7 ms·

I think it's the revelation that a shared culture and experience whose existence you took for granted really never existed. You feel untethered. I live in Nort

I think it's the revelation that a shared culture and experience whose existence you took for granted really never existed. You feel untethered. I live in Northern Ireland and I get this feeling when I come upon a street festooned in Union Flags and painted kerbstones. It's like stepping into a different country.

rayiner 3y ago
> I think it's the revelation that a shared culture and experience whose existence you took for granted really never existed. You feel untethered. I’d hazard a guess that many British felt that same feeling long before Brexit, and that’s part of what caused Brexit in the first place.
- pjc50 3y ago
  But it turned out that everyone had a different vision of nostalgia, leading to the Brexiteers fragmenting into ever more fractious and undignified factions sabotaging each other in public. There's no single date for the end of the British Empire, but a lot of the strife of the 60s and 70s was dealing with the economic and psychological effects of that. For many European countries with empires.
  - rayiner 3y ago
    Must be surreal. Americans should take notes.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      The American empire is a long way off collapse. People also underestimate collapse-inducing factors in countries with unfree political systems; we can't really see how China is doing internally. The sense that fragmented factions actively want to choose collapse in order to accelerate their own power grab within the collapse is similar in the US to Britain, though. Not as similar to Austria-Hungary and its fragmentary nationalists. Will it have a Gavrilo Princep or a Tetsuya Yamagami? Hard to predict.
      - skissane 3y ago
        > The American empire is a long way off collapse. The 2020 election dispute could have turned out a lot worse than it actually did. What if Mike Pence had lost his cojones and decided to do Trump’s bidding, and then Congressional Republicans and the conservative SCOTUS majority decided to go along with it? What if blue state governors then turned around and said that the federal government has been taken over in a coup, and ordered their states to reject its authority? 2021 might have ended up rather resembling 1861. Thankfully, in our timeline, none of that happened. But, 2024, 2028, 2032, etc, all represent opportunities for “just like 2020 but worse”. Trump is going to look for a more pliant running mate this time around, and at the moment he’s ahead in the polls. Even though, if he does win in 2024, he won’t be able to run in 2028, his attitude may well be “the election is only fair if my guy wins” Rejecting election results risks becoming normalised, increasing the odds that future Republicans will emulate Trump in this way even long after Trump has shuffled off this mortal coil; and also that Democrats may eventually succumb to the temptation to copy this page of the Republican playbook.
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        Already in 2016, there were Democrats who claimed that the election wasn't fair (and therefore wasn't valid). To be fair, all they did was talk...
        desas 3y ago
        Wasn't that also a thing with the first Obama election? Before that, 2000 had Gore vs Bush and the Florida recount. Is it escalating?
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        > Is it escalating? I think so, yes. Obama's first election didn't have much - just some non-politician named Trump shooting off his mouth. 2016 had actual politicians saying that it was illegitimate. Then came 2020, and Jan 6, and it wasn't just talk anymore. So yes, it seems to be escalating. 2000 was different. The vote was close enough in one state that that there was legitimate doubt about what the actual result was. It wasn't "illegitimate because I don't like the results" the way more recent ones have been.

rayiner 3y ago

> I think it's the revelation that a shared culture and experience whose existence you took for granted really never existed. You feel untethered. I’d hazard a guess that many British felt that same feeling long before Brexit, and that’s part of what caused Brexit in the first place.

pjc50 3y ago
But it turned out that everyone had a different vision of nostalgia, leading to the Brexiteers fragmenting into ever more fractious and undignified factions sabotaging each other in public. There's no single date for the end of the British Empire, but a lot of the strife of the 60s and 70s was dealing with the economic and psychological effects of that. For many European countries with empires.
- rayiner 3y ago
  Must be surreal. Americans should take notes.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    The American empire is a long way off collapse. People also underestimate collapse-inducing factors in countries with unfree political systems; we can't really see how China is doing internally. The sense that fragmented factions actively want to choose collapse in order to accelerate their own power grab within the collapse is similar in the US to Britain, though. Not as similar to Austria-Hungary and its fragmentary nationalists. Will it have a Gavrilo Princep or a Tetsuya Yamagami? Hard to predict.
    - skissane 3y ago
      > The American empire is a long way off collapse. The 2020 election dispute could have turned out a lot worse than it actually did. What if Mike Pence had lost his cojones and decided to do Trump’s bidding, and then Congressional Republicans and the conservative SCOTUS majority decided to go along with it? What if blue state governors then turned around and said that the federal government has been taken over in a coup, and ordered their states to reject its authority? 2021 might have ended up rather resembling 1861. Thankfully, in our timeline, none of that happened. But, 2024, 2028, 2032, etc, all represent opportunities for “just like 2020 but worse”. Trump is going to look for a more pliant running mate this time around, and at the moment he’s ahead in the polls. Even though, if he does win in 2024, he won’t be able to run in 2028, his attitude may well be “the election is only fair if my guy wins” Rejecting election results risks becoming normalised, increasing the odds that future Republicans will emulate Trump in this way even long after Trump has shuffled off this mortal coil; and also that Democrats may eventually succumb to the temptation to copy this page of the Republican playbook.
      - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        Already in 2016, there were Democrats who claimed that the election wasn't fair (and therefore wasn't valid). To be fair, all they did was talk...
        desas 3y ago
        Wasn't that also a thing with the first Obama election? Before that, 2000 had Gore vs Bush and the Florida recount. Is it escalating?
        AnimalMuppet 3y ago
        > Is it escalating? I think so, yes. Obama's first election didn't have much - just some non-politician named Trump shooting off his mouth. 2016 had actual politicians saying that it was illegitimate. Then came 2020, and Jan 6, and it wasn't just talk anymore. So yes, it seems to be escalating. 2000 was different. The vote was close enough in one state that that there was legitimate doubt about what the actual result was. It wasn't "illegitimate because I don't like the results" the way more recent ones have been.