet dream of world domination...

 

Not like Canada has extensive agreements with the US and EU that will seriously impact negotiations with the UK, oh wait...

 

...and not like HMG have refused to even speak to some commonwealth countries.

The Commonwealth!

...but only the white bits.
...and only if they don;t come here.
...and they pretend 'Commonwealth' still stands for 'Empire'

 

That's all true, but what I'm saying is that the Brexiteers don't even do that anymore. Brexit will be great because it will be, apparently.

 

The same Commonwealth that very much pleaded for the UK to stay part of the EU, incidentally.

 

The fist stage of problem solving is extracting the problem in the first place, you have to make sense of a complex and confusing situation before you can see where and what the problem are and as Brexiteers can't make sense of the EU (based on the mostly incorrect assumptions they've already made about it) they can't see what the problem is.

It's going to be great in their minds because they don't see the same problems as you or I, the EU, and particularly leaving it, are complex and confusing so they trust other people who they believe have made sense of it and are telling them everything's going to be OK, it doesn't matter if it is or isn't as in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

Take this Peter North blog post about the recent EASA notice to stakeholders spelling out the details of what Brexit means to aviation, the implications of leaving the EU just on that one sector are complex and confusing as they include such things as...

Now if you can make sense of that you're a better man than me, personally i just accept that it's so complex and confusing that i probably couldn't solve those problems and walk away, equally Brexiteers, i suggest, find it just as complex and confusing but instead of admitting they can't make sense of it they look to someone or something that seems to make sense.

A bit like how life can be complex and confusing so people invented deity's to make sense of it all and then they didn't have to make sense or solve problems as that's someone else's job.

 

One of those things you solve by multiple people taking small steps, the person in charge just needs to know the problem in its simplest term.

 

The person in charge needs to first acknowledge that there is a problem. Not happening here.

Then they need to acknowledge that their understanding of the problem is a gross simplification and that there are a lot of complications that minions have to work out. Not happening here either.

Instead there is a lot of misdirected anger at the civil servant minions for suggesting that there are problems and complications that need working out.

Corky42 puts his finger on it when he says that people create deities not to have to understand and deal with complex reality. To the Brexiteers, Brexit is God, hence inherently a good thing because it is God. And Leavers follow with blind faith. And civil servants and the rest of the population are expected to do the same lest they be branded as heretics.

 

I’d say that’s part and parcel of management structures/culture in this country throughout the public and private sector.

Blind faith brexit is indicative of tribalism in this country the rise of which I would partly attribute to the restrictions of free speech/thought etc.

 

Power is not having to be aware of problems. Leadership is taking control of them.

I would argue that with the advent of the internet and social media there has been an unprecedented freedom of speech and thought. It's just that there is a lot more speech than thought --because most people find it easier to talk than to think.

 

If people who supported leaving the EU want to know why they're perceived as anti-immigration, useful idiots of the far-right, and where lead by the nose then perhaps these transcripts from University of Essex lecturer Dr Emma Briant that were published by the DCMS committee yesterday will enlighten you (Link).

Of course it's wrong of me to tar everyone who voted to leave with the same brush but if you lie down with dogs and all that.

 

Interestingly even the Daily Heil writes about it.

It is well-known and even admitted by Dominic Cummings that Vote Leave rode the racist tiger to victory. And when you ride a tiger, almost nobody pays attention to what you look like, and can only see that big ****ing tiger.

 

Most leave voters do want less immigration, I don't think there bothered about being perceived that way.

Or do you mean being percieved as racist for being anti immigration?

 

No because in my eyes racism is not the same as anti-immigration.

 

I’ve often thought stuff like Cambridge Analytica and Russian influence are somewhat overblown to make the political mainstream feel better.

 

I think that most Leave voters like to think that their concerns about immigration are reasonable and informed, and not borne from racist/nationalist prejudice. Of course the arguments that most swayed the vote towards Leave were racist and nationalist prejudicial ones, not ones based in reason and fact. People will ipso facto conclude that most Leave voters are motivated by racist/nationalist prejudice.

 

Kinda sucks when someone beats you at your own game.

 

It's probably impossible to quantify what effect it had but i think it's safe to say it had some effect, was that enough of an effect to sway 1.3 million people, maybe not as apparently CA only gathered data on 1m UK citizens, was the extra £625k Vote Leave "donated" to the BeLeave campaign in the last days before the referendum, again probably not, but take the two together and i think it calls into question the validity of the result.

I wouldn't say they were racist, that in my eyes has a very clearly understood definition and conflating it with other biases, i feel, potentially lessens the impact of overt racism when it happens.

IMO it was more covert than racism, it was what some people call "new racism"