NP - Reductio ad absurdum on FB

[Mike Weaver]

I'll stick with my end of empire argument, for Brexit and Trump.

Most of us in the UK and US, no matter what our (family's) economic 
history, are culturally grounded in our membership of an imperial power. 
In the UK that may be long past but the presumption of our right to a 
secure life lingers ("long after it is cut out") and the reaction to the 
loss, among rightwingers and the politically uninterested is a rage 
against they who are perceived to have deprived them of such. It was 
easy for our rightwing opportunists to focus that rage on the European 
Union.

In the US the dimming of your imperial might has been happening in these 
last three decades and is much more raw, but the same thing is 
happening. Your political establishment is being blamed by a large 
minority of the population.

Another large minority still supports the establishment of Clinton and 
the Democrat hierarchy because they think any loss in fortune they feel 
is just temporary and the imperial capitalist project is still good, 
leaving only the longer sighted Sanders supporters to recognise the 
historical change happening to the US. Their egalitarian solution won't 
rescue the US's global power, but it will spread the decline more evenly.

This is not to deny that the racists, xenophobes, misogynists, and white 
supremacists have not been empowered by Trump's victory, but those 
tendencies were an accelerant not a cause of the conflagration.

Mike



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