Even as a Remain voter, this is a very disappointing twitter thread, actually. Incredibly patronising and insulting. This is actually one of the reasons Leavers have so much anger against Remainers, I reckon.
Even as a Remain voter, this is a very disappointing twitter thread, actually. Incredibly patronising and insulting. This is actually one of the reasons Leavers have so much anger against Remainers, I reckon.
It's like our camp has learned absolutely nothing
Nah, bloke is spot on. Brexit is irrational recklessness voted for by the ignorant.
Blue Eyes wrote:Nah, bloke is spot on. Brexit is irrational recklessness voted for by the ignorant.
Find it ironic that you're backing up an overly-simplistic Twitter thread saying how Brexit is all about wanting to over-simplify the modern world.
It's not a helpful tweet but it does sum up the state of things, I think. I don’t think it’s a particularly original thought, either. Brexit is insanity.
Blue Eyes wrote:It's not a helpful tweet but it does sum up the state of things, I think. I don’t think it’s a particularly original thought, either. Brexit is insanity.
But ultimately, like you say, it's unhelpful. My point wasn't to do with whether or not Leave voters are overwhelmingly uneducated rather than academic, but the point is, it doesn't matter. I also don't necessarily agree with the idea that Brexit was mostly decided by ignorance (for some voters, maybe) but that's a whole other discussion. The main problem with this Twitter thread is that it demonstrates a complete ignorance of the human psyche and like you say is unhelpful and so extremely counter-productive that it literally astonishes me why people are praising the tweet, even if its analysis is "correct" (which I'd dispute anyway but again, that's a whole other discussion).
It sort of reminds me of a guy with relatively strong Asperger's syndrome telling someone else why their opinion that their favourite videogame/movie/book is stupid in the attempt to push them towards something more "objectively correct". Whether or not the analysis holds up is completely and utterly irrelevant - it still is completely counter-productive as anyone who has ever interacted with a human before should know that insulting people is just going to get them to cling to their original beliefs more, it isn't going to make them change their mind. If anything, it'll actually make them dislike the person who is trying to convince them even more, and cause even more divisiveness. Which at the moment is the absolutely last thing we need when our country is still so split on the issue
I mean I'm at the point now where I am frustrated with both camps, in practicality terms the Leavers for sure (although I don't think Brexit will be an unmitigated disaster but this government isn't filling me with confidence and the potential opposition government is very unnerving) but the Remain camp is just shouting things from the sidelines as to how terrible things will be rather than actually making a case for how good things can be for people by staying in the EU (just like they did in the referendum - we've made zero progress whatsoever)
Even as a Remain voter, this is a very disappointing twitter thread, actually. Incredibly patronising and insulting. This is actually one of the reasons Leavers have so much anger against Remainers, I reckon.
It's like our camp has learned absolutely nothing
I agree with you on the Tweet thread, it’s overly simplistic and patronising.
The idea of “our camp has learned nothing” is odd though. I’ve seen it suggested (and I assume you were implying) that some people voted leave because of some Remainers being smug and thinking Leavers were idiots. Which if true, proves the point that they are idiots, voting in an important referendum in such a way is beyond stupid.
I don’t believe that though, there may have been a few that did (there are always idiots on all sides!), but there were a lot of reasons people voted leave. I believe they were all wrong, but there is no out and out reason why leave won.
Some were racist, some were stupid, some believed the lies on the NHS, some wanted more British sovereignty, some thought the EU was controlled by French/German bureaucrats, some thought they’d make personal money off of it, some believed it’d renew Britain’s place in the world.
Just saying that Remain was arrogant is too simplistic.
Even as a Remain voter, this is a very disappointing twitter thread, actually. Incredibly patronising and insulting. This is actually one of the reasons Leavers have so much anger against Remainers, I reckon.
It's like our camp has learned absolutely nothing
I agree with you on the Tweet thread, it’s overly simplistic and patronising.
The idea of “our camp has learned nothing” is odd though. I’ve seen it suggested (and I assume you were implying) that some people voted leave because of some Remainers being smug and thinking Leavers were idiots. Which if true, proves the point that they are idiots, voting in an important referendum in such a way is beyond stupid.
I don’t believe that though, there may have been a few that did (there are always idiots on all sides!), but there were a lot of reasons people voted leave. I believe they were all wrong, but there is no out and out reason why leave won.
Some were racist, some were stupid, some believed the lies on the NHS, some wanted more British sovereignty, some thought the EU was controlled by French/German bureaucrats, some thought they’d make personal money off of it, some believed it’d renew Britain’s place in the world.
Just saying that Remain was arrogant is too simplistic.
Yeah which I didn't imply, I was careful not to because it's falling into the same trap of oversimplification. What I did say was that being arrogant was counter-productive, and strengthened Leave voters' resolves (not that it was the reason - never heard any Leave voter say that was the main reason for their choice, that really would be dumb as hell).
I agree with you regarding no big reason Leave won, though. It's lots of little reasons that happened to add up to 52% of the electorate's main decision. Naturally some voters were racist, but I don't think wanting immigration reduced is necessarily inherently racist. For those who are racist I imagine this probably reinforced the vote to Leave, but the thing a lot of people don't ask themselves is why are these people so racist in the first place? I don't mean that as in there can ever be a "justification" for it, of course, but it's something I think as a country we need to explore rather than just dismissing them just because they're crappy people. I mean, they are, but we can't just ban racists from having the vote (as nice as it might be)
I don't think that percieved arrogance was there before the vote though particularly. If anything I think the Remain campaign didn't outline its credentials enough. For what should have been a home run it was a very poor effort.
DML wrote:I don't think that percieved arrogance was there before the vote though particularly. If anything I think the Remain campaign didn't outline its credentials enough. For what should have been a home run it was a very poor effort.
The arrogance was claimed at the time of the referendum. It was hard not to appear arrogant though, Remain were correct.
I’ve only read the headlines and looked at the dates on these articles, but the accusations of arrogance are there.
I think ignorance is ingrained on both sides. I'm very pro-remain but I doubt many EU supporters had an indepth understanding of the workings of the EU.
lex-man wrote:I think ignorance is ingrained on both sides. I'm very pro-remain but I doubt many EU supporters had an indepth understanding of the workings of the EU.
lex-man wrote:I think ignorance is ingrained on both sides. I'm very pro-remain but I doubt many EU supporters had an indepth understanding of the workings of the EU.
Most of the debate was pretty simplistic.
This is actually completely true. The amount of people I know on my FB who during the referendum were acting all high and mighty and posting about how 'intelligent people will vote remain' and 'academics are all in favour of it' yet didn't even understand the difference between the EU Commission (what most people have a problem with) and the EU Parliament, didn't know the extent/weight of EU policies on domestic matters, even the implications on trade was legitimately saddening.
Then of course we had Cameron implying threat of WW3 with Europe if we left and I think that's when a lot of people decided that the Remain campaign was a bunch of bullshit threats rather than an actual campaign to showcase the good things the EU does.
lex-man wrote:I think ignorance is ingrained on both sides. I'm very pro-remain but I doubt many EU supporters had an indepth understanding of the workings of the EU.
Most of the debate was pretty simplistic.
This is actually completely true. The amount of people I know on my FB who during the referendum were acting all high and mighty and posting about how 'intelligent people will vote remain' and 'academics are all in favour of it' yet didn't even understand the difference between the EU Commission (what most people have a problem with) and the EU Parliament, didn't know the extent/weight of EU policies on domestic matters, even the implications on trade was legitimately saddening.
Then of course we had Cameron implying threat of WW3 with Europe if we left and I think that's when a lot of people decided that the Remain campaign was a bunch of bullshit threats rather than an actual campaign to showcase the good things the EU does.
To be fair Cameron never said that the UK leaving the EU would cause WW3 he said it would make war more likely.
lex-man wrote:I think ignorance is ingrained on both sides. I'm very pro-remain but I doubt many EU supporters had an indepth understanding of the workings of the EU.
Most of the debate was pretty simplistic.
This is actually completely true. The amount of people I know on my FB who during the referendum were acting all high and mighty and posting about how 'intelligent people will vote remain' and 'academics are all in favour of it' yet didn't even understand the difference between the EU Commission (what most people have a problem with) and the EU Parliament, didn't know the extent/weight of EU policies on domestic matters, even the implications on trade was legitimately saddening.
Then of course we had Cameron implying threat of WW3 with Europe if we left and I think that's when a lot of people decided that the Remain campaign was a bunch of bullshit threats rather than an actual campaign to showcase the good things the EU does.
To be fair Cameron never said that the UK leaving the EU would cause WW3 he said it would make war more likely.
Not an entirely unreasonable thing to say given that one of the EU's original purposes was to stop another war in Europe after two horrific world wars. And in that the EU has so far succeeded.
I love how Davis went from "Brexit will be a land of Milk and Honey" to "Look, Brexit at least won't make us into an apocalyptic waste land" and no one blinks an eye