"Y'know, I suspect that Leave voters thought leaving was in their self-interest — or at the very least that voting 'Leave' send a message which was in their sel

"Y'know, I suspect that Leave voters thought leaving was in their self-interest — or at the very least that voting 'Leave' send a message which was in their self-interest." The trope about rubes voting against their interests is easily my least favorite of this political season. 1. First of all, when a group of people consistently vote in a way that surprises you, perhaps it's time to update your understanding of the world, instead of assuming -- over and over -- that theirs is broken. At the very least, one might admit that they don't actually know much about those interests. 2. An inability to understand why somebody might vote against their most immediate economic interests isn't something to be proud of. There is an enormous gap here and it's increasingly a gap in a belief in the transcendent. Yes, for a lot of rural American voters the transcendent is god, but it's more than just that. Are there or are there not ideals worth dying for? It shouldn't be so surprising to the left that some people actually behave as though there are.