Lance Dopestrong wrote:I'm in no ones 'side' except my own. I can see pros and cons both ways, and being retired with several im dependent income streams I'm fairly well insulated from it. Ultimately, whether the UK is in or out is of little concern to me. What I don't like though is being told that I'm a (insert childish name or rude word) if I were to vote a certain way.
Reason with me, inform me, persuade me, and do so in a polite and adult manner, and I will respond positively. Start getting ansty with me and, like many waverers, I'll dig my heels in. The left pushed the middle ground away with such behaviour, and having done so are in denial and still continuing with the same tactics. Let's see where it gets them.
Best of three, anyone?
The insults seem to be not about the way someone voted but rather about their lack of reason; or their made-up-stuff "reasons". One can understand the angst and subsequent heated language, as people believe a decision (a vote one way or the other) has been made that will have extremely serious consequences. But many (most) seem to have voted based on some sort of infantile emotional state rather than their own (or anyone else's) self-interest. The consequences are now always portrayed in extreme and often hysterical language.
I find a lot of my friends and acquaintances voted leave. At first I attempted to ask them why, in a genuinely interested way (I was a near non-voter because I had no confidence in my ability to understand the consequences, one way or another). It rapidly became clear that no leaver had any reasons other than a set of xenophobic prejudices of some degree, wafted into a hot burn by reading of the Daily Hate Mail and/or The Torygraph. The remainers also seemed to lack their own reasons, other than the more liberal inclination not to hate foreigners or fear multi-culturalism, as recommended by The Grauniad or similar.
I know of no one at all who voted based on their own everyday experiences. All of their thinking on the matter was dictated by the mass media, who are shallow, partisan and (these days) mostly lumps of potted PR from various PR agencies in the employ or various axe-grinders.
I still think very few have any real understanding of the consequences, one way or the other. I know I don't (other than worrying about the history lesson of a fragmented and nationalistic Europe). The government certainly doesn't - wishful thunks all 'round.
In all events, I avoid the subject like the plague now. People have not so much lost all reason (they never had it) as gained a set of hysterical knee-jerk responses to any issue about Brexit that might arise.
Cugel
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
