Brexit: Unions are for Pussies

[Appie]

at the cost of provoking warfare with Russia

You mentioned this a couple of times with how the EU acted in the Ukraine? What did the EU exactly do? You had the Ukraine that was EU oriented and a treaty with the EU that the president refused to sign at the last minute. The people revolted and got a new government, many casualties. That's when Russia acted and invaded the Ukraine. How is this Europe trying to ignite a war with Russia? It was the people of the Ukraine who started this. Ukraine was corrupt as hell and the people were sick of it and looked for help in the EU, because Russia was the reason they were in that shit position in the first place.

Also the treaty with the Ukraine never involved joining the EU, it was just a treaty for trade and stopping corruption. Turkey is closer to joining the EU than the Ukraine and even Turkey is years away.

I personally find it a shame the UK decided to leave, but it's their choice. For them I hope the negotiations will at least have a solid trade agreement with the EU, because not having that could hurt the UK alot (and the EU as well). As for in the UK itself, I hope they sort it out with a nation that divided (52-48), that's a split I wish on nobody and will most likely be a reason to bitch for months on both sides. For the EU, I hope they do something with this result, because it's clear the resentment towards some rules and how the EU handle things isn't only a UK thing, but is also happening in the rest of Europe.

[Blubbartron]

Facts exist separate from your understanding of them.

Everything you have is an opinion.

Your opinions either align with facts or they don't.

Your opinions can be non-factual (wrong) or factual (right).

"It is my opinion that the Earth is flat."

Opinions that are completely based within values cannot be judged as right or wrong ("X should die.") However opinions that are assessments which can be empirically or logically disproven can definitely be judged as right or wrong ("X should die because he did Y" when it can be proven that Y did not happen).

Sorry guys, but opinions are opinions because of the qualities of the subject matter. Not everything is an opinion, and not everything prefaced by "I think", "I believe", or "it is my opinion" is an opinion by default. People can say stupid and ignorant things, but stupid and ignorant things are not necessarily opinions (unlike thinking rap or country is good music, which is clearly stupid and ignorant).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion

[Galkaeater]

Voting expresses an opinion.

Opinions can be wrong.

Therefore, your vote can be an expression of an incorrect opinion.

It's perfectly fine to make fun of people who assert demonstrably false opinions.

Seeing people crying about it has made voting leave worth it.

[Zetanio]

Sorry guys, but opinions are opinions because of the qualities of the subject matter. Not everything is an opinion, and not everything prefaced by "I think", "I believe", or "it is my opinion" is an opinion by default. People can say stupid and ignorant things, but stupid and ignorant things are not necessarily opinions (unlike thinking rap or country is good music, which is clearly stupid and ignorant).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion

This is why you are the worst.

[Gredival]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion

"In casual use, the term opinion may be the result of a person's perspective, understanding, particular feelings, beliefs, and desires."

Also see

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion

"a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter; belief stronger than impression and less strong than positive knowledge"

[Wulfgang]

/sees philosophical debate on the nature of opinions

[Indalecia]

"...can you please define 'is'?"

[Aleth]

It's not that the EU wanted to provoke Russia - it's that they miscalculated their international diplomacy and signalled to Russia that they were threatening their access to the port. They failed to understand the point of buffer nations and the significance Russia placed on the Crimea (despite a history of Russia fighting like crazy over this patch of land/coast).

The affair shows the blundering incompetence of EU international policy. That it was unintentional is really the point. They don't know what they're doing.

The upshot of the blunder is a massive souring of relations with Russia whilst also showing them their military bullying tactics totally work. The EU effectively made the Russians into an enemy over this. I can't see how it's anything but a massive diplomacy fail.

Remainers seem to have a lot of blind faith in what the EU meant in terms of security - after this incident I cannot see why.

Edit: Unless they see the EU as a way of stopping Germany or France from being militarily belligerent. In which case I'd argue tying Germany, France and Belgium together economically is fine so they don't start killing each other again. However that doesn't mean the UK needs to be in it for it to function.

[Andalusian girls]

alright tykes and dikes shut the heck up sit the heck down and learn something from a free man

i’m hesitant to paint an entire outgroup of people as ignorant when they disagree with me but anecdotally speaking the Brexiters i’ve encountered are some ignorant sum bitches. Appie above already refuted the preposterous claim that the EU provoked war with Russia and is somehow responsible for Putin’s rape of Ukraine. earlier in this thread you heard ‘too many immigrants are taking advantage of social welfare it isn’t sustainable’, a notion belied by numerous academic studies showing immigrants contribute more to the system than they take out of it. they, generally, come as adults to work and often go home to retire, ensuring the state does not have to support them during the two most expensive periods of a person’s life. indeed one could say hardworking, prime-of-life immigrants are subsidizing the early-years education and pension plans of the freeloading native class. and to complete the triumvirate the only Brexiter i know in real life continually regurgitated support for the English defying unelected EU officials at which point i pointed out EU legislation had to be ratified by the European Parliament, a body elected with universal European suffrage, at which point he admitted he did not know what the European Parliament was or how the EU established laws.

anyways

the original sin of the Brexit campaign was promising both economic advantage and increased national sovereignty. they swore to limit immigration and improve public finances when immigrants were improving public finance, they swore to renegotiate international trade deals to be more favorable to British workers when British workers received the benefits of the 67 trade agreements the EU had negotiated abroad as well as favorable access to the common market. and they painted the real economic alienation of the disrupted class as the result of the machinations of foreigners and not as the failings of the state and the inevitable byproduct of postindustrial economies acceding to the realities of the service and information age.

on the continental side Brexit necessitates an interesting cost-benefit analysis for EU leadership as they must decide if it is in their interest to punish Britain with less favorable trade arrangements (and thereby punish themselves as trade is by nature reciprocal) in order to discourage other member states from withdrawing, or whether to maintain the status quo by treating Britain with kid gloves as they always have. as to internal reform, this event should and ought cause internal EU deliberations with the understanding that they must either become a loosely affiliated trade bloc and stop seeking to fulfill functions traditionally performed by national governments, or increase transparency and give European citizens greater franchise within the Union, most pertinently by making the chief executive of the EU (President of the European Commission) a directly elected position, thereby establishing the EU with greater democratic legitimacy.

the most ironic outcome would be the reassumption of the status quo with Britain negotiating continued access to the common market and ensuring the continuation of Euro-based securities being traded in London in exchange for Britain continuing to adhere to EU regulations and the free movement of labor that so riled nativist passions. if that does not come to pass the UK will be facing not only diminished prospects for the present financial cycle but a structural diminishment of their economy for years to come. we'll see, Britain has two years to negotiate once they formally declare an intent to leave and the pressing decision for them to make is who is going to do the negotiating with Cameron saying fuck this noise.

a final thought for the Celts. as mentioned Sinn Féin stated they would be seeking reunification with Ireland as a result of Brexit, likely a fairy-tale given the deep religious and ethnic lines that continue to scar Northern Ireland, but it at least provides a modicum of hope that the path to the end of the centuries-old schism engendered by English imperialism is observable and the reunification of the Irish people may be affected in our lifetime.

more pertinently the Scots, those poor silly Scots. they strike me as the biggest victims of this affair as during the 2014 independence referendum the Scots were constantly lectured that they were economically dependent on England and that seceding because of popular economic discontent and nationalist sentiments would only breed more pain, that ceding some measure of national sovereignty to better pursue shared interests with other peoples was what responsible nation-states did in the modern era, and that were they to separate from the UK they would separate from the EU and be forced into a lengthy admission process. were i Scottish; rage, Mel Gibson-led rage at the rank betrayal of perfidious Albion.

alright to the three of who who made it this far your boy ag OUT

[Andalusian girls]

wait i lied, i've been reading a history of the Anglo-Angevin Plantagenet dynasty which while primarily serving as a vehicle to illuminate my erudition also had a passage that struck me as germane to the present discourse. it details the Peasants' Revolt against Richard II, without ado further, Dan Jones;

There was a real sense that a whole corrupt political class was oppressing ordinary Englishmen. Serfdom was dying out as an institution in the late fourteenth century, but it seemed to many of those who rebelled in 1381 that it was giving way to a new and equally oppressive system, by which lawyers and justices kept the rural poor in just as deep a misery as they had suffered when they were bonded to the land.

Poll taxes that hit the poor hardest; labor legislation that prevented them from earning a reasonable wage; the hideous fear of plague; a miserably failing war… this was all sufficient to kindle a rebellion that shook England to its foundations.

After the fall of the Tower, London descended into chaos. On Cheapside, where just a few years ago the street had run with wine, now a wooden chopping block was set up. In St.-Martin’s-in-the-Vintry, the bodies of more than one hundred Flemish traders were piled lifeless in the streets. They had been dragged from sanctuary in a church and murdered by a mob whose idle hatred of foreigners was stirred by the perception that the Flemings received special privileges from the government.

keeping English traditions alive

[Zetanio]

tl;dr

[thetruepandagod]

tl;dr

People were mad, promises were made, shit's varying degrees of fucked depending on how vindictive the EU is, Ireland might do what the koreans never could and at some point we find some flemish to hang.

[Zetanio]

Yep. That all makes sense.

[Galkaeater]

a final thought for the Celts. as mentioned Sinn Féin stated they would be seeking reunification with Ireland as a result of Brexit, likely a fairy-tale given the deep religious and ethnic lines that continue to scar Northern Ireland, but it at least provides a modicum of hope that the path to the end of the centuries-old schism engendered by English imperialism is observable and the reunification of the Irish people may be affected in our lifetime.

more pertinently the Scots, those poor silly Scots. they strike me as the biggest victims of this affair as during the 2014 independence referendum the Scots were constantly lectured that they were economically dependent on England and that seceding because of popular economic discontent and nationalist sentiments would only breed more pain, that ceding some measure of national sovereignty to better pursue shared interests with other peoples was what responsible nation-states did in the modern era, and that were they to separate from the UK they would separate from the EU and be forced into a lengthy admission process. were i Scottish; rage, Mel Gibson-led rage at the rank betrayal of perfidious Albion.

Sounds like england is doing scotland (and ireland too) a favour by giving them a second chance.

[Aleth]

Social media is like this right now over the exit:

http://i.imgur.com/P8NJk2v.gif

The only other thing that would cause this level of baby-rage right now would be an episode of Game of Thrones where everybody's top three favourite characters died.

[kuronosan]

What's even more interesting the reversion of demographics. Most younger people wanted to stay and most older wanted to leave.

My family was split down the middle.

[Galkaeater]

also most younger people didn't vote while most older people did

[Krandor]

Yeah despite being overwhelmingly in favor of Remain only like 36% of the 18-24 crowd voted.

Much like with Bernie's campaign, UK learning that retweets and likes =/= votes.

[kuronosan]

Well hopefully WE don't regret it the way they have.

[Blubbartron]

Something I haven't seen mentioned regarding the age of people who voted one way or another is that the EU isn't that old. The EU as we know it isn't even 30 years old. its predecessor, much smaller in scale, is only about 60 years old. These old folks voting to leave likely were old enough to remember life before the EU. They could have personally compared their lives now to life before the EU for themselves and their neighbors, and decided that things aren't better economically. Young people have only ever known life in the EU. Their choice was between the status quo they know and the unknown, and people naturally fear the unknown. From this perspective, it's unsurprising the vote correlated with age in this way.