Jun 192016
 
 June 19, 2016  Posted by at 2:39 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


DPC White Star liner S.S. Olympic, sister ship of Titanic, NY 1911

The reason the Brexit debate has gotten so out of hand is nobody understands what it’s about.

The Brexit campaigns have started anew in the UK, and from what I’ve seen here from left field barely a thing has changed since the murder of MP Jo Cox. Neither side has any qualms about using her death to make their respective points. The main, and perhaps only real, point is that nobody understands what the vote is about. Jo Cox, bless her soul, didn’t either.

This lack of understanding is also, at the same time, the reason why the debate has gotten so out of hand. Nobody seems to understand it’s not about Cameron or Nigel Farage, or Michael Gove vs Boris Johnson, it’s about voting for or against the EU, for or against Juncker and Tusk and five other unelected presidents having a say in one’s life.

And that’s not all either. It’s about voting to leave, or remain in, a Union that is already dead and preserved only in a zombie state. Brexit is just one vote and many more will inevitably follow. Brexit is not the first, Grexit had that ‘honor’ last year. Later this month, elections in Italy and Spain have the potential to turn into preliminary Italix and Spexit votes. And then there will be more.

The reason why these things are taking place, and will be, going forward, is that the economies of all these countries are fast deteriorating. The sole reason why people have accepted the rule of Brussels coming from far away over their daily lives, is the promise that it would make those lives better and more comfortable.

That promise has been shattered. The EU has made things worse for most Europeans, not improved them. And when seen in that light, why should people agree to continue to be told what to do by those who’ve made them poorer? There’s no democratic model in which that remotely makes sense. There are only undemocratic models left.

Britain’s Brexit referendum has run head first into global developments, and there is no sign that any voice in the discussion recognizes this. They all think it’s about something else. And of course Cameron’s policies have devastated the country, and of course the even more right wing Leave campaigners would make that worse. But that’s not what this is about.

 

What Cameron missed when he called the referendum is not that some of his friends could turn on him and go Leave, what he missed is that so many Brits from both the left and the right would turn on him. He never expected that to happen. He always figured his manipulated rosy pink economic numbers would outweigh people’s actual daily lives.

This is a global phenomenon, it has little to do with Cameron himself, other than his neoliberal budget cuts are often even more extreme than those of many of his pan-European and indeed American and global peers. It has a lot more to do with the neoliberalism embedded in Brussels, which has installed technocratic governments in many countries, especially in southern Europe, all with disastrous consequences for the populations.

It’s an exact mirror image of what is happening in the US. The jobs numbers the government and media feed Americans look good once filtered through a hundred layers of manipulation, but people look at what job they themselves have, and what it pays them, and they look at their families, friends and neighbors, and then decide this just ain’t working out or adding up.

The Brexit vote is, in a nutshell, Britain’s last chance to hit the lifeboats and jump the Titanic before it hits the iceberg. This is not even because of the dictatorial character Brussels has taken on, which is starting to display cartoonish properties, it’s because the global economy has hit the debt iceberg well before the EU has.

Voting Remain in next week’s referendum comes down to “Let’s stay onboard so we can help rearrange the deckchairs. And while we’re at it, pick some nice tunes for the orchestra to play on the way down as we sink.”

 

If there’s one outstanding advantage to the Brexit debate, it must be that it has opened up British society to reveal all its festering boils, pimples, pustules, ulcers and neoplasms that had before remained veiled by either stiff upper lips or outright dumb-ass ignorance. Not that the ‘discussion’ has done anything to lift the dumb-assery, mind you; the intelligence level of the Brits has been exposed as yet another hidden sore.

Nothing typically British there either. Neither the people nor the politicians nor the media in the country show any sign of comprehending what is happening to them. Nobody is capable of taking a step back and seeing a bigger picture. Jo Cox’s death has done nothing to fix that issue. Indeed, if there’s one thing Britain has been, and still is, showing the world it’s that it’s incapable of solving its problems.

But that incompetence is not going to be alleviated by handing the reins to Cameron or Johnson, or Corbyn, or indeed Juncker and Tusk. The only remedy is a cold hard look at what’s really going on in Britain itself, a look at its place in a rapidly imploding global economic system, and a look at what being a part of the EU actually means.

To gauge that last bit, all one has to do is to look at Greece, at how the EU has forced the demise of the Greek economy, of its once magnificent health-care system, and of countless other segments of a society still mired today in inexorable decline. A look at the treatment of refugees holds a lesson or two as well.

The summarized lesson from all this is that Brussels will happily throw you under a bus if it feels that would further its ambitions. Of which the EU has many.

The treatment of Greece and the refugees has redefined the term ‘Union’, and everyone should take note.

 

In America, the Democratic and Republican parties have all but internally combusted and destroyed themselves. In Britain, Labo(u)r did that years ago through Tony Blair, and the Tories are doing it today by infighting over Brexit. None of these things are incidents or stand-alone events.

They are part of a much larger pattern, as evidenced by the popularity numbers of people like French president Hollande (8%?!). All but a few incumbent parties in the west are evaporating. And all for the same reason: the demise of the existing economic models and systems that they have based their policies and popularity on.

An economy in decline means the end of centralization and the end of existing political power structures. This is inevitable. Because both can exist only by the grace of ever growing economies. It’s what our economies are based on. It’s what our entire world view is based on. Sometime in the future historians will have a hard time understanding this, but for now it’s all we have, because it’s all we’re willing to consider: growth to infinity and beyond.

Which was, or seemed to be, kind of alright as long as there indeed was growth. But there no longer is any growth. And it will not return for a long time, arguably not in our lifetimes. Which makes it a problem that we haven’t prepared for the end of growth. Which is not terrible smart given that making a point for growth having stopped decades ago looks quite solid.

 

People in Britain try desperately to link Jo Cox’s murder to some sort of larger movement or entity, even if for all they know, for all they can know, the killer is just another warped individual who didn’t take his meds for a long enough period to make him go fully off kilter.

Yeah, he ordered some right wing magazines and books. But that doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy behind the murder. Nor does it make this fascist and/or right-wing terrorism. Those claims are made solely in an effort to connect the tragedy to the Brexit vote. And that effort all by itself is a huge blemish on Jo Cox’s life, her death and her legacy.

To truly honor her would be to make sure you understand, and help others understand, what she herself did not.

Home Forums Murder, Lifeboats, an Iceberg and an Orchestra

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  • #28839

    DPC White Star liner S.S. Olympic, sister ship of Titanic, NY 1911 The reason the Brexit debate has gotten so out of hand is nobody understands what i
    [See the full post at: Murder, Lifeboats, an Iceberg and an Orchestra]

    #28840
    regionswork
    Participant

    The overhead costs have gotten too high. No longer does the communication function of government add to economic base with infrastructure and services that are a foundation for communities and families. Instead its a burden due to the corruption of the peoples intention for their government. Everything will shrink to fit actual resources. Fighting and war only add to the burden of the future where there will be less. The Emporers have no policies – those woven by tailors are all semantic and obscuring numbers. As explained here, very few know.

    #28841
    rapier
    Participant

    Nobody in the US, left or right pretends to know what Brexit is about but in vague and odd ways they both support stay because bad things will happen if they leave, or something. Actually I have seen almost nothing from the vast cadres of ‘Conservatives’ on the issue. The Democratic party leaders who we are always told are weak and liberal but actually solid neocons are 100% behind the EU and the ‘progressive’ crowd including Sanders are solidly behind a stay vote, and the EU, for reasons nobody ever really says.

    Over here it is a vast tranquil ocean of ignorance. None of our great humanitarian ‘liberals’ ever mention the scores of the drowned or the growing interment camps in Greece, or anything about Greece. Hillary’s crowd at the State Department just issued a ‘letter’ to the NY Times who they identified as “diplomats” who urged striking Assad. Which means Putin too since the hallmark of our ‘diplomats’ is to identify leaders of state, as the state, who of course have to be eliminated. Well I run on but to tie it all up we are ruled by neocons and neoliberals but no politician even pretends they know what the terms mean. All they talk about is gender issues and guns, so strike up the band.

    #28852
    TonyPrep
    Participant

    How long have we had a “rapidly imploding global economic system” and how much longer will it continue to implode before we can say it has actually imploded? It seems to have held together with string and tape for many years but they seem to be sort of still holding.

    #28853
    Dr. Diablo
    Participant

    I don’t know where you are, but over here it’s happening right in front of our eyes. You can pick chart after chart all day long: 20% on food stamps, corporate and personal bankruptcy, workforce participation rate, retail sales, inventories, energy use, indebtedness, and lately, just to let you know it’s really kicking in, suicide, overdose, infant mortality and premature death rates. I don’t know what more you’d be looking for, unless you believe the hilarious Dow, which has the wealth of the elite’s management class locked up in it, and would lose their loyalty if it or their home prices fell.

    Economies the size of the EU or US are like enormous flywheels, so powerful it takes enormous abuse and enormous time to slow them down. But they are dedicated to their cause, and just as W. and O. took a decade to grind the entire military into the sand, so too they have finally kicked out enough pillars to have the economy sag and fail. But we put up a Potemkin Facade and a “Open for Business” sign, so nothing to see here.

    But this is the most common end to empires. Why attack and face retaliation when you can strangle them until they collapse? Like an old tree they are burrowed out from within by political termites and eventually any strong wind blows them over. So long as they’re being hollowed out, why bother kicking them over? Then you’d get blamed. Let it happen organically, on its own.

    #28857
    John Day
    Participant

    The sooner we all take our bitter medicine, the less-worserer things may be.
    That will be very hard to see…

    #28861
    TonyPrep
    Participant

    Oh yes, Doctor, there have been indications for years that the situation is deteriorating but I’m talking about “imploding”. That word implies a rapid deterioration and that doesn’t seem to be happening right now. The ability of the elites to keep things going, against the tide, is remarkable. I realise that, at some stage, the magic will no longer be enough and a much more rapid deterioration will set it but can they keep it going for months, years or decades? It’s all just speculation, and until people actually see it going on all around them, they simply will refuse to believe it and that lack of belief will, in some small way, help to maintain this failed system for a little longer. Allied to the fact that people want to believe it will all come right in the end, I think it could even be a decade or more before the system can be said to be “imploding”. However, I think the environment could throw a spanner in the works. The climate almost seems to be on the brink of something akin to a collapse but the speed is still unknown, at this point.

    #28870
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    And now, for the rest of the story…
    While not mentioned in Ilargi’s article, the reason every nation’s economies are imploding, indeed, MUST implode, is because of the one think that Krugman said to “never touch” and the thing Steve Keens runs away from like a crowd of children who just saw him soil his pants… THE DEBT-BASED MONETARY SYSTEM.
    The foundation of the economy is the money system – or as Nicole might put it, the debt-money system IS the OPERATING SYSTEM. Guess what? The operating system is compromised. It is a prima facie fraud. The media is paid by the Debt-Money Purveyors to keep their mouths shut or, as Krugman said, their 30 shekels of silver will not be provided.
    To not call out the Debt-Money Monopolists and their Mega-Corporate/Government Fascistic Empire is to be a useful idiot. The truth doesn’t care about our feelings. It just is. Actively concealing the Big Bad while it is running around starving 10s of millions of people to death and degrading and impoverishing multiple billions in no way, shape, or form constitutes “good.”
    The Biblical prophets, up to and including the Son of God Jesus, CALLED OUT THE BIG BAD BY NAME. They didn’t cower. They didn’t conceal. They didn’t tap dance around the Big Bad. THEY SET AN EXAMPLE. Yes, it cost them physically in the end… but the SPIRITUAL TREASURE they accumulated was incalculable.
    Posing

    #28891
    venuspluto67
    Participant

    If the vote is in favor of leaving and is close, the result may simply be jury-rigged to make it appear as though the vote were in favor of remaining. That’s how these things frequently go down.

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