BREXIT and the myth of the “good” referendum
Last year, I had a long discussion with someone I went to graduate school with about referendums.
He was quasi-horrified at my assertion that I fucking HATE referendums, and couldn’t figure out why I was so against them given most of my work has been in the area of democracy and democratic participation.
I reminded him that, actually, I wrote extensively on how to modify democratic institutions after ethnic conflict.  Basically, I wrote on how democratic institutions - and in some ways democracy itself - are fucking TOXIC in an post-conflict era when you’re dealing with the persecution of minorities.
Translation: democracy allows majorities to consolidate their power and repress minorities.  Sometimes violently.  Democracy is only as good as the people who exercise it, and call me a cynic, but a large chunk of people are not good and can’t be counted on to make good decisions.  Even GOOD people can make terrible decisions based on ignorance.
Don’t get me wrong… I don’t believe that democracy is inherently wrong or that we should replace it with something else, but the idea that the more democratic something is, the better it is is fundamentally flawed.  We need to recognize that there are some things that the masses shouldn’t make decisions on because they don’t understand them.
Referendums are the fucking WORST WAY to make large scale policy decisions for a number of reasons.  And in some ways, BREXIT is a perfect example of this.  Most people have absolutely no idea what the EU is and how it impacts their lives on a fundamental level.  They have no idea what benefits they see from the EU because benefits, like privilege, can be invisible to people.  It’s easier to identify and complain about the things we don’t like.
People love simple ideas.  They love that the source of their problems is some woman dressed in a hijab or a man that doesn’t speak English or a child that is “illegal”.  They love when the problem is The Other.  The Other makes a problem easily solvable.  Get rid of them.  Drive them out.  It’s why ethnic conflict is so prevalent and bloody.
People listen to racist pieces of trash like Nigel Farage because it’s easy.  Because they don’t have time to understand the nuances of the EU and how it benefits them, they just have to believe the village idiot who runs around giving them easy answers about how the EU IS A WITCH WHO NEEDS TO BE DROWNED!
I fucking hate the idea that policy and politics is something that anyone can do, that anyone can make decisions on these topics with no expertise needed.  Ignorance and stupidity in politics can have the same disastrous effects as ignorance and stupidity in law and medicine.  It impacts people’s LIVES, and understanding policy and its impact on society is serious fucking business.  Leaving decisions of this magnitude to people who don’t understand them is dangerous, especially when you have dumb politicians who look to exploit their ignorance to further their own gains.
And this is why referendums are bad.  There are times where there are necessary evils (The EU isn’t even ONE OF THEM, which is what makes this so particularly flagrantly stupid) that countries need to endure in order to survive.  There are times where the beliefs and values of people are so toxic that the most vulnerable in a country needs to be protected from the majority.  And while it’s problematic and dangerous, there are times where the people need to be protected from their own ignorance and that of radical politicians.
What this referendum did was allow the ignorance of a sizable chunk of the population to destroy their economy and political standing in Europe. Â Perhaps the UK itself.
Basically, the UK just made such a stupid fucking decision that two of their countries are seriously eyeing seceding from it to remain in the EU, the value of its currency has fallen so low that its economy has dropped below France’s, and it all has incredibly frightening consequences for their domestic political and economic future. Basically the rest of the world thinks that it is dumber than a bag of fucking hammers for doing something so CLEARLY COUNTER-INTUITIVE TO ITS OWN SELF-INTEREST.
Meanwhile, the 52% of UKers who voted to exit are like, IMMIGRATION! WE CAN STOP ALL THESE ~~FOREIGNERS~~ FROM IMMIGRATING!  AND ALL THAT MONEY THAT WE CAN SAVE BY NOT BEING IN THE EU!  Except no they fucking can’t because they still need to be able to trade with fucking Europe.
See what I mean about PEOPLE BEING FUCKING STUPID? Â Half of the UK voted yesterday to shoot itself in the kneecaps and barely understood why.
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