Yes! America has always had the bizarre privilege of being super far away. So much this. Honestly one of my biggest realizations / takeaways while living abroad. I didn't realize how "American" my perspective was before I started reading more international news, and it has startled me a bit. What I'm seeing here re: Brexit is a reaction that I didn't really anticipate, it's more of a "Yeah they're shooting themselves in the foot but that's their problem" kind of attitude, accompanied by a question of concern for non-British EU citizens who have created a life for themselves in the UK and suddenly have a major citizenship question on the horizon. Of course there is interest in exactly what's going down, but the way it's being presented (and discussed between humans) isn't what I anticipated.Europe has always been "over there" to the Americans and the "Phoney War" to the UK while to the French it's the Maginot Line
you step outside of the funhouse for one minute and empires look like empires
"Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband." - HL Mencken People who tend to read essays on economics believe that "equality" can be best created by raising up the poor. They themselves are rarely poor and if they can make things a little bit better for others without affecting their own lives, they win. Everything is better for everyone. This is the core of liberalism. People whose lives are shit believe that "equality" means everyone is equal. If their lives are shit the least they can do is make those rich fucks have shit lives, too. Yeah, things might get a little worse for them but it'll get a lot worse for those pricks with their cars in garages, their kids in college and their retirement in a fund, not a fantasy. This is the core of populism. Populists rarely consider that the natural order is hierarchal and whenever you break a structure you provide opportunity for people with exposure to ratchet up their holdings outside the normal constraint of law and order. And liberals are terrible at applying equal gains across all demographics. Thus the cycle of history.