uziq
Member
+492|3412
it’s like you don’t even understand what populism is. it’s possible to hold an election based on cogent ideas, policy, practicable tactics/strategy etc and not on wild emotional pronouncements, scaremongering and whipping up people against imaginary enemies. one is democratic process, liberal democracy, ‘the public sphere’ as envisioned by liberal philosophers from kant onwards; the other is demagoguery akin to religious preaching, faith-based thinking and other manipulation of emotions and irrationalism.

people are not so entirely stupid that they can’t cast a vote based on some semblance of reason, or be appealed to using reasonable arguments.

you are not this stupid nor this thick.

and by the way the high point of the social democratic pact between elites and the people in the UK is widely considered as being the post-war settlements that established the welfare state. did you even take a basic history class when you lived here?

Last edited by uziq (2019-07-28 02:44:09)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

people are not so entirely stupid that they can’t cast a vote based on some semblance of reason, or be appealed to using reasonable arguments.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/660/cpsprodpb/0E22/production/_90081630_leaveresult.jpg
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uziq
Member
+492|3412
which is entirely my point about referendums being advisory and not legally binding ... gee it’s almost as if i haven’t been criticising the dishonesty and shenanigans of the leave campaign ... what the fuck is your actual point? democracy is an impossible ideal because the conservative party called for an EU referendum to satisfy their in fighting? we should consider every election ever a futile effort and declare people ‘too stupid’ because the media and social media can influence people’s decision making? ffs.

i’m actually done with this thread at this point. you are dedicated to being as stupid as possible and bringing nothing remotely interesting to the discussion. read back through my posts; you’re not telling me anything i don’t know about brexit. my whole point is that, with new information on brexit, politicians should reassess the options (they have failed spectacularly thus far). heading for a no deal brexit is the height of stupidity and represents the elite taking cynical advantage of ‘the people’s will’.

Last edited by uziq (2019-07-28 04:37:45)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
You're entirely missing the point, whether or not the referendum was legally binding the public voted leave, whether or not you think that means the electorate put populism ahead of reasoned argument, or whether it means they truly believed Brexit is in best interests of the country as a whole is up to you.

The public voted for Brexit, no deal or not.
The electorate has given that message three times now, there are no options to 'reassess', not without another referendum or an election.
If the public is dumb enough to vote for something they don't understand then bad luck. Its like turkeys voting for Christmas, then complaining "Wait, what, Christmas means we get our heads cut off and breadcrumbs shoved up our backsides? How were we supposed to know? The politicians should reassess this for us and not give us what we asked for".

Apart from that you're wrong on every point you've made so far, your wishful thinking and reality seem to be disconnected - but of course everyone who holds a different view is 'as stupid as possible' and 'bringing nothing remotely interesting to the discussion'.
You're exactly the same as the Tory elite, just not part of it.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2019-07-29 19:14:23)

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SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
Italian government collapsed from what I understand is infighting between the far right coalition parties. Another impressive showing by the 21st century western conservatives.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
Thats how PR and coalitions work, the Italian system is uniquely dysfunctional and breeds corruption - which seems to suit Italians.

Whereas the US system promotes corruption, dysfunction and stagnation for three years out of every four, the difference is the govt isn't dissolved and a new election called - it just sits there doing nothing most of the time.
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uziq
Member
+492|3412
stop minimising. what happened is not normal.

you do know that being jaded all the time isn't smart, right? people grow out of that. it's called 'adolescence'.
uziq
Member
+492|3412
more brexit cheer.

‘how bad can it get?’ top contributors weigh in.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n16/the-state … can-it-get

james meek

Britain has taken a different route from the United States to cultural civil war, but we got there in the end. When the Republican Party and its media shapers smeared the phrase ‘identity politics’ with poison and turned it on their political opponents, they knew of what they spoke. The classic Republican definition of ‘identity politics’ – privileging one’s membership of a minority group over one’s responsibilities to the nation as a whole – is an exact definition of the Republicans’ own position now, under Trump. The patriarchal, white supremacist, American nationalist minority whose identity Trump channels is (from the point of view of American liberals) embarrassingly large – about a fifth of the entire population, and not far short of half of those who vote – but a minority nonetheless.

Britain veered away from sub-majoritarian identity politics after Thatcher, but returned to it in full force with the Brexit referendum. The accusation levelled by the right at women or immigrants or sexual minorities is that they use identity politics to seek special treatment, but identity politics as actually practised by the Republicans and now by the Farage-Johnson movement in Britain is the old demand for conformity, or subordination, to the cultural norms of the dominant minority. The concept of immigrant assimilation – that the native society should not be substantially changed by immigration, that immigrants should aim to be absorbed by it – foreshadowed the relentless call for unification that followed the Brexit vote. The meaning once implicit in national ‘unification’ – that everyone has to change so as to accommodate each other – has shifted to something more like absorption: not ‘We must unite with each other’ but ‘You must unite to us.’

As Britain struggles with the meaning of such concepts as assimilation and unification, so do its political parties. Many polls show that parties opposing a no deal Brexit are likely to attract more votes, combined, than the ‘no deal’ parties of Johnson’s Conservatives, Farage’s Brexit Party and the remnants of Ukip. And yet it seems very likely the no-dealers will find ways to collaborate in time for the looming general election. In some ways, Johnson and Farage might find it easier to campaign after ‘no deal’; diverting blame towards Europe for the post-Brexit disasters and humiliations caused by their own actions is something they’d be pretty good at.

The parties opposed to ‘no deal’ – call them the progressives – are more divided. As things stand, it’s touch and go whether they would even win a parliamentary vote of no confidence against Johnson, let alone avoid giving the Faragists a majority in an election by taking votes off one another. It may be that the best chance of crushing Faragism at the next election – surely a more important task for the progressives now than whether or not Britain leaves Europe – is simply for Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the non-English nationalists and the Greens to campaign as rivals and hope for the best. Jeremy Corbyn might win; more likely, he would have to work in a coalition with others. Or the divided progressives might lose, despite a larger combined vote share, despite the sense that the country is reaching a point of no return.

The practical, rational and emotional obstacles to co-operation between rival opposition parties are vast. Tactical voting doesn’t have a good track record; electoral pacts risk sapping party morale. Small parties risk being swallowed by big ones. Everyone’s ideological purity is tainted. Already confused anti-Faragist voters may become even more confused and bitter. The most obvious leg-up for the progressives would be an alliance between Labour and the Greens, whose vote share is big enough to damage Corbyn’s chances of victory but not big enough to translate into many new seats. But no wonder the Greens fear being smothered when the likes of the Guardian columnist Owen Jones propose a simple absorption of their party into Labour.

Beyond the mechanics of building an anti-Faragist electoral alliance, near impossible and absolutely necessary, there is something fundamental to consider in the difference between the two sides. The Faragist movement works for now because its central idea, quite openly, is that the white nationalist English minority doesn’t have to co-operate with anyone, in Europe, or in the United Kingdom, or in the world, and it acts accordingly. The progressive movement is struggling because its central idea is the opposite – co-operation – but as an electoral force, it demonstrates a failure to co-operate. Whether the progressive is Jeremy Corbyn, with his passion for international causes and consequent need to co-operate with overseas movements whose interests are bound to clash with those of the British working class, or Siân Berry and Jonathan Bartley of the Greens, whose determination to remain in the EU would involve co-operating with the increasingly vocal climate emergency sceptics of eastern Europe, the ideal of co-operation and its dreaded vehicle, compromise, is intrinsic to their politics, but at home, they repress it. How can you call time on the era of purely national politics when you cannot find common ground with the anti-nationalists in your own nation?
ferdinand mount

Yes, this is a right-wing coup. It is duplicitous or self-deceiving to pretend that British politics is still proceeding more or less as normal. We are told that it is ‘hysterical’ to argue that Boris Johnson’s regime is in any way comparable to the nationalist dictatorships of yesterday or today. If this is a temptation, I shall happily succumb to it as a patriotic duty. By every standard of measurement, the Conservative Party has been transformed into Britain’s own BJP. ‘Optimism with a hint of menace’ was how the Sunday Times approvingly described Johnson’s first days in power – pretty much the way you might describe the first hundred days of Narendra Modi, or Donald Trump, or Benito Mussolini. Yes, he has come to power by strictly constitutional means. So did they all. It is how they govern when they get there that counts.

First, there was the brutality of the cabinet cull. Macmillan’s Night of the Long Knives pales by comparison, as do Margaret Thatcher’s most far-reaching reshuffles. Both Supermac and Thatcher took care to include up and coming ministers from all wings of the party. Johnson has included only yes-people, or placemen who have vowed omertà in advance. His rhetoric has already assumed a strongman strut. He tears up prepared speeches in favour of sunlit-uplands rants peppered with sentimental appeals to ‘the will of the people’. Implicit in this waffle is a barely concealed contempt for the judiciary and for Parliament. In his two spells in the Commons, Johnson has never bothered to shine, or indeed even to turn up much. His most significant promotion was that of Dominic Raab as foreign secretary, the only man to have issued a veiled threat to prorogue Parliament to get his gang’s way.

We are already beginning to take for granted Johnson’s abusive tone towards international institutions and foreign leaders, except those like Donald Trump who talk the same mixture of bluster and treacle. At home, we are promised more mega-bridges and bonanza buses, the sorts of project with which dictators always like to dazzle the plebs. Here, the author of Boris Island Airport and the garden bridge is at least staying true to form.

What still puzzles some people is that so many old-fashioned Tories should have fallen for such a seedy, treacherous chancer. In fact, I think Johnson has succeeded because of his amorality, not despite it. The transgressive sayer of the unsayable breaks through the carapace of conventional politics with a mixture of humour and vituperation, slang and high-flown rhodomontade. Clowning is part of the act for the leader who wants to reach beyond good and evil in the fashion Nietzsche recommended. A cartoon Superman? Yes, but they all are. See Charlie Chaplin, passim.

How long will he last – five weeks, five years? I have no idea. All I can say is what I see. And it is not a pretty sight. Our new skipper has consistently admitted that he would love to be prime minister ‘if the ball came loose from the back of the scrum’. But that isn’t what happened. He collapsed the scrum, deliberately and repeatedly, and we are all now sprawling in the mud.

Last edited by uziq (2019-08-23 03:49:15)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
TLDR

"Dominant minority" Britain is still predominantly white Christian however the one-legged mixed race transgender lesbians try to spin it.

"Assimilation" This is not new or unusual, its what countries have practiced since before history, this multicultural thing is the bump in the road which is fast disappearing in the rear view mirror

"anti-Faragist electoral alliance" The people voted for Brexit, and the Brexit party came first in the EU elections by a clear 10% from the next party.
All these "the people shouldn't get what they voted for because they're stupid and don't wash" hipsterati are antidemocratic.
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Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
Whats more surprising?

That the LRB is surprised that its left-wing agenda has been rejected or that they're still writing this stuff.

The country is tired of the twitterati and their "what your town needs is some Afghans to balance out the Somalis" attitude. Hence they've gone with morons who don't have a left-wing agenda - Farage and Johnson.

They're not perfect but they're far more representative of the people and their actual views than agenda-driven fascists like Mandelson and Blair.
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uziq
Member
+492|3412
the LRB left wing? l o l

how is blair a fascist but your men aren’t? he received a much bigger electoral mandate from ‘der peepule’ than any of your current hard-right crushes.

it’s really a quaint rhetorical trick when you talk about ‘anti democratic’ impulses and then shut down any reasoned, nuanced commentary in front of insistent repetition of ‘the people have willed it’. because repeating slogans and dismissing ‘experts’ and ‘debate’ is really democratic.

as the article says, the idea of shutting down parliament in order to achieve the supposed sovereignty of parliament isn’t a catch-22, it’s a napoleonic catch-1852.

Last edited by uziq (2019-08-23 04:46:24)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
The LRB can publish as many sniffy articles as they like, they might as well try to divert Godzilla from their city through sarcastic twitter posts.

I couldn't really give a shit about the hard right, however the middle left has dug a hole and stuck their head in it - we still don't know where Labour stands - and this is what you get.

The British people voted for Brexit just as the German people voted for the Nazis. The Germans got what they deserved, now its Britain's turn.
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uziq
Member
+492|3412
we are back where we were three pages ago, pointing out the bloody obvious first principles. nobody voted for no deal brexit.

the english people voted for brexit, with some pockets in the south of wales. scotland did not. northern ireland did not. as the ‘sniffy’ article points out, with its insouciant insistence on facts, none of the devolved powers in the UK were invited to the negotiating table in brussels. it’s an almost entirely english affair being led by a tiny faction of faragists.

you keep talking about ‘the british people’ but evidently you don’t know who makes the british people. you think assimilation and forced consensus is about forcing you to have afghans or somalis as neighbours (not sure what’s wrong with that, but that’s a different topic), whereas what ‘assimilation’ means here isn’t what your favourite bogeyman blair did 15 years ago but rather what half of the union and more than half of its voters are being forced to do.

hitler didn’t come to power through a vote by the way. did you finish basic history class in school? the communists had a higher proportion of the votes when he was named chancellor out of bullying tactics. your ‘let them suffer’ rhetoric isn’t enlightening and represents something trivial in your personality. i suppose you’ll pull all of your money and assets out the country, because that’s the sort of ‘pro-brexiteer’ you are in this argument.

Last edited by uziq (2019-08-23 06:58:24)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
A hard Brexit would be bad for the Anglo American blah blah blah. If this all goes south at least we get to see an united Ireland and Republic of Scotland.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Larssen
Member
+99|1848
I mean it's true that people didn't vote for a no deal Brexit, but that also seems like a way for many to deflect responsibility. In a representative democracy it could be argued that whatever policy is implemented, 'the people never voted for it'. I realise it's a somewhat more complex issue, but the only thing this discussion can ultimately underline is the absurdity of referenda in our democracies (especially on issues as complicated as this) and the bankruptcy in the belief that decision by 'the people's vote' is healthy for democracy or even a good idea. Events like these are often used as propagand items in China to point out the foolishness of democratic rule. It touches on a painful truth as many reasonable people will be inclined to agree.

When the referendum was held probably about 90%+ of those who did vote had no idea what they were actually voting on, beyond resistance against the imagined future European federation. Brexit was mostly just an expression of the emotional nationalist response that illusion invoked among much of the general public. It had very little to do with reason, rather people invented reasons to try and substantiate their emotions.

Last edited by Larssen (2019-08-23 09:47:00)

uziq
Member
+492|3412
yes but the will of the people is inviolate because dilbert has crank theories about multiculturalism and somalis.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

nobody voted for no deal brexit.
Yes they did, the question was:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

Remain a member of the European Union [  ]

Leave the European Union                       [   ]
Not


Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

Remain a member of the European Union [  ]

Leave the European Union but only if we can negotiate a deal which involves continuing to be a part of Europe, continuing to pay into Europe, remaining part of the common market and ensuring the Irish are OK with their border with Northern Ireland and if not Parliament should be free to ignore the people who put an X in this box              [  ]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Unit … m_question

the english people voted for brexit, with some pockets in the south of wales. scotland did not. northern ireland did not. as the ‘sniffy’ article points out, with its insouciant insistence on facts, none of the devolved powers in the UK were invited to the negotiating table in brussels. it’s an almost entirely english affair being led by a tiny faction of faragists.
The UK is currently a united unit, thats how units work, if it breaks up as  a consequence then thats what happens.

you keep talking about ‘the british people’ but evidently you don’t know who makes the british people. you think assimilation and forced consensus is about forcing you to have afghans or somalis as neighbours (not sure what’s wrong with that, but that’s a different topic), whereas what ‘assimilation’ means here isn’t what your favourite bogeyman blair did 15 years ago but rather what half of the union and more than half of its voters are being forced to do.
Thats how parliamentary democracies work, not everyone gets what they want all of the time.

hitler didn’t come to power through a vote by the way. did you finish basic history class in school? the communists had a higher proportion of the votes when he was named chancellor out of bullying tactics. your ‘let them suffer’ rhetoric isn’t enlightening and represents something trivial in your personality.
Um you're wrong. Hitler had more than 3x the votes of the communists

Candidate    Party    First round    Second round
Votes    %    Votes    %
Paul von Hindenburg    Independent    18,651,497    49.6    19,359,983    53.0
Adolf Hitler    National Socialist German Workers' Party    11,339,446    30.1    13,418,547    36.8
Ernst Thälmann    Communist Party    4,938,341    13.2    3,706,759    10.2
Theodor Duesterberg    Stahlhelm    2,557,729    6.8   
Other candidates    116,304    0.3    5,474    0.0
Invalid/blank votes        –        –
Total    37,603,317    100    36,490,761    100
Registered voters/turnout    43,949,681    85.6    44,063,958    82.9
Source: Nohlen & Stöver

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Germ … l_election

i suppose you’ll pull all of your money and assets out the country, because that’s the sort of ‘pro-brexiteer’ you are in this argument.
I've never been pro-brexit, there are pros and cons, all I've done is point out to you why Britain voted for Brexit.
Way back when you dismissed Farage as a no-hope nut, how wrong you've been proven.
I pulled 90% of my assets out of the UK more than a decade ago.

yes but the will of the people is inviolate because dilbert has crank theories about multiculturalism and somalis.
The average person you so despise is more concerned with having Cruddy Cottington flooded with foreigners than most other issues, hence they voted for Brexit.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2019-08-27 01:17:33)

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Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX

Larssen wrote:

I mean it's true that people didn't vote for a no deal Brexit, but that also seems like a way for many to deflect responsibility. In a representative democracy it could be argued that whatever policy is implemented, 'the people never voted for it'. I realise it's a somewhat more complex issue, but the only thing this discussion can ultimately underline is the absurdity of referenda in our democracies (especially on issues as complicated as this) and the bankruptcy in the belief that decision by 'the people's vote' is healthy for democracy or even a good idea. Events like these are often used as propagand items in China to point out the foolishness of democratic rule. It touches on a painful truth as many reasonable people will be inclined to agree.

When the referendum was held probably about 90%+ of those who did vote had no idea what they were actually voting on, beyond resistance against the imagined future European federation. Brexit was mostly just an expression of the emotional nationalist response that illusion invoked among much of the general public. It had very little to do with reason, rather people invented reasons to try and substantiate their emotions.
It was a protest vote, you and Uzique can feel free to assign blame as you like:



Successive UK governments ceding too much power to Europe [  ] %

Successive Euro governments demanding too much power over member states [  ] %

Decades of France and Germany rigging the EU for the benefit of their respective economies  [   ] %

Tony Blair deciding to flood the country with immigrants  [   ] %

Angela Merkel deciding to flood Europe with immigrants  [   ] %

German banks making stupid loans to third-world member states  [   ] %

The EU forcing member states to bail out the German banks at taxpayer expense  [   ] %

Nigel Farage riding a wave of populist discontent to push his nutty agenda  [   ] %

The Conservative rump pursuing nutty policies  [   ] %

David Cameron failing to quash a rebellion in the rump of his own party  [   ] %

David Cameron failing to negotiate revised terms for membership of the EU  [   ] %

The EU failing to negotiate revised terms for membership of the member states  [   ] %

David Cameron being dumb enough to put the question to a referendum  [   ] %

Politicians of various parties failing to clearly state their position on the referendum   [   ] %

Politicians of various parties giving false and misleading information to voters in relation to the referendum  [   ] %

Voters being too dumb to understand what they were voting for but voting wrong anyway  [   ] %



Yeah, its 100% the last one isn't it, because 90+% of people aren't as smart or informed as you and Uzique.

As you can see, the time for politicians - in the UK and EU - to behave like grown-ups and govern in the interests of the people was some time ago.
Its much too late to be starting to think about it now.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2019-08-26 03:22:18)

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Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
And Johnson has gone full retard - should be fun to watch.
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SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680
If the hard Brexit goes through and Scotland and North Ireland leave the union, Queen Elizabeth will pretty much have reigned over the total collapse of the British empire then right?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
You mean United Kingdom, also Wales.
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SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3680

Dilbert_X wrote:

You mean United Kingdom, also Wales.
I know the difference. It was during her reign that the British colonies in Africa, the middle east, and east Asia were all lost, right?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
Then its already happened, Britain no longer has an Empire.
Scotland and Northern Ireland, and Wales - everyone forgets Wales, aren't part of the 'Empire', they're part of the United Kingdom.

Otherwise the Conservatives are still in the lead in the polls so I guess 'the people' still want a no-deal Brexit.

Whether parliament is doing its democratic duty or obstructing progress I don't know.
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Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
Added the Brexit bill vote in parliament, probably that was where parliament should have chucked out the idea of removing the decision from parliament.

Successive UK governments ceding too much power to Europe [  ] %

Successive Euro governments demanding too much power over member states [  ] %

Decades of France and Germany rigging the EU for the benefit of their respective economies  [   ] %

Tony Blair deciding to flood the country with immigrants  [   ] %

Angela Merkel deciding to flood Europe with immigrants  [   ] %

German banks making stupid loans to third-world member states  [   ] %

The EU forcing member states to bail out the German banks at taxpayer expense  [   ] %

Nigel Farage riding a wave of populist discontent to push his nutty agenda  [   ] %

The Conservative rump pursuing nutty policies  [   ] %

David Cameron failing to quash a rebellion in the rump of his own party  [   ] %

David Cameron failing to negotiate revised terms for membership of the EU  [   ] %

The EU failing to negotiate revised terms for membership of the member states  [   ] %

David Cameron being dumb enough to put the question to a referendum  [   ] %

Parliament being dumb enough to put it to a referendum  [  ] %

Politicians of various parties failing to clearly state their position on the referendum   [   ] %

Politicians of various parties giving false and misleading information to voters in relation to the referendum  [   ] %

Voters being too dumb to understand what they were voting for but voting wrong anyway  [   ] %
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Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6066|eXtreme to the maX
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/720x405/p07mdnwd.jpg
Pretty much sums up the Oxford toffs running the tory party.
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