Exploring Remainers’ anger
Personal insults help no-one, and it’s awful to see that people are resorting to them in response to you, Owen. Still, I think it’s worth exploring where a lot of Remainers' anger comes from, in order to understand it. It’s not disrespect of democracy, it’s a combination of love and frustration:
- Love of their country, and not wanting to see it take a potentially disastrous path.
- Frustration that this path is so potentially disastrous, and yet we’re going down it without stopping to decide if we really want to go through with it now we know more about it.
You and your family are in a car and vote 3:2 to drive it off a cliff. Then the driver puts their foot down towards the cliff. You obviously want to stop the driver. You feel a combination of love, anger, frustration, confusion and self-preservation. And yet no matter how much you shout to the rest of the family about how bad an idea it is, they’re convinced it’s either a great idea or at least an irreversible one.
You think 'surely the driver will be sensible enough to stop this literal car crash from happening.’ But the driver keeps going, chanting 'car crash means car crash, it’s the will of the family.’ You can see in the driver’s eyes that they know they’re doing something crazy, but they’re doing it anyway and telling you it’s the only option.
Now, Brexit may or may not turn out to be a car crash. But in many Remainers’ eyes, it either definitely is, or it’s too big a risk to carry out in the rushed way it’s being done. So it’s not about disrespecting democracy, it’s about democracy making a crazy decision, and there being a disappointing lack of people in power representing the view that it’s a crazy decision.
Without a strong voice in Parliament, Remainers have few places to turn other than screaming into the void at the perceived insanity of their beloved family driving towards a cliff, with them in the car.
