6 ms·

I couldn't put an exact time frame on it, but it took several years before the pro-Brexit politicians ran out of 'it will get better soon' arguments and the (ma

I couldn't put an exact time frame on it, but it took several years before the pro-Brexit politicians ran out of 'it will get better soon' arguments and the (majority of the) populace realised that they'd been had.

thechao 1y ago
The MAGA ideologues can stay cultists longer than we can stay solvent? I'm in Texas, and I've got a neighbor, down the road, who was in custom home construction; he's out of business now. Why? He can't import lumber, reliably; he used to hire "under the table", and he bought small steel supplies in bulk from Alibaba. So... pretty much his entire business model is kaput. He keeps telling me that, any day now, Trump's 11D chess moves are going to make him (my neighbor) solvent again. He just sold his (white) truck, and is selling his house. Still flying his Trump flag, though.
- reactordev 1y ago
  11D, got to wait for the 12D move to fix everything. /s
- franktankbank 1y ago
  Big if true. One more ; ought to do it.
- platevoltage 1y ago
  Sounds like the type that buys lottery tickets every week actually believing that they will hit one day. Just a matter of time.
- silisili 1y ago
  I think this is probably the same phenomenon that makes people fall for romance scams despite the obvious red flags. Like a sunk cost fallacy for human emotion - is there a term for that? Nobody seems to want to admit they were wrong or 'had', so do the alternative - being had even more.
  - ivape 1y ago
    I think it has a lot to do with who you are admitting it to. Let say you know you are wrong, but you have to admit it to your enemy. Many emotional people would rather die than do that, hah (over my dead body!). Unfortunately, this is the end-state of arousing politics. There's a whole media industry around making politics emotional now days, and quite frankly we really need it to go back to boring men and women discussing boring things on CSPAN. It was never meant for the average American (or Britain), simply because it takes too much dumbing down to make it palatable for ordinary people. It's OKAY not to know what is the right thing to do about global trade. The political-media-industrial-complex survives by making people believe they actually know what they are talking about. It's very difficult to suggest to someone "hey, even though you invested thousands of hours ingesting this content, you actually don't know anything about it" - who wants to admit that, first to themselves, and second to your enemy? Your Ben Shapiros, your Tuckers, Rogans, Maddows, Jon Stewarts are part of the industrial complex. We need to find an off-ramp for people that lets them keep their dignity while accepting ignorance. I personally don't have any ideas on how to do this because here in tech, you either know your stuff or you don't, there's no ego when you don't know (you'll just look stupid).
    - konstmonst 1y ago
      China did it better - most of their managers are engineers. US needs to make use of this pattern. Oh, and add an IQ and an EQ test as a requirement to being a president.
    - silisili 1y ago
      You make good points. There is obviously the nature of admitting to enemies that you were wrong that you touch on. What I'm referring to is admitting to yourself that you're wrong, which seems much harder to do. I just experienced this recently even in comments. For the record, I'm not a Trump hater, I'm rather neutral on politics. But in a recent interview Trump made an absolute fool of himself re: some guys hand tattoos. I felt secondhand embarrassment even watching it. Yet there were so many defenders show up, to explain what he -really- meant, or that he knew it was wrong but was proving a point, etc. I just don't get the mindset. Sometimes it's ok to admit the person you admire made a mistake. But not in the US, apparently. Because too many people have tied not only their identity but income to it.
- spacemadness 1y ago
  It sucks having some semblance of critical thinking skills as an American. It grows more painful every day and I'd rather just give myself a lobotomy at this point. I'm sure it felt similarly for many folks during Brexit who knew better.
- segfault88 1y ago
  This is a quote from Carl Sagan: > One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    The first step to getting out from under a charlatan is admitting you were an idiot. Some people seem constitutionally incapable of ever doing that.
  - andrekandre 1y ago
    > It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. religion and fandom can be like this as well...
- CoastalCoder 1y ago
  I'm curious how he reconciles his "under the table" payments with the Republican party's supposed "law and order" platform.
gm3dmo 1y ago
The other 51 percent for are sophisticated economic analysts who ended up hoarding toilet paper and pasta during Covid.
tialaramex 1y ago
Still plenty (nowhere close to a majority, but more than a few nutters) who are certain the problem is we didn't have a hard enough Brexit. The reason the scientific method is considered an actual discovery is that this whole "In light of new data I realise I was wrong" just isn't how we tend to behave. For many Leave voters, the fact they voted Leave necessarily means voting Leave was correct - some of them rationalise this as "I was lied to" => "Maybe Leave was the wrong choice but I was misinformed" plenty more reached "Leave was correct but politicians screwed up Leaving somehow, it's not my fault". The current iteration of the Nigel Farage party, named Reform, takes this sort of line. Once I was writing about the Achilles and the Tortoise story in GEB where the Tortoise rejects Modus Ponens and Achilles discovers, the hard way, that it's useless to argue any point with an interlocutor who rejects this principle. Somebody else on HN pointed out that most people probably would not accept Modus Ponens. And they're probably right, as hopeless as that outcome is.
- navane 1y ago
  The Italian socialist opposed joining ww1. The nationalists wanted to join, and the Italians joined, on the British and French side. They fought so bad that the British had to send troops to the new Austrian - Italian front, effectively weakening the allied effort and thus the spoils of the war were none for the Italians. Who did the fascists blame, the nationalist for joining this folly? No, the socialists for sabotaging their efforts.
  - disqard 1y ago
    Thank you for sharing that! TIL that the resulting defeat was soundly milked by Mussolini and friends to rise to power. If at first you don't succeed, blame the Voices of Reason (and demonize them), until you do succeed.
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      For some people, the most important goal isn't success but power. Failure is fine, as long as they retain power.
stouset 1y ago
As an American, is that the generally-accepted viewpoint now? That Brexit was a mistake? If so, do people feel like it was an honest mistake, or do people generally believe that the politicians and businesspeople who supported it were either incompetent or hoping to benefit personally at everyone else's expense? Something else? I'm asking because I'd really like to believe that there's a point where a convincing majority of Americans will wake up and realize that Republican (and particularly Trump) politics are a sham and have been unabashedly so since at least the first Trump administration. I would like that, but I'm not hopeful at this point.
- navane 1y ago
  I'm not in England but in mainland Europe and yes, I don't know a single person who sees Brexit benefiting the Brits. It was all lies and pandering for politicians benefits.
  - socalgal2 1y ago
    I always find it so confusing - the same people that want group X (Palestinans, Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, etc....) to have their own government/country, hate that Brits want to control their own country.
    - wavemode 1y ago
      You're talking about two very different sentiments. People see leaving the EU as a foolish decision. But Britain has every right to make that decision if it wants. I don't know of anyone outside of Britain who "hates" that they left (in the sense of feeling anger or offense). In fact a lot of the sentiment tends to be more like "good riddance".
      - nasmorn 1y ago
        Interestingly there seems to be even more foreigners working in London now than before Brexit. Just with less rights I guess.
    - 1y ago
WickyNilliams 1y ago
I honestly think you are vastly overestimating how much buyer's regret there is, or even any sense of Brexit being wrong. Brexit wasn't wrong, it's everything else that was wrong! The politicians didn't enact it decisively enough. The EU punished us. The media lied about it. The "remainiacs" did everythig in their power to stop it. etc etc To many, Brexit is their political identity and it is a politics of blame and grudges

thechao 1y ago

The MAGA ideologues can stay cultists longer than we can stay solvent? I'm in Texas, and I've got a neighbor, down the road, who was in custom home construction; he's out of business now. Why? He can't import lumber, reliably; he used to hire "under the table", and he bought small steel supplies in bulk from Alibaba. So... pretty much his entire business model is kaput. He keeps telling me that, any day now, Trump's 11D chess moves are going to make him (my neighbor) solvent again. He just sold his (white) truck, and is selling his house. Still flying his Trump flag, though.

reactordev 1y ago
11D, got to wait for the 12D move to fix everything. /s
franktankbank 1y ago
Big if true. One more ; ought to do it.
platevoltage 1y ago
Sounds like the type that buys lottery tickets every week actually believing that they will hit one day. Just a matter of time.
silisili 1y ago
I think this is probably the same phenomenon that makes people fall for romance scams despite the obvious red flags. Like a sunk cost fallacy for human emotion - is there a term for that? Nobody seems to want to admit they were wrong or 'had', so do the alternative - being had even more.
- ivape 1y ago
  I think it has a lot to do with who you are admitting it to. Let say you know you are wrong, but you have to admit it to your enemy. Many emotional people would rather die than do that, hah (over my dead body!). Unfortunately, this is the end-state of arousing politics. There's a whole media industry around making politics emotional now days, and quite frankly we really need it to go back to boring men and women discussing boring things on CSPAN. It was never meant for the average American (or Britain), simply because it takes too much dumbing down to make it palatable for ordinary people. It's OKAY not to know what is the right thing to do about global trade. The political-media-industrial-complex survives by making people believe they actually know what they are talking about. It's very difficult to suggest to someone "hey, even though you invested thousands of hours ingesting this content, you actually don't know anything about it" - who wants to admit that, first to themselves, and second to your enemy? Your Ben Shapiros, your Tuckers, Rogans, Maddows, Jon Stewarts are part of the industrial complex. We need to find an off-ramp for people that lets them keep their dignity while accepting ignorance. I personally don't have any ideas on how to do this because here in tech, you either know your stuff or you don't, there's no ego when you don't know (you'll just look stupid).
  - konstmonst 1y ago
    China did it better - most of their managers are engineers. US needs to make use of this pattern. Oh, and add an IQ and an EQ test as a requirement to being a president.
  - silisili 1y ago
    You make good points. There is obviously the nature of admitting to enemies that you were wrong that you touch on. What I'm referring to is admitting to yourself that you're wrong, which seems much harder to do. I just experienced this recently even in comments. For the record, I'm not a Trump hater, I'm rather neutral on politics. But in a recent interview Trump made an absolute fool of himself re: some guys hand tattoos. I felt secondhand embarrassment even watching it. Yet there were so many defenders show up, to explain what he -really- meant, or that he knew it was wrong but was proving a point, etc. I just don't get the mindset. Sometimes it's ok to admit the person you admire made a mistake. But not in the US, apparently. Because too many people have tied not only their identity but income to it.
spacemadness 1y ago
It sucks having some semblance of critical thinking skills as an American. It grows more painful every day and I'd rather just give myself a lobotomy at this point. I'm sure it felt similarly for many folks during Brexit who knew better.
segfault88 1y ago
This is a quote from Carl Sagan: > One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ethbr1 1y ago
  The first step to getting out from under a charlatan is admitting you were an idiot. Some people seem constitutionally incapable of ever doing that.
- andrekandre 1y ago
  > It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. religion and fandom can be like this as well...
CoastalCoder 1y ago
I'm curious how he reconciles his "under the table" payments with the Republican party's supposed "law and order" platform.

gm3dmo 1y ago

The other 51 percent for are sophisticated economic analysts who ended up hoarding toilet paper and pasta during Covid.

tialaramex 1y ago

Still plenty (nowhere close to a majority, but more than a few nutters) who are certain the problem is we didn't have a hard enough Brexit. The reason the scientific method is considered an actual discovery is that this whole "In light of new data I realise I was wrong" just isn't how we tend to behave. For many Leave voters, the fact they voted Leave necessarily means voting Leave was correct - some of them rationalise this as "I was lied to" => "Maybe Leave was the wrong choice but I was misinformed" plenty more reached "Leave was correct but politicians screwed up Leaving somehow, it's not my fault". The current iteration of the Nigel Farage party, named Reform, takes this sort of line. Once I was writing about the Achilles and the Tortoise story in GEB where the Tortoise rejects Modus Ponens and Achilles discovers, the hard way, that it's useless to argue any point with an interlocutor who rejects this principle. Somebody else on HN pointed out that most people probably would not accept Modus Ponens. And they're probably right, as hopeless as that outcome is.

navane 1y ago
The Italian socialist opposed joining ww1. The nationalists wanted to join, and the Italians joined, on the British and French side. They fought so bad that the British had to send troops to the new Austrian - Italian front, effectively weakening the allied effort and thus the spoils of the war were none for the Italians. Who did the fascists blame, the nationalist for joining this folly? No, the socialists for sabotaging their efforts.
- disqard 1y ago
  Thank you for sharing that! TIL that the resulting defeat was soundly milked by Mussolini and friends to rise to power. If at first you don't succeed, blame the Voices of Reason (and demonize them), until you do succeed.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    For some people, the most important goal isn't success but power. Failure is fine, as long as they retain power.

stouset 1y ago

As an American, is that the generally-accepted viewpoint now? That Brexit was a mistake? If so, do people feel like it was an honest mistake, or do people generally believe that the politicians and businesspeople who supported it were either incompetent or hoping to benefit personally at everyone else's expense? Something else? I'm asking because I'd really like to believe that there's a point where a convincing majority of Americans will wake up and realize that Republican (and particularly Trump) politics are a sham and have been unabashedly so since at least the first Trump administration. I would like that, but I'm not hopeful at this point.

navane 1y ago
I'm not in England but in mainland Europe and yes, I don't know a single person who sees Brexit benefiting the Brits. It was all lies and pandering for politicians benefits.
- socalgal2 1y ago
  I always find it so confusing - the same people that want group X (Palestinans, Kurds, Tibetans, Catalonia, etc....) to have their own government/country, hate that Brits want to control their own country.
  - wavemode 1y ago
    You're talking about two very different sentiments. People see leaving the EU as a foolish decision. But Britain has every right to make that decision if it wants. I don't know of anyone outside of Britain who "hates" that they left (in the sense of feeling anger or offense). In fact a lot of the sentiment tends to be more like "good riddance".
    - nasmorn 1y ago
      Interestingly there seems to be even more foreigners working in London now than before Brexit. Just with less rights I guess.
  - 1y ago

WickyNilliams 1y ago

I honestly think you are vastly overestimating how much buyer's regret there is, or even any sense of Brexit being wrong. Brexit wasn't wrong, it's everything else that was wrong! The politicians didn't enact it decisively enough. The EU punished us. The media lied about it. The "remainiacs" did everythig in their power to stop it. etc etc To many, Brexit is their political identity and it is a politics of blame and grudges