"When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree."
-- George Bernard Shaw
Americans know only so much about the United Kingdom; we know Monty Python but not The Goon Show. We know the Beatles but not Dr. Feelgood. We know James Bond and Austin Powers but not Merlin Minshall or Stakeknife.
Our notions of what is British may be as informed by Downton Abbey and Benny Hill as anything else. When we close our eyes and think of England, do we imagine a land of unarmed bobbies and punks with purple mohawks?
Still, we share a language, our histories intertwine. Taylor Swift dates (as of this writing) Tom Hiddleston. It's probably not wrong to suggest that Americans feel closer to the British than we do the (snooty) French or the (standoffish) Germans. We are just a bit closer to them than we are the rest of Europe. Winston Churchill's mother was born in Brooklyn, our special relationship forged in two world wars.
It is disconcerting to watch them go mad.
In the aftermath of their vote to divorce the European Union, it's become clear that a lot of Britons didn't completely understand the ramifications. If you've paid attention at all, the reports of frantic Googling and the admissions by some voters that they only meant to register a protest, that they never actually thought that an exit was possible (shades of Frank White's upset win over Bill Clinton in 1980), might give you some qualms about direct democracy. (If American Idol and the Boaty McBoatface incident weren't enough.) In the wake of the political fallout--David Cameron may not be a stupid man, but allowing this vote was not clever at all--there have even been suggestions that maybe someone can find a way to give Her Majesty's subjects the do-over so many of them clearly want.
(Sure, Parliament is going to fly in the face of the expressed will of the people. Not bloody likely.)
As one who has paid the equivalent of $27 for a shot of whiskey in a London pub, I can't help but be a little chuffed by the prospect of a somewhat more affordable England. (At this writing, a pound is worth $1.35, up a bit from the 31-year-low it hit on Monday; some analysts predict pound/dollar parity by the end of the year. That mightn't be a good thing for the world economy, but maybe it's not such a bad time to plan a trip.)
Still, the economic and politic instability the so-called Brexit has occasioned is obviously unsettling. If you take into consideration Austria's ongoing flirtation with the extreme right-wing populist Norbert Hofer, whose immigrant-bashing free-trade-averse Austria First rhetoric wouldn't have been out of place in 1933, it's clear there are troubling stirrings afoot across the continent, across the world.
The madness is never far from us.
The American-style assassination of Jo Cox, a member of Parliament who advocated remaining in the E.U., last month doesn't jibe with the notion of England as a gentler, more civilized place. She was killed by a deranged right-winger who aligned himself with American Nazis, who fashioned himself a zip gun. Perhaps if Cox had followed Hofer's example and taken to carrying a Glock 9 mm in public she wouldn't have been the first MP to be murdered in office since 1990.
(I imagine the gun lobby would have much to say about the illegal and homemade weapon used to murder Cox, but think about how rare political assassination is in the Britain. Since 1812, eight serving MPs have been killed, and six of these were killed in the name of Irish republicanism.)
It's clear that Americans are not the only ones who've lost connection with their history, and with the better angels of their nature.
In a way this could be a good lesson for us. We might look at what happened in the U.K. and understand that a vote is a serious thing, not to be spent frivolously. Anyone planning to vote mischievously ought to note the morning-after remorse of the Britons. They can sulk off, they can vote themselves a place apart, but they can't escape the gears and levers of the world.
And those who would stand for office ought to realize they can't escape the world either. One good thing that may come from this crazy election cycle is the realization by "them"--those mysterious people who manipulate those levers and gears--that they can't escape the world either. They can't escape the people whose interests they are supposed to serve. The rise of Bernie Sanders on the progressive side of American politics, the rise of Trump on the populist front and Her Majesty's subjects' vote to divorce from the European Union are all symptomatic of the outrage of the perpetually disenfranchised.
While we can argue over the merits of these phenomena, they all indicate that the besieged middle classes of Western civilization are waking up to the realization that in recent generations they have had very little control over what happens to them, and they're a little upset about that. Maybe these eruptions will give American political elites cause to consider issues of economic inequality and social justice.
Sanders is probably unsuited to an executive position; he seems too inflexible and sanctimonious to preside over a large, diverse country. But his message resonated with a great many people looking for something more idealistic, people willing to look past the received wisdom of civics classes. For a lot of people, socialism is no longer the obliterating buzz word it once was.
And maybe Trump's remarkable rise--obtained by exploiting the darkest fears of "salt-of-the-earth" Americans--will remind Democrats as well as Republicans of the dangers of cynically manipulating and/or ignoring the silent majority of folks who haven't the time or inclination to become terribly sophisticated about the minutiae of politics; who only want a fair chance to prosper.
pmartin@arkansasonline.com
www.blooddirtangels.com
Editorial on 07/03/2016