On Brexit
I'm beginning to think that We'll be worse off is not a good argument against Brexit. Because many Brexiteers hark back to the austerity years of the 1950s as a golden age. They think we are resourceful people who have had our national vigour sapped by dark-skinned idlers.I think you can much more readily situate Rees-Mogg in the decaying greatness of Britain of 1950 than you ever could in Victorian Britain. The Victorians *were* vigorous. They expanded the frontiers of capitalism alongside the margins of science and thought. The 1950s was a time of stifling intellectual torpor, when even Churchill made sense.
The sad thing is that the clash is not between those who have privilege and those who don't, at least not at the street level. It's between those who think that they *did have* privilege and those who think they *oughtn't to have had*. While the truth remains that they never did, whatever they think. They just had the comfort of knowing that some were even worse off than they were. So 1950s white suburban man had a shit job and his life was materially poor but at least he had a female slave and he was English, for which read "white". It was worse to be dark, as the newly independent third world struggled to find its feet.
posted by Dr Zen @ 12:31 am
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