6907

Why?

Why not?

What prevents them from voting again?

Is it undemocratic to change one’s mind?

6908

So if a duly elected U.K. government shitcans Brexit after all, that will be fine sovereignious democratitude with you because it’s your government? Color me dubious.

6909

No, it’s not.

Because Russia is an authoritarian dictatorship who seeks to destroy the West.

And that’s why Russia wants the UK to leave the EU.

And you are a traitor, and a Russian stooge.

6910

Because Russia is an authoritarian dictatorship who seeks to destroy the West.

No, you don’t really understand them, do you.

The Soviet Union was a revolutionary power, and they believed they had an obligation to spread the revolution all across the globe. They also believed this was the only way to survive. If Russia was the only communist power, it would die a quick death. Cut apart by its enemies.

The vitality and energy that drove that, I can’t think of other words for it, faded over the decades. By the late eighties the Soviet Union was increasingly poor, and increasingly aware of what little it’s largess had purchased.

I studied under an ex Soviet Diplomat once, his first foreign station was in Lithuania, he gave a small talk in his first weeks there to a local audience. He was young and fresh out of the Diplomatic Academy. He didn’t say it, but he must have been a believer, he was naive at least.

His spoke about the successes of the Soviet Union, and the benefits that Lithuania had enjoyed as part of the Soviet Union.

His audience sat there in stony silence.

They did not feel they had benefited.

It was a small moment, but it was the beginning of a realization.

By the end of the eighties the Soviets had largely come to the same realization.

They had exported the Revolution, and they had preserved it, at great expense, and through coercive means. But what had they built, other than lingering resentment? And if that was true, what was the point?

Glasnost led to internal turmoil, for the first time in decades, citizens of the republics felt free to state their opinions, and act on them. And they wanted independence.

In some ways it was little different from 56, it could have gone that way. The Soviets could have sent in the tanks, they didn’t though, because they no longer believed it was worth it. When faced with that decision, to send in the tanks, Gorbachev said no.

Modern Russia is not Soviet Russia. Their foreign policy is no idealistic. It’s about ruthless self interest. And they do an unusual job of that. They have good relations with Israel, Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia for example. That’s a remarkable feat. There is one commonality though, that sense of fatigue lingers, and there is a powerful feeling that it simply wasn’t worth it. Especially given the real poverty in Russia. That’s the enduring lesson for Moscow.

So, no, it isn’t about destroying the west, they just don’t think that way, they haven’t in a long time. It’s not about Kruschevs line, we will bury you, which is misunderstood, he meant, we will be there when you die, to bury you. The Soviet Union was unable to break the west, and it was the west who was there to bury communism. It’s about surviving now, and finding ways to prosper. To ameliorate the poverty and the misery, and to build a better future, in whatever way they can.

The enemy you imagine doesn’t exist anymore. It hasn’t in decades.

The great ideological battle is over, we won.

6911

Is it undemocratic to change one’s mind?

If there’s been a fundamental change in circumstances, if Brexit supporters changed their minds in great numbers, then it would of course be foolish to continue.

But I don’t think that’s what’s happened. There hasn’t been a great shift in either direction.

Parliament, a previous Parliament at least, put this issue to the voters, they expected one outcome, but got another, and now they’re doing everything in their power to undo the people’s vote.

That’s not Democratic.

And voting until the people vote the right way?

I am skeptical of pure Democracy, tyranny of the majority is a real danger, and recipe for turmoil, and some decision should require supermajorities.

But the British put this to the people, they made an implicit promise, and they must now follow through, or defy the people. There’s a price to pay if they choose to defy them.

6912

He’s a different sort of bad actor to me. Just as bad, but he’s not aligned with the Western fascists.

6913

Now it’s a battle against state level entrenched corruption and vicious thug like authoritarianism, and this is what pits Russia against the west and why Russia is so keen to boost Trump, since he is the most likely to turn America into another Russia; i.e. a large scale criminal enterprise.

6914

Capitalism, sure, for the moment. Democracy TBD…

6915

If only there was some way to find out for sure. You know, some kind of way of quantifying the opinion of the nation, several years down the line with the withdrawal agreement now in black and white, to double check that there is still popular support before we make what even Leave supporters agree will be a massive, economically harmful, and, at least in the short-term, irreversible step.

6916

To be clear, whatever the EU’s missteps with regards to Greece, Greece was going to get austerity either way. It had a massive deficit that it couldn’t finance. Even if it left the euro, a) it had a load of foreign law debt it couldn’t redenominate, and b) it wouldn’t have been able to raise the debt it needed locally, at least not without massive inflation.

6917

I don’t want to relitigate Greece, but even at the time people recognized that the approach could have been less harmful to the population. After all, neither the people who borrowed money while hiding their debts nor the people who loaned money they could foresee not getting back were the Greek population.

6918

I think it’s a question of whether the choice was in fact legitimate, in the sense of being binding. There is a fine line to walk between having too many restrictions on what a representative body can do, and too few. I mean, could the US Congress, say, pass a law that called for a referendum on, I dunno, abortion? Sure. Would that referendum mean anything? That’s a different story. Could they pass a law saying that the results of a referendum would become law, thus bypassing in effect the Constitutional law-making structure? The US is of course different from the UK, in that our written Constitution has some pretty specific requirements and prohibitions.

I guess it comes down to how much power you want to give to an elected body. Do you want them to be able to make their own rules, or perform within a set of given rules? And in the case of the UK, I have no idea how the referendum fit into their system. If it folks are arguing, though, that having promised the people that they would honor the referendum’s outcome and implement what it asked for, the Parliament was obliged to do so, I am not convinced. There is a cost to saying “nah, you guys are childish, that’s not gonna happen.” There is also a cost to saying “well, this is the dumbest thing ever, but you want it, you get it.”

6919

Sure, there were ways it could have been done better and in particular the forecasting was ridiculously optimistic about the impact spending cuts would have on growth, but my point was simply that even if the EU had done nothing and Greece had crashed out, there would have been austerity, quite possibly worse austerity when the effect of inflation on household cashflow is taken into account.

That said, I’d dispute the idea that the Greek population had nothing to do with the situation - they definitely weren’t the worst actors, but the rampant tax evasion wasn’t just a corporate/elite thing, and there were plenty of Greeks borrowing mortgages beyond their means (who, by the way, are now being shielded from foreclosure).

6920

Russia’s kleptocratic authoritarians perceive their self interest to be linked to erosion of the West and the values that hold it together. It makes it easier for them to rob their own people, and makes it less likely that western nations will form an alliance to stop Russia from expanding its influence across the globe. A weak western alliance means that Russia can do things like annex parts of its neighbors, or bomb the crap out of civilian populations to prop up its puppets, without fear of reprisal.

And this, ultimately, is what you need to consider, Draxen.

Incendiary Lemon regurgitates Russian propaganda. You need to wonder why he and the Russians want the UK to bail on the EU. How is that going to help Russia? Because they aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

They’re doing it because it weakens the UK, the EU, and the West as a whole.

6921

lol Labours GE campaign moves on from “Don’t mention Brexit” to “Don’t mention Corbyn”.

As for IL. Whatever. He’s here to disrupt the thread in bad faith. What ever is bad for the UK and US is good for him. For some reason. Easier to ignore than read whatever The Official Line on Brexit is for him and his ilk.

Edit: and the Eat The Rich campaign an on-trend turn, banning private planes

Of course, the more pragmatic and sensible in Labour formerly in Labour would point out things like “mass redundancies in UKs private aviation industry” but alas we’re gone now. My approach would be to take 450,000 cars off the road by increasing employment in public transport sector but that doesnt involve telling the instagram generation not to be aspirational Eating the Rich does it.

Anyway another figure to add to the mass redundancies in the private education as private schools are banned and high end tourism, luxury goods and hospitality industries as rich people are banned and whatever other lunacy these idiots have planned to oppose Johnson and the Tories and their “Exterminate Poor People” campaign. Which isnt going brilliantly either tbh

6922

There were alternatives other than the EU does nothing and Greece crashes out and the EU forces Greece to live with austerity budgets.

If you knew Greeks routinely evaded taxes, and I knew Greeks routinely evaded taxes, why didn’t the smart money people loaning they Greek government money know that? Of course they did, but they also knew that when the shit came done, they would be first in line for bailouts.

6923

There were no alternatives that did not involve some degree of austerity, though. Less than actually happened, sure. But, and this is the crucial point, without the EU, the austerity most likely wouldn’t have been less. A better EU response would have ameliorated it, but that doesn’t make it an argument for leaving the EU, as many (especially Lexiters), do.

6924

I’m not saying without the EU. I’m saying that if the EU could have made it better and instead made it worse, then the EU made it worse. It’s a fair criticism. Does it mean one should leave the EU? Of course not.

6925

But they didn’t make it worse than not doing anything. They made it worse than a better response would have. Absolutely valid to criticise them for that. But to go from there to “Greece would have been better off without the EU intervention” is, IMO, wrong.

6926

What was the “better” thing that the EU should have done for Greece?