(06-24-2016, 09:49 AM)Drunken Scouser Wrote: The rights and wrongs of this to one side for a second, this is definitely the start of the 4T in the UK. The generations are perfectly aligned for it. By my judgement, the oldest UK Millennials are reaching their mid 20s, the oldest Xers their late 40s and the oldest Boomers their late 60s.

(06-24-2016, 08:45 AM)Bronco80 Wrote: Wow.  The 4T marches on...

OK, fellow S&H readers, what do we make of the generational breakdown here, if anything?

(06-24-2016, 01:45 PM)Odin Wrote: This stuff genuinely terrifies me, the world wars have shown that Europeans need to have their nationalist stupidity kept under control by the "Eurocrats" they despise or else we will have World War 3.

Ragnarök Wrote:After the long and gruesome war between God, Humans,
and Demons...
Scarred during the dangerous moments in battle, and avoiding total destruction altogether, the Humans, God and Demons entered a long truce

The 1000 years of fragile and forged peace...

In the land of Midgard, the existence of peace eventually led the humans to erase their memories of the scars and hardships of the wars in the past. Not remembering the faults of the past, culture was spreading throughout the land along with selfishness, corruption, and arrogance.

Then one day, strange occurrences started happening, breaking the balance that once existed in Midgard. There came a strange howl from the boundaries that divided the humans, God, and demons; creatures began attacking; increasing earthquakes and hail - and...
The mysterious legend of demons...
As the fragile peace began to fall apart, stories about the parts of Ymir, protecting the peace, began to spread among the adventurers. Forgetting the true nature of it, people set out to seek each of the pieces for their own selfishness, and the wealth that would come with it...

Eric the Green[/quote Wrote:  don't think I agree. TTIP confers many benefits. A trade deal between countries that are on the same level, is not bad. The TPP is bad because it lowers standards and wages for the nation at the higher level (the USA). Tariffs protect a nation from the harmful results of trading with nations at a different level. Europe and the USA have better standards and wages than Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.

Quote:Globalism is only wrong if it is controlled by a few big corporate powers.

Quote: Otherwise, it's just the fact of life today. Hiding from it is wrong.

Quote:Nations are basically just lines on a map. We already have a party that includes a USIP; it's called Republican under Donald Trump.

Quote: A unified Europe in which individual nations still have a lot of control over themselves is the goal here.

Quote:It prevents war and boosts the economy of a group of nations that lead the world socially and politically. The freedom of movement and commerce was cool; it was liberation from centuries of barriers.

Quote:On balance the EU is (or maybe I should say was?) more beneficial than it was oppressive by big banks and corporations.

Quote: I say mend it, don't end it. I hope Britain learns its lesson and applies for re-entry in a few years, if the union still exists by then. The economic community dating from 1957 probably still will. But by the time it re-applies, England could be shorn of its "united kingdom." The price of this "rebellion" by old geezers will be two broken unions.

Quote:The generational breakdown clearly shows that young people thought the union benefited them and was not "the establishment."

Quote:It was just like here in the USA; older folks are afraid and old-fashioned; deceived by the idea that their identity comes from their nationality or their race. Balderdash; it does not. But the angry old white folks won this election, because they turn out more to vote. Sounds familiar to me; very familiar. The old are keeping the young tied down to the past.

Quote:Scotland may as well grab a tube of lube if they want to join the EU. Their economy will get strip mined just like a whole lot of other "lesser regions".

Quote:Greece needs to reform itself. It can't blame Germany for imposing austerity; Germany has limits on what it can give to the other nations in trouble because of the recession CAUSED BY Republicans and neo-liberal Democrats in the USA.

Quote:Things are going so badly now, maybe I'll just do what Pete and Roger recommend: "take a glass of that light brown ale, and a purple pill."

Lyrics Wrote:Money makes me crazy, money makes me insane
Diamonds, silver, gold, and precious steel
I want it all, it's mine to claim
I hold my hands out, I take it all

I want a fistful, fistful of diamonds
I live for the glory and fame
I want a fistful, fistful of diamonds
The millions are calling my name

Fortune come here to me, it's power that rules the game
Seduction of silver and LAWLESS greed
I love it all, I damn the shame
The root of all evil can hear me call

I want a fistful, fistful of diamonds
I live for the glory and fame
I want a fistful, fistful of diamonds
The millions are calling my name

Solitaire, come cast a spell of magic
The smell of green I stack my dollars high
Intoxicating, my mind's wreaking havoc
A famous face, I get what you can't buy

I want a fistful, fistful of diamonds
I live for the glory and fame
I want a fistful, fistful of diamonds
The millions are calling my name

(06-24-2016, 12:04 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(06-24-2016, 11:30 AM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote:

(06-24-2016, 08:45 AM)Bronco80 Wrote: Wow.  The 4T marches on...

OK, fellow S&H readers, what do we make of the generational breakdown here, if anything?

Uh, what's the picture supposed to be?  I just see a square with white shapes in it.

Figures showing the breakdown of Brexit votes by age:

18-24 -- 25% favoring out
25-49 -- 44%
50-64 -- 56%
65+   -- 61%

Quote:Britain has Brexited. The consequences of Thursday’s vote are momentous. But it is even more important for what it represents: Today, we are entering a new political era—one in which popular support for the core institutions of liberal democracy can no longer be taken for granted.

The practical consequences of Britain’s departure from the European Union are terrifying. Millions of European citizens living in Britain woke up to the disorienting realization that they may soon lose the right to stay in a country they had made their home. The same goes for British citizens living in France, or Spain, or Germany. If politicians fail to ensure that some amount of freedom of movement between Britain and the rest of Europe is preserved, the disruption to the lives of ordinary people will be on a scale practically unprecedented in peacetime. But even if some reasonably humane solution is worked out, the emotional toll exacted by the uncertainty they face will be serious.

At the same time, Brexit will also speed up the continent’s centrifugal forces: England is turning inward. Scotland may well leave the United Kingdom before the decade is over. The uneasy peace in Northern Ireland is being put to a serious, and wholly unnecessary, test. In the coming years, copycat referenda on EU membership are likely to be held in countries at the European core, such as the Netherlands. There can no longer be any doubt that the European Union is in an existential crisis.

Europe’s weakness harms the West as a whole. As the continent lurches from crisis to crisis and sees the gradual rise of populist strongmen on its own shores, it is getting increasingly tempted to make nice with authoritarian leaders in Turkey, Russia, and China. It’s little wonder that, outside Britain, the only triumphant voices to be heard Friday morning are those of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin, and the propaganda outlets of ISIS.

These points alone would suffice to make the outcome of Thursday’s referendum the most significant vote in a generation. But its true importance is even bigger than that: The decision of the British electorate to leave the European Union constitutes the most significant rebellion of the citizens of an affluent liberal democracy against their political system since the end of World War II. It signals the beginning of an era in which we can no longer be assured that the citizens of countries from Sweden to the United States will reliably choose liberal democracy over far-right populism and xenophobia.

There are plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with the European Union as it is currently constituted. The EU leaves the most important decisions to an unelected council of the ministers of its member states, giving ordinary Europeans little control. And countries such as Greece are paying a massive—and seemingly indefinite—price for the faulty construction of the single currency zone. Though I strongly believe that the human and political consequences of the U.K.’s departure from the European Union made a “Leave” vote unconscionable, I have some sympathy for those who advocated Brexit on the basis of sovereignty or in the hope of building a more robust welfare state.

As the polls show, however, those were not the reasons that most supporters of Brexit had in mind. In fact, voters on both sides of the divide had virtually indistinguishable views on such questions as whether “capitalism” was good or bad. But Brexiters had starkly more negative views on issues such as “immigration,” “multiculturalism,” and “social liberalism.” The vote to leave the European Union was not a vote against Europe’s financial elites. It was a vote against civil rights, against ethnic minorities, against immigrants, and against refugees.

This also puts a rather more sinister cast on all the talk of sovereignty. Voters cared some about whether decisions will be taken in London or Brussels in the future. They cared much more about whether checks and balances would continue to stop the people’s righteous anger from expressing itself. What they really want is the freedom to make discriminatory laws against the immigrants and minorities whom the chief proponents of Brexit demonized throughout the campaign.

As my recent research shows, British voters are far from alone in turning against the limits on the popular will that constitute an important element of liberal democracy. Across most countries in North America and Western Europe, voters have grown deeply dissatisfied with the political class. For a rapidly growing number, this dissatisfaction with particular leaders has started to transform into an actual rejection of democratic institutions. Across North America and Western Europe, the number of citizens who say that it is important to live in a democracy is shrinking. At the same time, the number of citizens who are open to making their countries more authoritarian is rising.

This trend is especially striking in the United States. Two decades ago, 1 in 16 Americans believed that Army rule would be a good way to run the country. Today, it is 1 in 6. The picture is even bleaker among the young and affluent: Support for military rule in this group has increased nearly sixfold, from 6 percent to 35 percent.

Obviously, Brexit won’t lead to military rule. Nor is the Pentagon about to assume power in America. Opinion polls need to be interpreted carefully and with a healthy dose of skepticism. But when they show such a stark shift in opinion, it is safe to conclude that something big is going on. That big thing, I fear, is that the citizens of liberal democracies have grown so disenchanted with the status quo that they are willing to put their faith in populist strongmen and radical political experiments.

Two decades ago, far-right populists were electorally insignificant in most of North America and Western Europe. Then, people such as Jörg Haider in Austria, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Marine Le Pen in France celebrated a remarkable string of political successes, establishing their movements as a firm part of their political systems and making their countries less hospitable for immigrants and other minority groups. In countries such as the United States, France, or Sweden, they are now within striking distance of outright majorities. Thursday’s referendum proves that there is no magic firewall that is sure to stop them.

It is worth remembering that David Cameron only called this referendum because he, along with the vast majority of Britain’s political class, was convinced that Brexit would never happen. It is also worth remembering that, 24 hours ago, most polls seemed to point to a victory for the forces of stability.

This should serve as a stark warning to people who are confident that Donald Trump could never be elected president. If he manages to turn the election into a referendum on the status quo, he has every chance of winning—especially since all the evidence suggests that the citizens of liberal democracies have never held the status quo in as much contempt as they do now. If we blindly trust the polls that seem to foretell his defeat, we might be in for an even ruder awakening come November.

Quote:35% of well-off Millennials support a military dictatorship? WTF? That is absolutely terrifying.

(06-24-2016, 06:27 PM)Ragnarök_62 Wrote: uhhhh yeah.  Those trade agreements seal the deal.

Quote:I'd venture to say any ABC candidate qualifies in his/her own way.

Quote:Oh, but if any of those trade agreements passes, that goes down the drain. Did you manage to read that letter from Greece I posted?

Quote:Could be. However I'm more interested in how Rags gets even more feathers for his nest! I'm more interested in the dispersal of GMO's into Europe myself. Go Monsanto, baby.

Quote:Have you considered that perhaps the era of integration has ended and the era of dissolution has started.
Nothing in this universe is permanent.

Quote:(me) The generational breakdown clearly shows that young people thought the union benefited them and was not "the establishment."

(Rags) With age comes wisdom, man.

Quote:LOL! Rag's identity = US citizen.  From my experience at work, methinks the young are tied down to Ishits.

Quote:2. Pssst.  Eurocrats are the high priests of Neo-liberalism man.  The sooner Eric does a bit of research , the smarter he'll be.

Quote:TPP, TPIP =  LAWLESS greed.

(06-25-2016, 11:59 AM)Odin Wrote: We Have Entered a New Political Era, One in which popular support for the core institutions of liberal democracy can no longer be taken for granted.

Quote:Britain has Brexited. The consequences of Thursday’s vote are momentous. But it is even more important for what it represents: Today, we are entering a new political era—one in which popular support for the core institutions of liberal democracy can no longer be taken for granted.

The practical consequences of Britain’s departure from the European Union are terrifying. Millions of European citizens living in Britain woke up to the disorienting realization that they may soon lose the right to stay in a country they had made their home. The same goes for British citizens living in France, or Spain, or Germany. If politicians fail to ensure that some amount of freedom of movement between Britain and the rest of Europe is preserved, the disruption to the lives of ordinary people will be on a scale practically unprecedented in peacetime. But even if some reasonably humane solution is worked out, the emotional toll exacted by the uncertainty they face will be serious.

At the same time, Brexit will also speed up the continent’s centrifugal forces: England is turning inward. Scotland may well leave the United Kingdom before the decade is over. The uneasy peace in Northern Ireland is being put to a serious, and wholly unnecessary, test. In the coming years, copycat referenda on EU membership are likely to be held in countries at the European core, such as the Netherlands. There can no longer be any doubt that the European Union is in an existential crisis.

Europe’s weakness harms the West as a whole. As the continent lurches from crisis to crisis and sees the gradual rise of populist strongmen on its own shores, it is getting increasingly tempted to make nice with authoritarian leaders in Turkey, Russia, and China. It’s little wonder that, outside Britain, the only triumphant voices to be heard Friday morning are those of Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Vladimir Putin, and the propaganda outlets of ISIS.

These points alone would suffice to make the outcome of Thursday’s referendum the most significant vote in a generation. But its true importance is even bigger than that: The decision of the British electorate to leave the European Union constitutes the most significant rebellion of the citizens of an affluent liberal democracy against their political system since the end of World War II. It signals the beginning of an era in which we can no longer be assured that the citizens of countries from Sweden to the United States will reliably choose liberal democracy over far-right populism and xenophobia.

There are plenty of reasons to be dissatisfied with the European Union as it is currently constituted. The EU leaves the most important decisions to an unelected council of the ministers of its member states, giving ordinary Europeans little control. And countries such as Greece are paying a massive—and seemingly indefinite—price for the faulty construction of the single currency zone. Though I strongly believe that the human and political consequences of the U.K.’s departure from the European Union made a “Leave” vote unconscionable, I have some sympathy for those who advocated Brexit on the basis of sovereignty or in the hope of building a more robust welfare state.

As the polls show, however, those were not the reasons that most supporters of Brexit had in mind. In fact, voters on both sides of the divide had virtually indistinguishable views on such questions as whether “capitalism” was good or bad. But Brexiters had starkly more negative views on issues such as “immigration,” “multiculturalism,” and “social liberalism.” The vote to leave the European Union was not a vote against Europe’s financial elites. It was a vote against civil rights, against ethnic minorities, against immigrants, and against refugees.

This also puts a rather more sinister cast on all the talk of sovereignty. Voters cared some about whether decisions will be taken in London or Brussels in the future. They cared much more about whether checks and balances would continue to stop the people’s righteous anger from expressing itself. What they really want is the freedom to make discriminatory laws against the immigrants and minorities whom the chief proponents of Brexit demonized throughout the campaign.

As my recent research shows, British voters are far from alone in turning against the limits on the popular will that constitute an important element of liberal democracy. Across most countries in North America and Western Europe, voters have grown deeply dissatisfied with the political class. For a rapidly growing number, this dissatisfaction with particular leaders has started to transform into an actual rejection of democratic institutions. Across North America and Western Europe, the number of citizens who say that it is important to live in a democracy is shrinking. At the same time, the number of citizens who are open to making their countries more authoritarian is rising.

This trend is especially striking in the United States. Two decades ago, 1 in 16 Americans believed that Army rule would be a good way to run the country. Today, it is 1 in 6. The picture is even bleaker among the young and affluent: Support for military rule in this group has increased nearly sixfold, from 6 percent to 35 percent.

Obviously, Brexit won’t lead to military rule. Nor is the Pentagon about to assume power in America. Opinion polls need to be interpreted carefully and with a healthy dose of skepticism. But when they show such a stark shift in opinion, it is safe to conclude that something big is going on. That big thing, I fear, is that the citizens of liberal democracies have grown so disenchanted with the status quo that they are willing to put their faith in populist strongmen and radical political experiments.

Two decades ago, far-right populists were electorally insignificant in most of North America and Western Europe. Then, people such as Jörg Haider in Austria, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and Marine Le Pen in France celebrated a remarkable string of political successes, establishing their movements as a firm part of their political systems and making their countries less hospitable for immigrants and other minority groups. In countries such as the United States, France, or Sweden, they are now within striking distance of outright majorities. Thursday’s referendum proves that there is no magic firewall that is sure to stop them.

It is worth remembering that David Cameron only called this referendum because he, along with the vast majority of Britain’s political class, was convinced that Brexit would never happen. It is also worth remembering that, 24 hours ago, most polls seemed to point to a victory for the forces of stability.

This should serve as a stark warning to people who are confident that Donald Trump could never be elected president. If he manages to turn the election into a referendum on the status quo, he has every chance of winning—especially since all the evidence suggests that the citizens of liberal democracies have never held the status quo in as much contempt as they do now. If we blindly trust the polls that seem to foretell his defeat, we might be in for an even ruder awakening come November.

35% of well-off Millennials support a military dictatorship? WTF? That is absolutely terrifying.

Quote:Yesterday the UK voted to leave the European Union after thirty years of a halting, sometimes noble, often messy experiment in international cooperation. In my circles—professional, well-educated, Cambridge and London—the principal reaction was incredulity. How could this happen? Who could want this? A natural reaction. In my electoral district, 75 percent voted to Remain. In the hip parts of London where my daughter lives, a similar result. But a look at the electoral map showed (inevitably, given that a substantial majority of England—though only a narrow majority of the UK—voted to Leave) that huge swathes of England outside of London voted by similar proportions to Leave—the poorer areas on the East and South coasts, depressed former industrial districts in the North, though also more prosperous parts of the West Country and the Midlands.

In shorthand, Britain’s EU problem is a London problem. London, a young, thriving, creative, cosmopolitan city, seems the model multicultural community, a great European capital. But it is also the home of all of Britain’s elites—the economic elites of “the City” (London’s Wall Street, international rather than European), a nearly hereditary professional caste of lawyers, journalists, publicists, and intellectuals, an increasingly hereditary caste of politicians, tight coteries of cultural movers-and-shakers richly sponsored by multinational corporations. It’s as if Hollywood, Wall Street, the Beltway, and the hipper neighborhoods of New York and San Francisco had all been mashed together. This has proved to be a toxic combination...



https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/britains-eu-problem-london-problem

Eric The Green Wrote:No, it depends on which countries are involved, and what they agree to.

Wiki Wrote:The contents of the competing proposals as well as of the reports on TTIP negotiations are classified from the public,[6] but after a proposed draft was leaked in March 2014,[7] the European Commission launched a public consultation on a limited set of clauses and in January 2015 published parts of an overview;[8] and subsequently increased security over its secrecy.[6]
[/url]
The [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission]European Commission says that the TTIP would boost the EU's economy by €120 billion, the US economy by €90 billion and the rest of the world by €100 billion.[9] According to Foreign Affairs, TTIP aims to "liberalise one-third of global trade" that, they argue, would create millions of new paid jobs.[10] However, a Guardian article by Dean Baker of the US thinktank Center for Economic and Policy Research[11][12][13] argued that the economic benefits per household would be relatively small,[14] and according to a European Parliament report, impacts on labour conditions range from job gains to job losses, depending on economic model and assumptions used for predictions.[15]

Rags Wrote:I'd venture to say any ABC candidate qualifies in his/her own way.

Eric The Green Wrote:And maybe C too, in her own way.

Quote:Oh, but if any of those trade agreements passes, that goes down the drain. Did you manage to read that letter from Greece I posted?

Eric Wrote: Probably. But no, it depends.

Quote:

Rags Wrote:Could be. However I'm more interested in how Rags gets even more feathers for his nest! I'm more interested in the dispersal of GMO's into Europe myself. Go Monsanto, baby.

Eric Wrote:What's best for all is best for me.

Quote:Have you considered that perhaps the era of integration has ended and the era of dissolution has started.
Nothing in this universe is permanent.

Quote:That's not how it's supposed to be, except maybe for a couple of decades. The long-term trend remains integration. That's the nature of the age we live in. Planets in Aries now tend toward the same direction as in the 1860s. So I understand that; Aries is individualistic. But the age we live in since the 1890s is still globalizing and collectivizing of wealth and power.

Quote:(me) The generational breakdown clearly shows that young people thought the union benefited them and was not "the establishment."

(Rags) With age comes wisdom, man.

Quote:Election results in the USA and now in England tell a far different story. NO. And it wasn't true in the sixties either. NO, youth is often wiser.

Quote:Yes, it's what I say, and I am correct.

Quote:LOL! Rag's identity = US citizen.  From my experience at work, methinks the young are tied down to Ishits.

Quote:I don't remember what Ishits are (i-phones and stuff?)

Quote:, but your identity Rags is yours individually. It is your passions and your unique talents, not what group you belong to. That is just what authority tells you your identity is.

Quote:Your true identity belongs to you, not the state, religion, race, etc. Identifying as an American or a white boy is just being an authoritarian; in popular parlance, it's fascistic.

Quote:2. Pssst.  Eurocrats are the high priests of Neo-liberalism man.  The sooner Eric does a bit of research , the smarter he'll be.

Eric Wrote:Neo-liberalism is powered by the Reaganuts here in America. Europe has been far more advanced and socialistic. The right-wing in Europe has been equivalent to center-left here. But NOW we have this nationalist, xenophobic wave. I thought that the Arab Spring refugee wave was a passing thing that Europeans would react to for a while, but get over once it passed.

Quote:There has been a degree of openness already to immigrants such as Turks and Africans, but it's this wave from Syria that has tipped Europe into xenophobia.

Quote:But if the English voted against freedom of movement, then they can't have their cake and eat it too.

Quote:It will have to end. Europeans in England will have to go home and English in Europe will have to come home.

Quote:Travel and trade will be just as hard to do with Britain now as it is with Russia or China. You'll need a visa to travel there and a green card to live there. You'll need to show your papers when you get off the chunnel train.

Quote:England is no longer part of Europe; it's a stuffy, haughty, snobbish and fearful island and should be treated as such. I think the USA and England should not be the close allies we have been, too. I say, fuck 'em.

Quote:TPP, TPIP =  LAWLESS greed.

Quote:NO, they are two different deals. But England is now in the back of the priority list. (How do you spell that q word that Obama used?)

(06-25-2016, 04:29 PM)Dan Wrote: As a nationalist, left wing populist this type of response strikes me as overwrought for a few reasons
 
1)     Military dictatorship is not the only alternative to democracy, unelected unaccountable bureaucracy is another alternative and it’s been the form that’s actually been successful in last few decades.  And the opposition to the EU and much of the current populism is a response to that.
2)     It is absurd to claim that the only alternative to multiculturalism, globalism and open borders is fascism. 
3)     I think the globalist; multi-cultural socialism is bound to fail.  Socialism broadly defined requires a high level of social trust and cohesion in order to work while multiculturalism and globalism work best with high levels of individualism.  I view a strong sense of nationalism is an important factor in allowing the masses the challenge the elites.  The few successful left wing parties such as the Scottish National Party and Sinn Féin are also nationalist and populist.