Brexit explained

The whole time I thought I was reading a British writer.

Then at the end I thought, "Hey wait, what if this guy is American?"

Why Hasn't Brexit Happened? by Christopher Caldwell. Spoiler: American journalist, senior editor for the Weekly Standard, contributor to Financial Times and Slate.

Slate?

Oh man, that blows the whole thing.

It's a long read. But not a slog. A whole bunch of words. Words I looked up before but neurologically disconnected because nobody sensible actually uses them. Like "supranational" and "deracinated" next to each other in the same sentence, where extra-national and uprooted will do.

Paragraph after paragraph after paragraph.

But it's well worth the time reading because it does pull together all the elements over the period of Britain connecting with Europe politically and the discomfort and trouble and pain of disconnecting.

Worth the time if you speed read.

I thought the writer was British because of the article's Anglo-centricity.

Brexit is an epochal struggle for power, and an exemplary one. It pits a savvy elite against a feckless majority. There have been scares before for those who run the institutions of global “governance”—the rise of Syriza in Greece, with its attack on the common European currency, the election of Donald Trump, the nation-based immigration restrictions put forward by Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian president Viktor Orbán. But it is Brexit that has hit bedrock. If Brexit happens, our future will look one way. If not, it will look another. Those people who warn, as Zakaria does, that voting for Brexit has decreased Britain’s importance in the world—are they joking?

UK with its population of 67,600 000 and GDP of 2.82 trillion.
vs
US population of 329,500, 000 and GDP 20.49 trillion.

Are you joking?

He writes as if Britain is the main thing and the United States is a sideshow.

To the contrary, America is the main thing and Britain is the secondary sideshow. Globalist elite seizing power and exfiltrating American wealth is the cause and American voters electing Trump is the result with British leaving the European Union as secondary result. Not the other way around.

[Ew, I hate these sites to pieces that do not allow copy/paste. I had to trouble and B-click to view element and copy.]

The weird thing is the article is headed by a picture, a colonial-style etching of a patriot and a redcoat facing each other wrapped together with ribbon binding them together (red tape if the etching was colored) with the words "treaties, tariffs, budgets" and "laws, rules" and "fisheries" and "Parliaments, taxes" written on the ribbon. With a subscript "When in the course of human events." Obviously from the American Constitution.

An etching depicting an American to Britain concern, not an etching depicting a Britain to Europe concern.

So in the mind of the writer then, America-Britain must be the main thing.

Conversely, if Britain leaving the European Union is the main global thing and America electing Trump resulting in realigning all America's trade deals (affecting nearly all global trade deals, China, Americas, and Europe) is secondary to that then why mention the self-image of today's E.U. elites as viewing themselves like a colonial American who broke it off with Britain?

The self-image of today’s E.U. elites is still that of protecting Europe from its historic dark side. They are confident history will regard them as the fathers of a Common European Home. In the imaginary biography he carries around inside his own head, a British builder of the European Union, whether a human rights lawyer or a hectoring journalist, will cast himself as one of the righteous heroes of his time, one of the enlightened. He is a man who “stood alone” to “fight for his principles” and so on. Maybe posterity will even see him as a European James Madison.

That doesn't even make sense. If anything it would be Brexiter who could make such a comparison to an early American patriot.  Not an E.U. elitist. And they wouldn't compare themselves to a historic American. They would compare themselves to a historic British subject attempting to change the state of being as a subject to being a genuine citizen.

The E.U. pursues the goal of transcending (a fancy way to say “getting rid of”) the nation-states that make it up. As the Union grows ever closer, there must eventually come a moment when the loyalty of subjects is transferred from the institutions of the nation to those of federal Europe. Brexit showed that, for elites to whom the E.U. offers a grand role, that moment has come already. The E.U., not Britain, is their country. 

Ding ding ding.

There's the tell.

In both cases, Britain and E.U.,  "subjects" not "citizens." Citizens made the institutions. Not the institutions rule the subjects.

The article is very good. Well worth the time spent internalizing. But the writer mentions "British citizens" and "citizenship" four times and then this, the real view of the relationship between a nation's governing elites and a nations citizens as "subjects." The writer and British leaders simply cannot work it out that the nation's government represents its people, or should, not the general population represent and support the nation's wealthy and highly expensively specifically educated so-called elite who regard the general population with utter contempt.

And it shows.

The general population is not stupid. Their deep education is in their line of economic pursuit that makes the county run as it does. The European elite has its unique elite expensive exclusive universities that specialize in parliamentary training. When set against each other the elite are far more wily in parliamentarian manipulation because that is their specialty, but they are no more smarter nor more educated than than general population that makes the countries actually function. The ruling elite are brilliant at controlling parliamentarian process and messing up the popular urgency. While, once diverted from their usual line of activity and activated to do it, the people are experts at knocking the heads off their presumptuous rulers, one way or another.

Ace of Spades has this in their sidebar as "Wow this Brexit article is everything!" Whoever put it up is impressed that Britain never had judicial review of laws until it was slipped in to join the E.U. They also didn't have any referenda until they used it to join the E.U. Then years later used it again to leave the E.U.