Brexit and the Hate Binge

At work, some Englanders spoke with shock and horror at the outcome of the Brexit election. They sounded like me a few weeks ago, trying to explain Trump to a man in Bristol. Not Trump, but how he could have happened.

At work, theories from the well-informed Englanders and us less-well-informed Americans, Chileans, Indians, and Chinese ranged widely, and no doubt there’s a little bit of truth in each theory. My theory is quite gloomy, so I didn’t share it.

When it was just the United States, just Trump, it was easy to point fingers. Oh, those conniving Republicans, see what their scheming has wrought. Oh, those Democrats, see how they didn’t stem the tide of war and now we’re paying for it. If only we’d invested in education or not repealed the Fairness Doctrine, Fox News and fact-free campaigns wouldn’t happen.

But it’s not just the United States. There’s a rising tide of hate-filled nationalism around the world. It’s been rising since before the Syrian refugee crisis. I’ve been a self-centered American most of my life, and so I’m not really sure when it started rising. Before 9/11.

The cause, I fear, is something I read about in Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. In that book he writes about civilizations who ran through their resources, refused to realize it, and disappeared even though adaptation was easy. Well, we’ve wrecked the planet so quickly that no one is sure if we can fix it, and I think every human on this planet can feel it in their bones.

We feel the doom, and grow desperate to avoid both the doom and the feeling. Focusing on Trump or Brexit or Assad feels comforting, but misses the point. The doom and the fear are killing us in equal measure, and if we don’t start adapting and stop indulging in fear and his twin hate, we’ll disappear as surely as the Anasazi and Greenland Vikings did.