Re: What the **** is Tom Watson trying to do? Archived Message
Posted by dovetailjoint on September 11, 2019, 3:38 pm, in reply to "Re: What the **** is Tom Watson trying to do?"
What disturbs me, worries me and makes me feel very uneasy, is the dangerous trench-digging that's going on. The polarisation of sided and opinion. At the same time things, institutions, that seemed solid last week are now cracked and crumbling before our very eyes. It's close to a revolutionary situation where the centre isn't holding and centrifugal force is pulling everything apart. Authority is breaking down and the PM brazenly breaks the law and undermines the very parliamentary system that supports him. This is reckless. Brexit is dangerous partly because it pushed a huge direct democracy 'wedge' into a 'crack' in the liberal, representative, democracy system and turned it into a gaping chasm with potentially disasterous consequences to follow. One of the reasons ruling elites were 'sceptical' about democracy was the prospect of the majority taking over and threatening social stability with their demands for a more just and equal society, one where the power and wealth were more evenly distributed and levelled. It seems obvious and a fact, that Brexit has become an open challenge to the way one is used to 'doing' democracy in the UK, if not to the entire social order. Normally the constitution can stand pressure and absorb challenges without buckling. What's exciting and dangerous about things today is how clear it is that the political system doesn't seem to be able to deal with Brexit properly and a dangerous gap has opened up between the executive, the legislature, the law, the judiciary, the media, the monarchy... and the people who are split down the middle and getting more and more antagonistic with each other and the country's political system and instituions. It's hard to imagine a more dangerous political situation than the current one. In a country like the UK which is so grossly unequal socially and economically, with so many poor people pushed out to the margins of society, with an elite living in obscene luxury... one decides to wreck the political system through Brexit, a massive price to pay for next to no practical benefits. Absolute madness. How on earth does one bring the country's two opposing factions back together again? How does one create a sensible compromise that most people can live with? From the outside the UK looks like its gone mad. The damage to the status and image of the UK is staggering. Virtually all the 'goodwill' and soft-power the UK had has been pissed away, for nothing. Wanton destruction of a quality brand. In the modern world this a disasterous situation.
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