For several years
people have been exposed to the idea that if they all shoot
themselves in the foot they will receive a shower of unimaginable
riches: handicapped car permits, enhanced pensions and health care,
as well as a renewed sense of solidarity with their handicapped
brethren.
In the UK, the
argument convinced a majority of the population to make that
commitment. When the ruse was exposed showing that the promised
golden shower would be very different from what they had been led to
expect, die-hard cult leaders stepped in to claim that “democracy”
required that the voice of the people be respected and that there
would be no going back. Logic might have suggested that the Make
Britain Great Again cult should be simply seen as a momentary
collective lapse of judgment and reconsidered.
I do recall that
after a centuries-long, half-hearted campaign to replace imperial
units, in 1973 the UK joined the EEC and was obliged to adopt the
metric system. Remember, that going back as far as the 1660’s,
British scientists and engineers were at the forefront of
metrication. As adopted, it included the ingeniously modular system
of paper sizes and required abandonment of quaint non-decimal units
of currency such as shillings and guineas. There has been some
backlash. The pint will never die in Britain. After nearly a half
century, human weights are still often announced in stone and
distances are given in miles. All peoples of the earth are peculiar
in that they are unique but the Brits seem to revel in their
eccentricities more than most. Therefore, an eleventh hour reversion
to reason is less than a sure bet.
What then might some
of the effects of Brexit be, in terms of restoring Britain to past
glory? We are reasonably sure that the Government of India will not
go along with restoring the sovereignty of the Queen over the
sub-continent, even though that would give car makers such as Land
Rover and Jaguar their British identity back. German brands such as
Mini and Rolls Royce, as well as all the major Japanese makes, still
produce cars in the UK but with a new system of tariffs, that may
prove untenable.
Will the metric
system, partial or not, be revoked in a bid to make the special
relationship with the USA more special? That’s a thorny issue
since British pints are larger than US pints and President Trump is
not known for compromise. Will the special relationship lead to
Brits being required to eat anything that the FDA and the US Dept of
Agriculture deem fit for human consumption? Will it mean that the
UK, now freed from EU meddling, will fall under the umbrella of US
Homeland Security?
Brexit may halt the
painfully slow introduction of mixing taps into the British plumbing
system but a reversion to the old hot and cold taps will be hindered
by the loss of untold thousands of Polish plumbers who already left
with their devalued pounds in the wake of the 2007 economic collapse.
The edible food revolution may be harder to reverse, even if the
formerly young unemployed Italians who sparked it are sent home,
since nearly two generations of Britons have grown accustomed to
eating edible food.
On the other side of
the pond, the MAGA cult, cousin to the Make Britain Great Again cult,
is also facing an uncertain future. Despite two years of daily
scandals and the crude and unceasing demolition of standards of
civility, diplomacy, credibility and integrity developed over two and
a half centuries of US government*, the presidency of Donald Trump
has sailed along without a peep of protest from the
Republican-controlled Congress, with the exception of a few members
pushed into early retirement by shame or dismal reelection prospects.
*
Not to paint too rosy a picture but there were standards, no
matter how imperfect adherence to them may have sometimes been.
After stating that
he would drain the swamp, Trump sought and found his cabinet in the
sewer. The subsequent high turn-over rate of his appointees resulted
from some of them being even too sleazy for Trump to abide, while
others were fired for not being sleazy enough. The new teflon
president has slithered through all this on the strength of a rising
stock market, (until September 2018) and vast kick-backs to the
oligarchs who backed him (under the guise of tax reform).
Trump may have
out-Foxed himself. While he simply lied outright in campaign
promises regarding health care, social security, deficits and taking
care of the troops, he also made statements about building a wall on
the Mexican border so racist and so irrational that they clouded the
essentially reasonable idea that a country should have secure
borders. In so doing, he spawned a whole generation of believers in
no borders at all. No sovereignty, just universal love.
He went on to say “I don’t see why
we have to be enemies with Russia”. A quarter of a century after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the idea of better relations with
the inheritors of the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal seemed
less irrational than most of Trump’s other tweets. Little did
anyone realize that his quest for better relations was driven not by
a need for national security but by the chance to build a Trump Tower
in central Moscow.
Trump is now reviled
across the bi-partisan Neo-con coalition for his Russian dealings.
His support for a high visibility murderer and dismemberer has
inspired queasiness in all but the deadest of souls. Recently he has
fired all “the adults in the room”, i.e. the generals he had
appointed to civilian posts. Then he announced a withdrawal of
troops from Syria and Afghanistan, undermining the absolute control
of the government by the Military Industrial Complex. Ironically,
the one positive thing he’s done in two years may be the thing that
leads to his removal from office.
With apparent
impunity, Trump can abuse women, pay them hush money, insult all
identifiable minorities, tear up treaties, violate international law
and act like the typical US kid drugged up for attention deficit
disorder, but in derailing the military gravy train, he may have
crossed a red line that neither Wall Street, the Pentagon, nor AIPAC
will tolerate. Almost as quickly as I started to write this piece,
Mr. Bolton, the new Director of Homeland Security, stepped in to
overrule the President, possibly saving the President his job for the
moment.
The troops were due
to repatriated in one month; the final Mueller Report should be out
sometime in the first quarter, and March 29th is the last
day to drink or reject the Brexit Kool-aid. How will the cults fare?
Your guess is as good as ours but it looks like an interesting time
ahead. Happy New Year!
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