Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[Jkaen]

I voted leave. Most important vote in a generation. Went campaigning for it and everything, spent hours and hours pounding the streets to make sure that we left the EU. Not all of us are the great unwashed and old the media would have you believe! I think I am relatively young and well off :P

The well off bit is no surprise.

Voting leave was the greatest act of political self-harm that the UK has ever committed.

I voted remain, but I think this is a bit over the top, I disagree with the way the country has gone, but if you read REM's post there are sensible reasons for heading that way if you believe the real possibility of the EU getting bigger otherwise

[Jkaen]

Focusing on the racism bit just allows them to play the misunderstood victim card and avoid the fact that they've won a referendum based on falsehoods and a flagrant disregard for expertise.

This is very true, but that doesn't mean that the racism bit should be ignored or dismissed. I, as a liberal, left-wing, supporter of a federal Europe, would be happy to have a rational, reasonable, discussion about immigration and the effects of the EU's freedom of movement with a leave supporter; I just hope that then we would be able to have a rational, reasonable discussion about racism afterwards.

Pretending that racism doesn't exist is just as bad as crying racism every time someone wants to talk about immigration.

I think this move doesnt stop immigration, but lets us tailor it, instead of taking 1.5 million people we want and 1.5 million we have to take (or whatever the exact numbers are) we are now able to take 3 million we want

[Mr. Cairo]

Focusing on the racism bit just allows them to play the misunderstood victim card and avoid the fact that they've won a referendum based on falsehoods and a flagrant disregard for expertise.

This is very true, but that doesn't mean that the racism bit should be ignored or dismissed. I, as a liberal, left-wing, supporter of a federal Europe, would be happy to have a rational, reasonable, discussion about immigration and the effects of the EU's freedom of movement with a leave supporter; I just hope that then we would be able to have a rational, reasonable discussion about racism afterwards.

Pretending that racism doesn't exist is just as bad as crying racism every time someone wants to talk about immigration.

I think this move doesnt stop immigration, but lets us tailor it, instead of taking 1.5 million people we want and 1.5 million we have to take (or whatever the exact numbers are) we are now able to take 3 million we want

In theory yes, and in fact, that is how many countries around the world deal with immigration (including the country of my birth: Canada). But that is not what will come about from leaving the EU. Whoever ends up PM will undoubtedly try and keep the UK in the single market, which will mean keeping free movement of peoples. Just like Norway and Switzerland. I don't know what the actual solution is, but I am quite confident that leaving the EU is not it.

[Old Harry]

I feel that this vote will allow Europe to go the way it needs to without a partner that kinda doesn't want to be there, kicking, screaming and preventing the change needed. The EU needs to drastically change to survive, and I don't think it is capable of this currently.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, but totally disagree with the rest of your points. I really hope you're right though.

Btw pretty much every key reason given for Brexit has been proven to be inaccurate or just an outright lie...

I think it's easy to fixate on the bad arguments that your political opponents are making while dismissing the ones your own side makes. I've mostly given up on using the presence of bad arguments to determine if a political position is bad, because they're just everywhere. What matters IMO are the strongest arguments from each side.

Both sides had some truly awful arguments (Osborne's budget forecast - which served to undermine the forecasts of proper economists - and Cameron's WW3 being low points of remain) - it's as if fear is the only game in politics and lying bears no penalty at all. Which is even more depressing than the referendum result.

[Commodore]

Buy rhetoric and sell dialectic; wiser investment advice than even shorting the pound.

[scooter]

it's as if fear is the only game in politics and lying bears no penalty at all. Which is even more depressing than the referendum result.

This is what bothers me about all this because it's happening in parallel here in the US. People do irrational things when they make decisions based on fear, and that's been on a steady rise for awhile now.

It would be one thing if this Brexit vote was about a rational debate, but it seems pretty clear that it never was. The folks who are upset that it derailed into an emotional/fear-based debate are in the minority. If they weren't, it wouldn't have happened! So sure, a rational debate about it can happen in a place like this thread, but the reality is that this type of debate is just a footnote to what really was an emotional argument over immigration.

Oh don't get me wrong, I am not advocating a free pass on the racism, it just sucks all the oxygen out of every debate with Leavers because they take great offense at it. It is a stain on our national discourse now.

This is nothing new - we run into this issue in the US when talking to Trump supporters.

The tricky part about this is that it's difficult to disentangle the two sometimes. Yes, there were LOTS of people who voted "leave" on Brexit who aren't racist jerks, but should it not be concerning that a great number of people who voted leave are doing things like this: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/hom...04191.html

Or take the US for example. I know a couple people who support Trump who are not racist monsters, but should it not be concerning that white supremacist, anti-semitic, and Islamophobic groups are supporting him en masse? What about the fact that he kicked off his campaign by characterizing a people group as "rapists and murderers" and has since then said about a half-dozen things worse than that? At what point does a supporter of a person who does that get also characterized as being pretty racist for tacitly approving of these actions by aligning themselves with people who do them? Supporting someone like him is empowering fringe hate groups, full stop. That needs to be discussed in some way.

I'm not really sure what the answer is. Obviously it's lousy to see rational discussions drowned out by emotionally-charged accusations of racism, but the type of downright violent racism that has occurred seems so bad that addressing it is a pretty urgent issue. When stuff like this has gone unchecked in the past, it's had horrifying results. I don't think it's inappropriate to be more concerned about that than trade deals.

[darrelljs]

Its impossible to support a candidate that only has admirable supporters.

Darrell

[scooter]

Its impossible to support a candidate that only has admirable supporters.

Darrell

We're pretty clearly not talking about a normal level of unadmirable supporters. Whatever you thought about recent US presidents, none of them had violence against minorities at their campaign rallies and encouraged it. A large faction actively validating the worst of society is different.

[Mardoc]

Scooter, you're not going to like to hear this: At this point, I'm in full-blown 'boy who cried wolf' mode when it comes to accusations of racism. It seems that almost every single one translates into 'shut up!' rather than anything to do with actual bigotry. True, there's probably the occasional real case that I miss, but life's too short to figure out who's got an actual case vs. who just wants attention.

If I don't agree with J. Random Commenter's policy preference, and J. Random believes that his policy affects minorities, or was proposed by a minority, or is supported by minorities...then J. feels comfortable calling me a racist. Since you can find a connection like that for every policy there is, the accusation gets thrown around a thousand times for every time it was warranted.

Heck, anymore you will be called a racist for suggesting that the government should be prohibited from making decisions based on race. When you're a racist for believing in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream...the word has no meaning anymore.

On your immediate point:

should it not be concerning that white supremacist, anti-semitic, and Islamophobic groups are supporting him en masse

I don't honestly believe there exists an 'en masse' of people with those beliefs. There's probably like three people who honestly believe in racial theories, and they get the focus. Like how the Westboro Baptist Church turns out to be one family who can always get on camera, cropped in such a way as to imply a crowd.

[pindicator]

I don't honestly believe there exists an 'en masse' of people with those beliefs. There's probably like three people who honestly believe in racial theories, and they get the focus. Like how the Westboro Baptist Church turns out to be one family who can always get on camera, cropped in such a way as to imply a crowd.

I have relatives who argue the same and say they're not racist but then will throw around terms like "n****r rich" to describe how they blew through a paycheck.

Most people don't intentionally harbor the idea "I hate this kind of group of people". Instead it's a lot more associative bias, and letting those biases dictate how they interpret the world. Attempting to analyze that has led to this kind of backlash, which makes sense because nobody wants to think of themselves as racist.

(And I'd go on to argue that labeling people as racist who display these associative biases without trying to help them understand how it affects others and how to change the behavior is just as detrimental because all it does is turn the conversation into a giant name calling episode where everyone ends up defensive and entrenched into an "us vs them" situation, but that's veering the conversation a ways off topic.)