re: #262 Dom

In between the electoral cycles we can talk about all kinds of programmes and policies and there may be a route for getting an idea off the ground, but we have a largely binary voting system around large groupings of falsely dichotomised issues, so that if you are liberal in this way and conservative in that you still makes your one choice and shut up for 5 years.

In the case of Brexit, both campaigns were painting rosy nonsense for themselves and tarring the other guys. The Out camp was shamelessly stirring up ethnic tensions that will not go away, that are actually the first impact I note when the locals round here objected to a Jewish community planning application, citing demographic fears. I prefer to be out of Europe, a distant bureaucracy full of strange allegiances that the British don’t recognise, but not when the campaign empowers a racist lobby, actually creates the very tensions that we fear would hurt Europe. So my decision was, I’m not playing this time, afterwards see if we can play nice whatever happens. But it was the campaign itself that has Britain on edge. It is not much different from Trump’s lowest common denominator approach. I can’t stand Frankie Boyle either.

Did you truly feel that neither you, nor others, would really be affected by the decision? I ask, because we see that a lot here, people who either won’t vote or will vote for someone other than Clinton or Trump. They think they can make it something other than a binary choice, and thereby have their conscience clear even if the person who gets elected will take things in a direction opposite of what they wanted.