Moving Abroad

Earlier this year I moved to a different country.

Whenever I think I've got accustomed to this country's differences, something happens. A minister proposes having companies publish lists of the numbers of non-British employees working on them. A newspaper denounce judges as Enemies of the People for having the audacity to rule that parliament must have a vote on government actions which remove rights from its citizens.  And then you realise: it's only just begun.

A large proportion of the American population have just moved to the same country. For which I can issue a guarded "hello". I would say "welcome", except the country we've all moved to doesn't welcome outsiders —it views them with suspicion, especially if they are seen as different in any way. Language, religion and skin tone are the usual markers of "difference", but not sharing the same fear and hatred of others highlights you as a threat.

Because we have all moved from an apparently civilised country to one where it turns out half the people are the pitchfork waving barbarians who are happy to burn their opponents. That while we thought that humanity had put behind them the rallies for "the glorious leader" who blamed all their problems on the outsider —be it The Migrant, the Muslim, The Jew, The Mexican or some other folk demon, we hadn't; we'd just been waiting for glorious leaders that looked slightly better on colour TV.

One thing I've seen in the UK is that whenever something surfaces which shows how much of a trainwreck things will be (collapse in exchange rates, banks planning to move), the brexit advocates are unable to recognise or accept that they've made a mistake. Instead they blame: "the remainers", the press "talking down the country", the civil service "secretly working against brexit", the judicial system (same); disloyal companies. Being pro-EU is becoming as much a crime as being from the EU.

That's not going to go away: it's only gong to amplify as the consequences of brexit become apparent. Every time the Grand Plan stumbles, when bad news reaches the screens, someone will be needed to take the blame. And I know who it's going to be here in England —troublemakers like me.

We're sitting through a history book era. And not in a good way.

If there's one change from the past, forty years from now, PhD students studying the events, "the end of the consensus", "the burning of the elites", "the rise of the idiotocracies", or whatever it is called, they'll be using Facebook post archives and a snapshot of the twitter firehose dataset to model society. That is: unless people haven't gone back and deleted their posts/tweets to avoid being recorded as Enemies of the State

-Steve

ps: Happy Kristallnacht/Berliner Mauer Tag to all! If you are thinking of something to watch on television tonight, consider: The Lives of Others