Inevitable that we would get a psychoanalytic explanation of the leave and remain factor in Brexit.
I wouldn't have read it except that DW Winnicott, who wrote my favorite child-rearing manual, Good Enough Mothering, was an important figure in describing "object relations." Think teddy bears.
Plus in this London Review short essay, we are given a succinct account of what Fintan O'Toole means by the English affinity for "Heroic Failure." "The Tory Leave mentality that precipitated Brexit drew on the
long-standing tradition of English exceptionalism. The best description I
know of this mentality, Fintan O’Toole’s Heroic Failure,
characterizes it as ‘the transformation of a screw-up into a
demonstration of character’. Examples include the Charge of the Light
Brigade, Sir John Franklin’s doomed attempt to find the Northwest Passage in the 1840s, and Dunkirk. In each case, the British character is seen to rise above
self-inflicted disaster through studied indifference, and thereby to
manifest its inner superiority. Theresa May’s blind, stubborn,
quasi-suicidal determination to enforce the referendum is another
instance."
I'm not much on psychoanalysis, but I can understand the wish to repackage a screw-up as a demonstration of character. Pretty sure that's how the American South dealt with its defeat for any number of generations.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly!
DeleteThe alliance between the Empowered and the Poor in their notion that Britain would be better off outside the constraints and benefits of the EU strikes me as something that all nations flirt with, and sometimes succumb to.
ReplyDeleteIn the U.S., where white conservative values voters, who tend to be poorer, and Big Capital, who want to castrate government regs, formed a similar front.
Ditto the religious poor in Russia and the oligarchs, who love Putin.
Possibly the factions that split India and Pakistan resulted from the same kind of alliance between ultra-traditionalists who were poorer and elites who saw division as a means to stay in power.
The Brits are not the only ones who have charged toward doom half a league, half a league at a time, are they?
Jean, No. In my youth there was hardly a gas station or drug store that didn't display a lithograph of Custer's Last Stand. We liberated (in a fashion) Cuba and The Philippines while remembering a battleship we lost and won World War II remembering a fleet of battleships destroyed in an attack we almost slept through.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, there was the time in 1842 Gen. Charles Napier of Britain's Indian Army was ordered to clean out a nest of rebels raiding from the province of Sindh. Exceeding his orders, he conquered the whole province and reputedly sent Whitehall a one-word telegram, which read: "Peccavi." ("I have sinned.") The actual fact of the telegram has been strongly challenged, but it it's too good to let go. It has absolutely nothing to do with this thread, but I couldn't resist passing it along.
Thinking of Victorian generals, I believe Chinese Gordon died futilely, albeit allegedly with great character, in Khartoum.
Deletehttps://artuk.org/discover/artworks/general-gordons-last-stand-38781
Is Eli Zaretsky"s conclusion...:
ReplyDelete"It has been said that Brexit will produce a new politics based on the opposition between open and closed rather than left and right. This would be a mistake, just as defeating Trump by electing someone with Hillary Clinton’s politics would be a mistake. Rather, what this brief foray into mass psychology suggests is the relevance of a 21st-century version of socialism in forging an outcome responsive to the deeper needs of both camps: a socialism that holds its citizens, while recognising the value of risk and open spaces."
...a rather full-throated endorsement of Bernie Sanders?
Hmmm....Bernie??? Have to think about that.
ReplyDeleteYou mean he looks like a teddy bear?
DeleteSee this: How Bernie is like Donnie.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bernie-sanders-has-emerged-as-the-donald-trump-of-the-left/2019/04/02/66a516f4-5576-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html?utm_term=.2c54ba74210c&wpisrc=nl_opinions&wpmm=1
The Birth of Social Democracy
ReplyDeleteFrom Karl Marx to Eduard Bernstein
By Gary Dorrien
Commonweal, April 3, 2019
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/birth-social-democracy
So now the Brits want the deadline extended into June. Are they slow-motion rethinking Brexit without actually putting it to another vote?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they think that if they drag it out long enough, everybody will forget. It would help if the World Cup of soccer/football were this year. But, alas, they missed it by a year.
DeleteThey really have dug themselves a hole!! And France (Macron), the ingrates!, are playing hard-to-get. Any chance of a big rugby world cup? Cricket? something to distract everyone?
DeleteKatherine: yes, I think this is slow-motion something. Maybe everybody go home and forget about it! I see Rees-Mog's a hard hard brexiter is threatening to gum up the EU works if the Uk doesn't get to exit...as if it's the Eu gumming everything up.
DeleteAt this point I think EU officials wish they's just get out; it's creating a degree of uncertainty everywhere that is costing time and money.
And friends: a politically incorrect question: Is Theresa May's performance half-gender based, and half-upbringing! Why is she so uncompromising? And so obtuse?
And Here's a terrific round-up of people opinion and anxiety of the Brexit stand-off...Who would want to live with this?
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/06/my-brexit-nightmare-readers-on-how-the-uncertainty-is-affecting-their-lives
Note the number of Germans living in the UK...and of families with different national backgrounds.
DeleteLooks like a lot of people could potentially have their lives upended. One of the people in the Guardian article was Scottish, and didn't seem as worried. So I'm wondering how that would work. If England Brexited, but Scotland didn't, wouldn't Scotland have to separate from England in order to remain in the EU? And then they'd be facing the same problem that exists with Northern Ireland and the border.
DeleteThe Scottish tried to leave the UK a few years ago, but that vote went to Remain in the UK.
DeleteNow, if the UK leaves the EU, there may be a change in opinion. Much talk of Scotland holding another vote.
I was thinking Hadrian's Wall might make a good border, depending on how much, if any, is still standing.
"....Is Theresa May's performance half-gender based, and half-upbringing! Why is she so uncompromising? And so obtuse?"
ReplyDeleteI think it's what Jim said earlier, about repackaging a screw up as a demonstration of character. She's trying to demonstrate that she's the responsible adult, that people have to suck it up and accept the consequences of their action. Except that sometimes responsible adults change their course when it looks like things aren't working out the way they had hoped and in fact are heading into a disaster. Maybe it's gender-based, too, because she's afraid she'll appear weak and women have to be on guard against that (at least that's how the common wisdom goes.)
Or May can't admit that she seriously messed up...from beginning to end...My gender inquiry rests on the observation (not scientific) that women can stick with their decision, even if their wrong, and know it. Whereas men can beat people up!
ReplyDeleteTheresa May is certainly to blame for a lot--not least for activating the deadline for leaving before any plan was in place and without any need at that time to set the deadline. But what’s happening now is both fascinating and terrifying, in that we get to see, on a national scale, what true governmental gridlock is like. I think it’s not just that May is rigid, it’s that no other plan or suggestion can get any kind of a favorable vote either. Every faction chooses None of the Above for every question.
ReplyDeleteAnd it must be said the whole crisis was precipitated by powerful men who consciously lied about Britain’s ties to Europe and deliberately played to lower-class fears about immigration and national identity. I just don’t see, though, what they get out of it.
What do they get out of it? David Cameron who called the referendum is vilified whenever his name appears. What a fool. Boris Johnson! Rees-Mogg! The aforementioned Fintan O'Toole looks to class and education for explanation.
ReplyDeleteBut Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn? Seems increasingly inept.
Is there something in the water?
Maybe they're tapping into some sort of longing for mythical bygone glory days, especially by people who perceive themselves to be the losers in globalism.
Delete