Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
This is also a continuation of previous Sandbox threads (1) and (2) that have fallen victim to the dreaded page bug.
The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
Those states and these two guys. If Clinton gets indicted as she so richly deserves and Trump continues to keep talking, they’ve got a chance.
I would dispute the notion that any third party has a chance. I think there’s a significant chance that Hillary will not be the candidate in November, but no chance at all that she will be indicted.
I’m rather uninterested in principles, and unpersuaded by political arguments of all stripes. I think politics is best thought of as Darwinian or Adam Smithian. I don’t think anyone is in control or can be in control (although there are occasional aberrations attributable to individuals.) I’m afraid I find short term history uninteresting, except on the rare occasions when it threatens me personally, or my family.
Everything I want to say is being said by people having greater writing skills than I have and a larger audience than I have. (The same is true of things I abhor and things I wish were not said.) I try to be nice to my family and to my cat.
As long as they are excluded from the presidential debates, despite being on the ballot in all 50 states, you are probably correct that they don’t have a chance.
I’d be willing to make an even money bet that the FBI recommends indictment. I used to have a security clearance and I would have been fired and prosecuted for far less than what Clinton has done with classified material. Whether Obama’s AG chooses to actually indict is a separate issue.
Cats are libertarians.
Glen Davidson
I repaired crypto devices in the Army and would still be in prison If I had set up an unsecure communication link in a time when people were actively shooting at Americans. I take much of the rumors of Russian hacking as possible bullshit, but it seems that someone did hack her emails.
I still think there will be no indictment and no recommendation for indictment. Make of that what you will. There’s a chance there will be political consequences, however. Or not.
Cats are assholes. They do purr, however.
And they do the cute and the weird.
Glen Davidson
Thanks for the link Patrick. Reminds me of the British Liberals. They were the voice of reason and conscience until they (or rather their Lib Dem descendants) gained power in alliance with the Conservatives under Cameron. As they say, power corrupts.
Reading ” The Daily Beast” from your link I found a quite rational article about Brexit and this quote:
I’m cross with my daughter who emailed me a couple of days before the vote to ask if it was too late to register a postal vote!
A bit pompous but:
Thanks for the link Patrick. Reminds me of the British Liberals. They were the voice of reason and conscience until they (or rather their Lib Dem descendants) gained power (after a hundred years in the political wilderness) in alliance with the Conservatives under Cameron. As they say, power corrupts.
Reading ” The Daily Beast” from your link I found a quite rational article about Brexit and this quote:
I’m cross with my daughter who emailed me a couple of days before the vote to ask if it was too late to register a postal vote!
A bit pompous but:
As a former cypherpunk, I’d be very interested in any stories that won’t get you incarcerated.
I was trained to repair stuff. In reality what broke were the old mechanical teletype machines, which needed constant adjustment.
Some things have changed since the old days. Your $79 dollar phone has better encryption technology.
Some things remain the same. You break encryption not with supercomputers and wizards, but by stealing the keys. Something that is laughably easy if you have people mixing personal and governmental email.
In Silcon Valley, it’s a post-it note.
I the rest of the world, it’s a trojan app. I’ve seen it happen over and over to the same people. Click here to view something cool. Those people don’t have access to computers where I work, not any more.
It’s really difficult to break into a computer system that whitelists email senders and websites. It’s incredibly easy to compromise systems that allow users to browse at will or receive email from unknown senders.
Alan Fox,
A commentator in the Guardian likened this kind of scenario to the indecision of a dog upon actually catching the car it’s been barking after. 🙂
Alan, quoting John Avlon:
Allan:
There should have been an option for people to change their votes within 48 hours if they didn’t like the consequences. 🙂
If there were a do-over referendum today, I wonder if Leave would still win.
Let’s try it again without the rain. Then with people saying different things in the media. And one without the financial sector getting it so wrong,
No, I think you probably have to go with one vote per action. Buyer’s remorse just goes with the territory.
Glen Davidson
Glen:
Hence the smiley at the end of my sentence.
Oh, for sure.
Still, it’s always interesting to think of how much chance goes into historic events, like the weather conceivably (not for sure, of course) making the difference.
Glen Davidson
Of course, if there were a sea change in public sentiment, there would presumably be two main courses open to overturn it. I would think they could basically re-run the vote to nullify the first one.
Otherwise, well, it’s actually non-binding. The Greeks had a similar non-binding popular vote that decided against accepting a bail-out package–then the government went and accepted it anyway. It doesn’t look like the UK is going to react similarly, which I think is a good thing (because democracy), unless, that is, there were some serious change in public sentiment toward remaining in, or a war or something hideous like that.
For now, well, will of the people, for good or ill.
Glen Davidson
Some U.S. states have provisions for recall elections for various offiicials, I think. Pretty messy business, though
The Leav-ers’ answer to every challenge throughout the campaign has been “Meh. Be fine”. And this continues. Pounds plunges to 30 year low? Meh. It’ll recover. Pricier petrol? Meh, it goes up mostly anyway. Expensive imports? But look at the exports! Scotland gone? Shrug. One does feel one has been dragged into a massive political experiment by people without clear sight of the risks. But hey, they’ve ‘got their country back’. Fuck knows what they plan to do with it.
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world”
— George Washington
“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
— Thomas Jefferson
The original Brexiters.
Just so you know, Patrick, Britain actually had representation with the EU.
Patrick,
Which raises the question, what counts as “foreign”? Georgia was pretty foreign to New Hampshire, but they entered into a permanent alliance that Washington did not seek to dissolve.
Moral progress largely depends on expanding the circle of empathy, welcoming more of Them into the circle of Us. Why should it not be so in politics as well as ethics, with the familiar subsuming more and more of what used to be considered foreign?
Byers talks Brexit:
keiths,
Whaaa? Only London in that list has a significant ‘foreign influence’ – unless one regards Scots Irish and Welsh as foreign! Noteworthy that my own ward, South Lakes, was clear for Remain, pretty much alone in the North West and in the ‘aging population’ demographic. My bet is a good campaign by the sitting MP, a popular member of an unpopular party.
@ Allan Miller and any other Brits affected by the referendum,
Don’t know if it will have any effect but this is gaining momentum:
A petition to parliament
My wife and I have signed it and emailed everyone in our address book.
Bravo. Nice post.
Alan Fox,
Cheers Alan, this has popped up on Facebook too. Unfortunately, would have had more force if the ‘live’ period hadn’t straddled the vote itself!
I fear, for better or ill, we are on the way out, for a mishmash of pretty spurious, soundbite reasons. Taking The Country Back, Making Britain Great Again, One In The Eye for the bureaucratic gravy train, Too Many Immigrants … When the topic comes up, I am trying and failing to get people to articulate their reasons for leaving and draw a clear causal link between leaving and their desired result. They can do the first easily enough, not the second.
I asked one what his first extra-EU act would be and he said “nationalise the railways”! Unfortunately, I’d constructed an improbable scenario by combining Brexit with putting someone in charge who was an old-school socialist!
One friend has just been complaining about ‘unelected EU officials’ – a pernicious myth in itself. But even if true, I asked how we could change that if outside, and he said “I have no truck with any politicians really”. So, give him a vote and he’ll lash out at the nearest one with it!
Same stupid shit here. Half the country will vote for Trump for “reasons” just like those. They think they’re channeling Thomas Jefferson or something.
The two were far less foreign than the countries of Europe. I lived for some time in both Luxembourg and England, and have also worked in Belgium, Germany, and France. The cultures of those countries are very distinct, and not just because of the different languages. They have many more hundreds of years of history than the U.S.
That’s exactly why I like the Thomas Jefferson quote:
“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
By all means encourage the growth of the “circle of Us”. Free trade and free travel build relationships and prevent conflict. That doesn’t require an ever growing, distant bureaucracy micromanaging things like whether or not one country can sell unpasteurized cheese.
The overwhelming power and intrusion of the U.S. federal government over what were originally relatively independent states should be a warning to anyone who supports a stronger centralized European government.
Patrick,
That’s the kind of nonsense I was talking about, Allan. Let’s return to the Articles of Confederation! That will make America great again!
So long as your country and mine have to deal with that kind of “thinking,” we’re in trouble.
Patrick,
Foreignness is a continuum. What is the threshold of foreignness beyond which “permanent alliances” no longer make sense, and why?
As a point of information, unpasteurized cheese is freely available for sale in France.
As you note, it’s a continuum. My personal view is that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level of a political organization, starting with the individual. Permanent alliances stop making sense at some point when the individuals involved are more negatively impacted than positively impacted by the association.
My friends in Europe, and particularly the UK, on the remain side are primarily concerned about their ability to work freely in other countries and on the economic impact of leaving. Those on the leave side are concerned about the EU bureaucracy and the potential influx of immigrants from Syria. All those concerns seem to me to be valid. They can all be resolved without the need for a United States of Europe.
I’m supportive of Londependance.
Sure, I just picked that as one of the active bones of contention when I was last overseas. The fact remains that the EU has increased the amount of regulation even to the point of controlling what produce can be sold. That’s simply unnecessary authoritarianism. It’s not as if the member countries didn’t already have such rules in place, more appropriate to their citizens and cultures.
The EU wouldn’t be resented if it focused on free trade and freedom to live and work in all member countries. It is its growing power and intrusion into the sovereignty of those members and the lives of individuals that is being resisted.
I find that an interesting idea. I’ve long thought that New York City and Los Angeles are sufficiently large and different from the states in which they are located that it would make sense for them to separate politically.
Countries get the EU they vote for. Now citizens of GB will lose their vote. Brilliant. This move will not lead to freer trade, which seems to be your only consideration. Quite the contrary. As you now concede it will also not improve the cheese situation, and has also vastly decreased the values of millions of retiree pensions and the buying power of millions of Brits in a single day, we’ll wait for you to come up with some actual benefit. Maybe something that’s not on the back cover of some Rand novel?
Patrick,
Why not address contentious issues, like the Great Cheese Question, within the context of the EU, rather than bailing out altogether?
Think Scotland, Wales, and devolution.
Don’t forget Gibraltar!
I suspect that something very like that will be the ultimate result. The UK isn’t going to stop trading with Europe, nor vice versa. Optimistically, I see this as a statement about the overreach of the EU authoritarians which will hopefully bring about change. Pessimistically, I see people like Juncker reacting by trying to punish Britain and cutting off his nose to spite his face.
The bottom line, for me, is that large governmental organizations are a demonstrable threat to individual liberty. I’m glad to see some modest movement in the opposite direction.
Frankly, the real issue for Europe in the next decade isn’t going to be Brexit but the Islamization of those countries that are taking in large numbers of Muslim immigrants. England and Germany can sort out their differences. There’s no compromise with those who want Sharia.
Cristian Scientists with appendicitis. Everyone loves democracy until it does something they disagree with.
I find the independence movement rather ironic. Isn’t that what just happened?
At what level must a decision make everyone happy?
Rich,
Which voted 96% for Remain, and only 4% for Leave, incidentally.
A interesting soundbite from the EU post Brexit:
Merkel also said that the “Christian framework is the basis of what we do”.
I suspect the EU will collapse in a decade, or at least be radically different. Eurasian union is possible.
Patrick,
I certainly agree that governments can overreach, but why throw the baby out with the bathwater?
4% = 823:
Where’s the baby? What value do the EU bureaucrats provide that can’t be achieved through treaties between the member states without the extra layer of government?
I find the response from the Remain supporters quite telling. Many seem to be blaming the older, more rural population not simply for having a different opinion but for being uneducated. This comment that’s going around Twitter made me smile: