That would be the “beta males” referenced by Steve. I have seen a ton of Chicken Little posts over the last few days so let me put up some snippets here. However, let me quote David French who put it better than I could what has been causing my head to shake (and ache) over the vote taken in Britain last week in describing what the “Side of History” really means to Progressives and what their version of “progress” has been these last few decades
I’m old enough to remember when history had a side. History, you see, had chosen to progress toward an international order that de-emphasized international sovereignty, elevated a bureaucratic and technocratic elite, and sought to solve international conflict through a combination of moral and economic pressure. Nations caused wars, so nationalism (and even patriotism) had to be set aside. Democracy unleashed bigotry, so “the people” mattered mainly when they agreed with the elite. It was a system that worked remarkably well for the international upper class. Men and women dedicated to commerce enjoyed unprecedented access to international markets. Activists dedicated to social justice could engineer their societies without ever truly facing the accountability of the ballot box. The logic of the system was self-proving. It would triumph through the sheer force of its virtue.
…Is it any wonder that citizens of one of the greatest and strongest nations in human history would recoil from an international order that was proving mainly that it could enrich an elite without seeming to lift a finger to preserve the nation’s core values and traditions — the very things that had made it great and strong? Is it any wonder that citizens of other great countries are —wondering what loyalty they owe to that same elite?
And so we launch yet another phase in human history, where what’s old — nations pursuing their own interests — is new again. On one end of the European continent sits Russia, a nation that is flexing its muscles and seeking to reclaim its traditional power. On the other end is Britain, a nation that has reclaimed its independence and now faces an uncertain future defining its new relationship with the world. Across the ocean, America faces its own crisis. Our technocratic elite has constructed its own self-serving system — one that mirrors the very system that Britain rejected yesterday. Our politics are more uncertain and chaotic than at any time in decades. We can’t predict what will happen. But one thing I do know — history never truly had a “side.” Instead, it is the story of action and reaction, and no outcome is inevitable.
The British have finally claimed “Give me Liberty or give me death” alongside “Live Free or Die” as their own. Good for them. Not so much for the naysayers:
Reuters: Analysis: Brexit threatens to undermine U.S.-Britain special relationship
WASHINGTON — Britain’s decision to leave the European Union could send damaging shockwaves through the bedrock Anglo-American “special relationship,” raising questions about London’s willingness and ability to back U.S.-led efforts in global crises ranging from the Middle East to Ukraine. The loss of the strongest pro-U.S. voice within the 28-nation bloc, as a result of the “Brexit” referendum, threatens to weaken Washington’s influence in European policymaking and embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin to further challenge the West, analysts and former diplomats say.
If it is that “so special”, why do the two muddleheads present it in terms of “what can they do for us”? Or is that special relationship ONLY depend their relationship within the EU? And how does that line up for all those years (well, after the War of 1812 anyways) when there was no EU? Yes, nations aren’t “friends” but can have common interests. And if it is special, wouldn’t we be standing with them, period? Georgie Stephanopoulus of This Week (and former wonderkid in the Clinton Administration): if Britain has less leverage in Europe, is it still going to be the first call of the president of the United States?”
Telegraph (UK):
The Brexit contagion: How France, Italy and the Netherlands now want their referendum too
Good for them. I see nothing wrong for countries to re-assume their national sovereignty that they had before the EU started in the 50s. Sure, it was meant to stop another World War by fostering better relations but then the Elite political classes decided to become the US of Europe out of disparate countries with really not much in common. Let themselves be themselves, as the EU decided to go totalitarian with a new style of Eurocratic aristocracy.
“Got no idea why working class whites think our elites [and] MSM view them with hatred [and] contempt.”
Well, words like xenophobic, misogynistic, redneck, nationalistic, zingoism, selfish, racist, money-grubbers, bitter clingers, homophobic, transphobic….you get the idea…
This one is typical – the message is typical: Economics comes before Freedom. And that is EXACTLY why a lot of folks voted to Leave as they are more than fed up with Brussels bureaucrats telling them how they can live their lives (like telling the British they can’t use the tea kettles of their own choice):
5 reasons why Americans should care about Brexit
- It could hurt the economy
- It may leave a less stable Europe
- It puts stress on the ‘special relationship’
- Trump will go all in on immigration
CNN: The United Kingdom shocked the world when its citizens voted to leave the European Union Thursday.
Well of course they did – the world’s “leadership” expected sheep – they got the sheepdogs protecting their freedom (at last). Leaders lead only when they have followers – and it turned out that the leaders had less followers than they thought. Oh sure – the dependent classes (think Scotland) wanted the government gravy train to continue (and now think that their independence from the UK will allow them entrance to the EU. You think that the EU wants a Greece II? And the Elites didn’t want to lose their power. But the ordinary working blokes who have been kicked in the teeth (and groin, and other places) by their own government (re: Labour doing their secret pogrom of essentially being open borders so as to replace the electorate they had with a new one) finally said “ENOUGH!!”.
The next? See the first one first then think about this “is it about us or about the British people”?
Why the U.S. is freaked out about Brexit
Britain’s vote to leave the European Union Friday left the United States confronting a threat to the strength and cohesion of both its closest historical ally and a 70-year transatlantic partnership that has been the bedrock of Western peace and prosperity.
The outcome of Britain’s referendum instantly pitched an already weakened Europe into a new crisis, opening the possibility that other member states could choose to leave the E.U. and create new headaches for Washington.
So the British should give up their ever-lessening freedom and self-government just to make life easier for Obama? And as far as “weakened” is concerned, this has been happening for a while and it is BECAUSE of the structure of the EU (a very undemocratic and unrepresentative form of “super-national” government) that it has become weakened all on its own, baby. And if it is that bad, should it just dissolve? Oh yeah, forgot – Progressives exist there (except they are honest enough to call themselves Socialists and Communists) and at NO time can any government become smaller.
World’s new danger if other nations follow ‘Brexit’
Moments after the startling results of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union emerged, anti-immigrant crusaders in other parts of Europe gave notice they, too, would try to get their countries to leave.
Note the slight of hand and smear by the Media: “anti-immigrant”. True there and here that they NEVER say illegal or say “documented” with their attempts to paint their opposition (and make no mistake that there like here, the MSM in the pocketbook of the Elite) as just nasty, roughnecked haters. And they wondered why they lost?
And another one: trying to blame Britain for a certain-war-to-come and not the country that, ahem, actually did so in the past:
‘Brexit’: A very British fiasco
he EU is the latest of a series of multinational organizations set up after World War II to ensure that there would never again be a pan-European war and to create the conditions for a new European prosperity after the destruction wrought by the war against the Nazis. The EU has admirably succeeded at both.
Well, it was Germany at fault for I and II and if prosperity was the goal, then Bergen hasn’t been looking at the fortunes of the young in Europe with its stiltified labor markets and severe regulatory regime. But seriously – fiasco? Bergen is like most of the other globalists / internationalists in that it is the emphasis on global and showing us the thinking that nation-states should be done away with to get out of the way of their Utopia.
But it isn’t all doom and slander. Megan McCardle has a good handled on this:
…Or perhaps they were just unable to grasp what I noted in a column last week: that nationalism and place still matter, and that elites forget this at their peril. A lot people do not view their country the way some elites do: as though the nation were something like a rental apartment — a nice place to live, but if there are problems, or you just fancy a change, you’ll happily swap it for a new one.
In many ways, members of the global professional class have started to identify more with each other than they have with the fellow residents of their own countries. Witness the emotional meltdown many American journalists have been having over Brexit.
And THAT is a large part of the problem – they simply stop seeing the “non-elite”; worse, they see them as not mattering. Until they do.
…A lot of my professional colleagues seemed to, and the dominant tone framed this as a blow against the enlightened “us” and the beautiful world we are building, struck by a plague of morlocks who had crawled out of their hellish subterranean world to attack our impending utopia. You could also, I’d argue, see this sentiment in the reaction of global markets, which was grossly out of proportion to the actual economic damage that is likely to be done by Brexit. I mean, yes, the British pound took a pounding, and no surprise. But why did this so roil markets for the Mexican peso? Did traders fear that the impact on the global marmite supply was going to unsettle economies everywhere?
Like I said, to them, folks like you and I with our own aspirations and dreams, our own set of traditions and values, just don’t matter. And we are seeing in a lot of other of the European countries that other folks like us are starting to get rather fed up with the likes of Bergen and this is one way to tell them to just go “Sod off”.
And one of Steve’s favorite folks to read: THEODORE DALRYMPLE ON #BREXIT:
For a long time, Britons who wanted their country to leave the European Union were regarded almost as mentally ill by those who wanted it to stay. The leavers didn’t have an opinion; they had a pathology. Since one doesn’t argue with pathology, it wasn’t necessary for the remainers to answer the leavers with more than sneers and derision.
Even after the vote, the attitude persists. Those who voted to leave are described as, ipso facto, small-minded, xenophobic, and fearful of the future. Those who voted to stay are described as, ipso facto, open-minded, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking. The BBC itself suggested as much on its website. In short, the desire to leave was a return to the insularity that resulted in the famous—though apocryphal—newspaper headline: fog in the channel: continent cut off.
As with our own media, Brexit has certainly been a clarifying moment in terms of seeing how much England’s largely socialist pundit class utterly despises over half of its citizens.
It’s how the Progressives here in the US see everyone else, so all we Conservatives / Libertarian / TEA Party / COnstitutionalists are quite familiar with the “down-their-snoots / over-their-Prince-Nez-glasses” condescending looks that smarmy teachers usually give their elementary school pupils. Consider the BREXIT vote a punch in the mouth to these bullies.
It’s similar to the US Globalists when we who love our country say “LEave the UN to its own corruptness” and “WHY do we keep being the biggest funder to those that absolutely hate us?”. But there is a bit of wicked stupidity from the Elite to make sport of, like this bit of unwitting irony from one of the Members of Parliament who obviously hasn’t a clue:
Labour legislator David Lammy says Thursday’s national vote was non-binding and “our sovereign Parliament needs to now vote on whether we should quit the EU.”
So, his “sovereign” lawgivers should vote to give away the UK sense of sovereignty away, probably permanently? Sounds like any number of the DC Democrats. And another explanation of why “the folks” are ticked:
It’s not the economy, the price of gas, or war in the Middle East that has working- and middle-class people from Bangor, Maine to Bangor, Wales mad as hell. It’s immigration. They’re fed up being forced to accept unlimited numbers of migrants and refugees from cultures that in many cases don’t share Western democratic values. They’ve had it with the internationalist coalition of elite journalists, establishment politicians, and financial grandees telling them that if they oppose the principles of open borders and centralized decision-making, they are no better than white-sheet-wearing racists.
Whether in West Virginia or the West Midlands, people see and feel their culture changing, and see their leaders taking away their right to slow or blunt those changes. Brexit is one response. Donald Trump is another. It may be a backlash, it may be reactionary, but it’s a legitimate political expression of exhaustion, anger, and powerlessness.
The folks didn’t get a vote on seeing their culture and nations being changed – but they do see it being rammed down their throats and affecting their childrens’ futures.
And there was some bright news – at least for Britain if not for the EUers:
It wasn’t the British markets that took the real hit. That was borne by the continental Europeans:
- – The FTSE 100 finished down 3.1%
- – Germany’s Dax dropped 6.8%
- – France’s Cac closed 8.0% lower
- – Spain’s Ibex ended down 12.4%
- – Italy’s FTSE MIB fell 12.5%
- – In Greece, the Athens market lost 13.4%
It is Madrid, Milan, Paris, and Frankfurt that are tanking. The reason? While there will be a short-term hit to the British economy, it will be the rest of Europe that suffers far more from this than us — and investors have already figured that out. The predictions were that the London market would go into meltdown if we voted to leave the EU. It would be Lehman Brothers all over again, except probably far worse. The index could lose 20 per cent or 30 per cent of its value we were told … But it’s only fallen back to its level of, er, last Friday. In effect, a week of gains have been lost. It is still up on the beginning of February. You need a very fevered imagination to describe that as a catastrophe.
In short, the losses across Europe are far worse than ours. That is, to say the least, a bit odd. After all, Brexit is meant to be an economic catastrophe for us, not for our neighbours, who have all been wise enough to stay in the EU, and will carry on enjoying all its wonderful economic benefits.So what’s up? The explanation is simple. In reality, the EU doesn’t make much difference to the UK economy one way or another … Our trauma will be over quite quickly but the EU’s has just begun. The markets have worked that out — and investors are quite rightly getting out while they still can.
And we have the MSNBC morons piling in:
MSNBC Host: UK Desire to Maintain Borders, Sovereignty Sounds Like ‘Old-Fashioned Xenophobia’
Yeah, that will convince people to change their minds….see pathology, above. And the EU regulators taking away their small appliances:
But European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, in his weekly College of Commissioners meeting on April 20, accidentally revealed that the EU, just after would move forward with regulatory bans against eight of the best selling kettles and nine of the best selling toasters in the United Kingdom just after the Brexit vote.
The announcement set off a firestorm of ridicule regarding the arrogance of the EU nanny state. It also revived the bitter anger over 2014 regulations on supposedly “high-powered” vacuum cleaners that threatened to ban 6 out of the top 10 selling vacuum cleaners in the UK, including the wildly popular British made “Dyson Ball” and “Dyson Cordless.”
And from Instapundit, it isn’t just the airlines that consider us cattle:
DON’T EXPECT THE LEADERS TO BELIEVE THIS: The Problem with Brexit is the Leaders, not the Voters: Elites have pushed policies that go against the basic sense of identity, security, common sense, and morality of many citizens.
What is more significant—and more worrying about the Brexit vote—is that it demonstrates just how deep the gulf has become that separates governing elites and the people they are meant to govern.
Whether in Europe or the United States, our ruling elites have pushed policies—political, economic and social—that go beyond what sits well with the basic sense of identity, security, common sense, and morality of many citizens.
Failure to control immigration? Amnesty? Social benefits for non-citizens when citizens are suffering? Nation-building wars abroad instead of nation-building at home? Massive debt? Failures to confront terrorism effectively? Businesses moving jobs overseas? Recession in the countryside while the capital prospers? Rapid changes in gender politics? Bizarre contortions of politically correct speech, which shout down what many see as common sense? It has left many in the electorate angry and disenfranchised. And when those in the public who feel this way have objected or resisted, elites have doubled-down, rather than listen and adjust.
The rulers of the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States—take your pick—are so convinced that they know better than the masses, and that they are building a better world, that even in defeat, they are bemoaning how wrongly the masses have voted. And that is the looming danger for the future that the Brexit vote foreshadows: that elites will still not address the concerns of a large proportion of their own citizens.
They see us as, at best, livestock to be managed
Consent is being withdrawn. The question is, is it in time?
“Yesterday, Britain was offered a choice between fear and freedom. It chose freedom. Decisively.”