Is Brexit the Wake-Up Call Needed to Make America ‘Sane’ Again?
The results of last Thursday’s historic vote to leave the European Union (EU) continues to reverberate around the world. The British Sterling Pound, the nation’s currency maintained concurrently with Euro, fell to a 31 year low in intraday trading on the Forex currency market.
The Financial Times (FT) 100 index of stocks, trading on the London Stock Exchange, fell as low as 8.67% before closing down 3.15% in last Friday’s (June 24) trading. As of this writing (June 28), the FT100 is down 5.5% since Thursday’s historic vote.
Stocks trading in the U.S. also fell sharply as the vote was recorded and announced to the world. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down as low as 3.4% while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell to lows of 3.6% and 4.1% respectively finishing the day’s trading off 1.6% for the Dow and S&P and 1.9% for the Nasdaq.
Presumptive Republican nominee and domestic fearmonger-in-chief Donald Trump while on a campaign respite visiting his controversial Turnberry golf course in Scotland on Friday, wrote on his Twitter account the following:
The response to the “Donald’s” tweet was swift, artful and bruising. Many in Scotland were quick to point out that the country (which is not England) overwhelming voted to remain in the EU. The responses to Mr. Trump’s ill-advised musing was swift, crushing and brutally accurate, as his continued failure to grasp geopolitical issues and a fundamental lack of cultural issues on an international scale was again on display, front and center.
Although it is easy to dismiss the latest Twitter gaffe as “Donald being Donald” feeding red meat to his legion of low-informed, nationalistic supporters, there exists a clear and present danger every time he utters a sentence.
It is equally dangerous to cast his followers as only being low-informed or low information voters. These voters are showing a strange, resilient, almost cult like devotion to Trump and the conspiracy theories he callously tosses out like peanuts to elephants.
A Public Policy Poll released in May found that of those with a favorable opinion of Donald Trump (67%), 59% believe that President Barack Obama is a Muslim. This notion has been debunked time and time again during the President’s seven and a half years in office (yes Virginia, President Obama and his family are Christians).
The fact that this rumor is persistent and fanned by Trump and his surrogates (i.e. Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter). The palpable hate created by this campaign has the potential to set America on a Brexit course similar to Great Britain, with dire consequences as the forecast.
The American Brexit has been simmering for sometime, perhaps even before the election of Barack Hussein Obama in 2008. A growing resentment towards immigrants and a steady decline in the country’s middle class has contributed to a growing xenophobia and class based rage fueled by Koch Industries and other dark money funders who fund organizations that use the words “freedom” or “patriot.”
The rise of the Tea Party, married with Trump’s 2012 effort to discredit President Obama’s citizenship giving rise to the ugly birther movement, has set in motion a perfect storm of anti-immigrant fervor and a possible Trump presidency.
It is not an accident that the rise in xenophobia in America closely aligns with the nationalistic movements abroad. Our Brexit is a repudiation of common sense laws and continued support for a Congress that counts as victories its defeat of anything proposed by the Obama White House. When Senator Mitch McConnell announced his intentions to block everything that President Obama proposes and make him a one-term president, the disgusting utter lack of respect for either the man or the office he holds was on full display.
This repudiation carries through when one-third of Louisiana Republicans believe that the government’s slow Hurricane Katrina response was the fault of Obama, even though he had just completed his eighth month as the junior U.S. Senator representing the State of Illinois.
There is a special kind of dumb ass thinking that gives rise to the ridiculous conspiracy theories that are largely race based, unfortunate and dangerous in a country that prides itself on its openness, acceptance and diversity.
Many in England came to realize, too late unfortunately, that their vote may have been cast incorrectly. Their mistake may in fact be the undoing of the U.K. Scotland organizers dismayed by the outcome of their 2014 secession have been given new life now that the country will be part of the impending divorce from the EU.
Google revealed that after the vote the top questions posed in the search engine (according to Google Trends) were:
“What does it mean to leave the EU?,”
“What is the EU?,”
“Which countries are in the EU?,”
“What will happen now we’ve left the EU?,” and
“How many countries are in the EU?”
Many of these questions were posed within 6 hours of the vote, showing a dangerous level of disengagement by the voters on an issue that will have a lasting impact on the economic viability of the U.K. When the tyranny of small minded, insular men becomes the standard by which we live our lives, we all suffer.
Brexit, as unfortunate as it is, serves as an ever present reminder as we enter the general election season in the U.S. that we must be vigilant in testing every assumption, challenging the two candidates to the point where they become uncomfortable with the questions, in order to prove their mettle and temperament to sit at the desk with the red button within reach.
Brexit isn’t the 2016 U.S. Presidential race but Brexit is the cautionary tale we must heed. If we give in to our greater fears and become isolated and cut-off from the rest of the world, we will begin to lose our identity as a nation of inclusiveness and freedom.
If we begin gathering individuals based on their national identity or religious beliefs and deporting them en masse, including those who are American citizens, we step further into an abyss from which we can not come back.
The American idea is better than the hate speech and faux patriotism that is being offered by demagogues and charlatans. Let’s use the results of the U.K. vote to motivate us to learn more, do more, be more, together, as one nation indivisible. Our very future and survival as a country depends on that very thing.
