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The Union Jack Delusion, or Moats and Walls

Forum:  Paradoxplaze.com
Plainly and simply put:  it is not fair!

Of course the Brits voted to exit the European Union--that is their right--but now the Europeans--a European is someone in Europe, but not an Englishman--are closing some of their offices in England, and going home.  And the newspapers report that the English are furious that they are leaving!  Why?  Why in God's name are they leaving?  If this is how the EU is going to behave, as all thinking Englishmen say, it is a good thing that Britain voted to leave first!

The English are going to make England great again!  You know, "The sun never sets on the Union Jack", and all that.  Retake India!  Destroy the Spanish armada!  Put a plug in the tunnel under the Channel!  Plum pudding.  Bangers.  As our Rumply President might have said, but didn't, it is a bigly decision.

[Not big:  bigly, as in "big league".]  Really bigly!  Nobody knew how bigly!

We, in stark contrast to the British, have adopted the Chinese model.  We do not have the advantage of a moat between us and our neighbors--a model the English have long admired--so we are building a wall that will keep us pure and unstained from the world.  Perhaps we could also call it a Berlin Wall model for dealing with difficulties.  Wall out, or wall in:  it doesn't work.

Stupidity!  Bigly stupid!

Let us put aside, for a moment, the short range difficulties of living together.  That is to say, let us not think of the human condition as a marriage.  It is an odd marriage, indeed, that does not have plenty of difficulties.  Everywhere in the world we demonstrate to each other that something in us distrusts people who are even a little different from us.

Where do those Anglo-Saxon Brits think the Angles and the Saxons came from?

I live in a part of the United States that once was claimed by Spain, and that was purchased from Mexico:  the Gadsden Purchase.  We have a partial wall between us and Mexico already, and families are staring through, and climbing over and flying over and sailing around the wall.  If only we had a Channel, as the English do:  that would be impassible, like a moat:  nobody ever got across a moat; not a big, beautiful moat!

The long range fact is that we human beings, after our birth in Africa, not far from where Barack Obama was born, have walked and sailed and flown almost everywhere; even to Hawaii, as Barack Obama did when he was only a day or two old.  But you knew that!  It is a factfact that for most of human history, we have been a danger to each other, especially when the "other" lived on the other side of the river, or channel, or wall.  We are the descendants of generations of human beings who had to be careful not to turn their backs to strangers.  Suspicion is deep within us, so deep that we can, and do, create conspiracy theories, almost without thinking.  Certainly without thinking seriously.

We generate racial stereotypes.  Guess who is coming to dinner!  Women are happiest when subservient to men.  White men are inherently good looking and smart and creative and peace-loving with minds designed to create empires, and make money, and rule over their households.  And women cook, and have really good fingers for sewing things.  And making babies.  (Not with their fingers:  that was badly said.  Men aren't good talkers.)

The future is not dependent on moats and walls.
The future will go to those who know what it is to be human beings, together.



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