Here in the USA the most vicious presidential election of the 20th and 21st Centuries is blessedly closing. It has been the most horrid in my life time with Trump supporters chanting at his rallies that Hillary Clinton be locked up for her email controversy. It has been a toxic campaign, and one that will continue to divide this nation.
So perhaps our American readers have not noticed that a British court this past week stated that only the House of Commons can initiate Article 50 to allow the U.K. to exit the European Union. This Kingdom, so vital to the world as a bulwark of civilized behavior, is now engaged in bitter, divisive and ugly debate over the validity of that court decision. Our regular correspondent, Terry Field, a learned Englishman who lives in France and Florida, provides this Sunday morning an article worth your time. He covers many 'bases' including reflections on his fellow Englishman David Lott's recent views on Brexit and western foreign policy.
I trust our readers welcome this dialogue challenging us to remove ourselves, at least for a time, from our respective 'world view' cultural corners. - Glenn N. Holliman
Reflections while on a Florida Sojourn by an Englishman - Terry Field
The intellectual violence overwhelming England
at present is almost unprecedented. There appears to be a collapse in the
cohesion of the mind of the nation. This is new, and not seen before. Certainly
not since the 1930’s, when the competition between communism and capitalism for
the mind of the nation raged unchecked. Terry Field below right.
The forces supporting brexit appear to be
intent on ‘sweeping aside’ those persons – almost an equal number at the point
of the referendum – with accompanying violence of language and stridency of
attitude that continues to surprise. This form of social violence carried all
before it for the months after the vote, and the Houses of Parliament seemed
cowed, and unsure of their right to think independently of the plebiscite.
That is how the new unelected Prime Minister Teresa May has characterised that matter. The vote should be the force for total
acceptance of a radical break with Europe; Parliament should rubber-stamp it and
its potential to limit or modify the process would be removed by dictat.
The court, having decided this to be
unsupported by law, the rage of indignation against these venerable judges has
been vicious and unconstrained.
Never mind the sovereignty of the Parliament,
never mind the rule of law, never mind wise considered judgment – these lawyers
are constraining the ‘will of the people’ and are an enemy to be confronted.
The rage dominates the populist press. The
Telegraph – a supposed ‘newspaper of record’ screamed ‘the judges against the
people’.
Yet 52% voted to leave; 48% to stay.
After a campaign of grotesque lies and
distortions by the Brexit camp; suggesting ludicrous moneys would flow into the
bankrupt National Health Service from the funds saved – to be promptly retracted by Nigel Farage (leader of the United Kingdom Independent Party) and
others after the vote result. Nigel Farage below.
This preamble is needed to add context to the
article by the correspondent from UKIP.
The article suggests a potentially violent
response if the leave group -52% of the vote only – does not get the interpretation
its most radical members place on the vote. But here is the rub.
We have in Britain an ancient and respected
representative parliamentary democracy, charged with holding in it hands all the
legislative power of the State. It is there for correct that Parliament should
and has the authority to analyse the entire process of suggested exit from
Europe proposed by the new government. It is not to be bypassed. Not to be
ignored.
The plebiscite was an opinion, incapable of
being interpreted by any faction, and that includes this government,
independent of Parliament.
Should the extreme Brexit faction choose the
apparently threatened violent response, we have in Britain a police, a
judiciary and a prison system that can act to protect the nation from violent
insurrection.
The article refers to the continuing failure of
the United States to ‘win any wars’ – presumably since 1945.
As I recall, the world was convulsed by a cold
war from 1945 to 1986, and it could be argued that is has been re-started in
recent years.
I would consider it a gross insult to the dead
of Britain and the United States to suggest that the recovery of the Korean
peninsula was not both a victory and morally right. I would similarly consider
that the support of the nationalists in China and the protection of Taiwan was
and is morally right and a limited success.
Vietnam and the Middle East are different
categories, and cannot be considered either successful nor morally unstained;
yet who when Russia fed arms to Vietnam and the Soviet expansion into Africa
was radical and threatening could unequivocally say the war was not an
understandable reaction after Dien Bien Phu. Easy to say today it was a
dreadful error. Not so easy at the time, and I suggest the writer of the
article who so readily dismisses the American actions since the war with such
gross contempt had any greater wisdom to offer at the time.
Wars are, in general, not ‘successes’ or
‘failures’. Only a military man of intermediate rank thinks they either should
or could generally be so. War is an extension of civil action, and has,
normally, limited objectives. That the cold war threw up many ‘proxy wars’ is
undeniable. Those wars were dreadful. The assaulted peoples suffered
dreadfully, but it does take two to tango. The other sides – China and Russia –
were active and violent where it was in their interests to be so. The article
seems to suggest there was no such set of adversaries. Bizarre.
As for the Middle East, the changed view was
that pre-emptive action to forestall severe near-term threats was the developed
view in Britain and the United States.
It may or may not have been a reasonable and
responsible pre-conception. The aftermath of the Middle East adventure has
resulted in disaster. Is that because the initial analysis was incorrect, or
because the extreme over-reaction of the present Administration to act not at
all and watch events unfold with other ‘allies’ taking the load on the ground
has created such a vacuum that ISIS and Putin have seized their opportunity?
It is a point of discussion, not an excuse –
taken by the above writer – to excoriate the United States, and suggest Britain
has no mind and slavishly follows it ‘protector.’
Given the commonly received view on both sides
of the Atlantic that pre-emptive action against anticipated future aggression
and ‘failed states’ would protect the West effectively, the problem for Britain
was how to act on this, whilst not appearing to do so.
Hence now, Blair’s agony and Chilcot’s
vengeance.
But this present public posturing of
squeaky-clean morality does nothing to answer the question – was the strategy,
and the motivation behind it, misplaced, or not? It is FAR too early to tell.
Given this, it leaves an unpleasant taste to
read a diatribe against the actions, mindset, and by inference the moral worth
– of the United States and Britain over a number of decades. I reject, as do
many, such a radical characterisation.
The events on the battle field are made harder
to bear by the economic trauma experienced by the West, firstly since
de-industrialisation (and the appearance of industrial super-productivity, not
discussed at all) followed by the
‘financial crisis’ ( not really) of 2007/8.
The losers - in this tale of massive changes in
wealth creation and the raising of 1000 million people out of poverty across
the World are – in part by social media, in part by the sort of charismatic
leaders we have seen before in the 1930s and in part by the breakdown in the
constraints of the social cohesion that came with the militarised
societies that lived through war and
then cold war – asserting themselves, but their desires are informed by poor
economic understanding, and infected with dangerous petty nationalism.
They can, in the end, achieve nothing, even if
they gain power in the United States by a disastrous election result, and of
course if Britain cuts itself out of the largest trading block of like minded
people on the planet. Their dreams reflect their flaws in both comprehension,
and capacity to empathise with their fellow citizens who disagree with them.
This is a new form of violence – of
intimidatory social violence. Its bluff should be called. Its absurd unwise,
simplistic, childlike urges should be confronted and defeated.
In Britain, the Prime Minister is a constraint
on wisdom and rationality. In my view, she is the worst prime Minister the
country has ever experienced – or certainly since 1914. Teresa May below.
Therefore, I hope in Parliament. I trust it
will steer the country to more rational times. (If May does not go to the
country selling another dose of cheap nationalism and unachievable hegemony
over a supine world waiting with baited breath for Britain to flex its
free-trade wings).
At this rate, I half-expect us to try to
recover India. Anyone for tiffin?????
Terry Field nesting in Florida much of this winter....
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