Right about now, you might be nervously wondering: what happens if Trump gets re-elected? After all, there’s still very much a sophisticated plan to kill democracy with 50 January 6ths, thwart the vote, and strangle the peaceful transfer of power — and the GOP’s only growing more extreme and violent by the day, now openly, brutally rejecting the idea of even pretending to want a democracy.
There’s a country in the world which teaches us America’s future if the GOP comes to power again, and that country, sadly, stupidly, is…Britain. You might not believe it, because Americans of a certain kind are used to thinking of Britain as its older, wiser cousin — but these days, that’s far from the case: it’s more like America’s drunk, staggering, idiot uncle. Britain these days is like turbo-America, maybe just sans the guns.
Let’s begin at the beginning. How badly is Britain really doing — and how does it show us America’s future in the hands of the GOP? You think prices are skyrocketing in America — and they are. Yet inflation’s cooling off a bit in America — though it’ll continue to be high, because, well, a dying planet isn’t exactly a friendly one to the manufactured plenitude an industrial-carbonized civilization. But in Britain? Inflation’s going to hit 13%. And that’s just the forecast — the reality will probably exceed it. Where does that leave Brits? Getting poorer at lightspeed.
Their real incomes are cratering, and that’s a very, very bad thing for a society, but we’re going to come to all that.
Why is inflation so high in Britain — and why would re-electing Trump or his ilk have a similar effect in America? Well, inflation’s a global phenomenon, precisely because climate change is now having shocking macro-scale effects that weren’t “supposed” to happen until 2050 or so: it’s causing worldwide crop failures, killing harvest, drying up rivers, putting entire continents into drought. But Britain has an additional layer on top of all that: the self-destruction of Brexit. You see, Britain has always had to import food and energy from Europe — but now, huge, huge amounts of red tape, tariffs, fees, and forms stand in the way of all that. So prices are now rising permanently to a new post-Brexit equilbrium. French cheese, wine, German beer? Yesterday, easy — no barriers. Today? All those barriers mean it’s got to get way, way more expensive.
Now. How does that relate to America? Brexit was the ultimate folly — protectionism, caused by nationalism. What’s Trump likely to do? Well, the very first thing he’s probably going to do is start a trade war with China all over again. This kind of thing pleases fanatics on both the right and the left. And while it’s true that China’s labour standards would make Dickens blush and Marx chuckle — a trade war isn’t going to help anyone. All it’s going to do is raise prices for Americans. All that ultra-cheap plastic stuff Americans are used to buying without a second thought from Amazon and Walmart? That made-in-China lifestyle? Kiss it goodbye, and while that might be a good thing in the long run, there’s a far, far better way to do it than just cutting off trade and passing the costs onto people.
Brexit was Britain doing something incredible, unprecedented in modern history — a nation effectively putting sanctions on itself. Remember when Trump didn’t just start a mini trade war with China — but also alienated Europe? That was in the relatively good old days, of the 2010s, when climate-fueled inflation hadn’t yet started to skyrocket. Now, though? It’s a very, very different story — can you really afford the inflation caused by nationalism on top of what you’re already paying? I didn’t think so, and yet our story’s only barely begun — with the story of Americans getting much, much poorer, fast, just like Brits are, imploding into Weimaresque or maybe Victorian levels of poverty and despair.
Why did Brexit happen? Britain’s fanatics discovered the oldest trick in the book. Scapegoating. They scapegoated Europeans for Britain’s problems. And the amazing thing is that Brits fell for it — the entire nation became hostile to Europeans, to the point that the number of Europeans moving to Britain has fallen by 90%. That’s almost 100% — the equivalent point of….ethnic cleansing. That is how much Brits came to genuinely hate and despise and loathe Europeans, because they were told, in Big Lie after Big Lie, that those dirty, filthy, lazy, greedy yet impoverished Europeans were taking their jobs and after their kids and wives and whatnot. Trump, of course, will do the same, and you know that — but my point’s not that.
It’s that scapegoating doesn’t work. By definition. It doesn’t solve the real problem or problems, it just hides them, behind a Wicker Man to burn down and rage at and spit on. So hating Europeans didn’t solve Britain’s problems — it just made them worse. What did Britain’s lunatics and fanatics then do? They found a new scapegoat, which was…immigrants, gays, women, kids.
Let me give you an example. Remember when Trump had concentration camps? Britain’s going arguably one step further. In violation of international law, despite protests by international bodies like the UN High Commissions, it’s “removing” refugees to…Rwanda. Rwanda is a sham democracy run by a dictator — a “President” who’s been in power since the early 2000s and will likely be until the 2030s. It’s ratings on human rights and basic freedoms are abysmal. Think about it: if anyone else were forcibly taking people to another country, we’d call it human trafficking.
Yet here, it’s a kind of “business deal” — Britain’s paying Rwanda ludicrous amounts of money for…this…vulgarity, this insult to democracy. Because after all, Britain still has obligations under international law, one of which is not to forcibly send people it doesn’t like to some tinpot dictatorship.
When Britain does it, it ruins the good reputation it once had, and makes it a laughingstock. But now imagine Trump doing it. He signs a “deal” with some country…some serial abuser of human rights…a place run by a dictator and his men with guns…to send people he doesn’t like there.
Chilling? I thought so. Now it takes on a whole new dimension, and it should, because coming from a party and demagogue happy with concentration camps, it’s all too easy to see how that morphs into sending all those immigrants and refugees you hate to another country entirely. Hey! Just business! And if a few Americans end up caught in the gears of that infernal machine — and if they happen to brown, black, gay, critics, opponents — well, just a mistake, right?
Big Lie after Big Lie. Europeans are responsible for our problems! Wait, we still have problems! We’re still getting poorer, us “real” British! I know, let’s send some people we don’t like to another country, and give the masses something new to thrill them, to give them a rush of supremacy, contempt, spite, a new two minutes hate.
The worst part? It worked. Almost half of Brits “support” this insane “policy,” which is of course such a gross rejection of democracy that Mussolini would be proud. Think about that. This is what Brits became — and just a few decades ago, they were envied the world over for being generally polite, kind, thoughtful, funny, and wise (even if they got a little drunk on holiday.) Now, though? Britain’s the kind of country that aggressively cheers on self-destruction, drunkenly applauds wrecking its own democracy.
So go ahead and think about how many Americans would eat it up if Trump announced, suddenly, that the concentration camps, this time around, wouldn’t even be in America — they’d be in Rwanda. Can you imagine how his base would erupt? How many independents would be swayed? It’s a no-brainer for full-throated fascist movements to do such things, because, by the way, forcible deportation is a literal textbook crime against humanity. And fascist movements feed on such things.
This is the vicious cycle of scapegoating at work. First it was Europeans — then it was all immigrants and refugees. First it was hostility towards Europeans, then it was suddenly splitting up with Europe, even if that’d destroy the economy, then it was forcibly deporting people halfway around the world to a place designed to scare those poor people — and thrill the masses with supremacy and superiority, fuel their addiction to spite. And the sad truth? None of this worked, because scapegoating doesn’t.
What did all this really do? It had two effects, really: one, it disguised how badly broken Britain was becoming, and two, it broke the spirit of the people. Let me explain each of those.
While Brits were growing seduced by the Big Lies scapegoating hated others for their woes, their society was falling apart. I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean it literally. Today, Britain’s running out of water, half the country’s in drought, entire villages need trucked water bottles, taps and reservoirs are running dry, as are rivers — and that’s before I get to the government basically giving up and announcing it’s going to have to cut power this winter — and that’s before I get to the part where I talk about waiting hours for….ambulances…or months to see a…doctor.
Nothing works anymore in Britain, and I mean nothing. Americans, consider yourselves lucky because you have…post offices. Britain privatized its mail system, while the Big Lies of scapegoating were consuming the country, and the results were predictably disastrous. That’s true for all its systems, though.
“Water companies have come under criticism as England faces water shortages. Some homes have run out of water, rivers have turned dry and farmers are facing crop failures. Many are outraged at the companies for failing to invest in reservoirs, fix leaks and stop sewage pollution from their pipes.
“The bosses of England’s water companies have been criticised for banking £58m in pay and benefits over the last five years. Since privatisation, shareholders have been paid £72bn in dividends. The cash has come from big debts, with companies having borrowed £56bn, and big bills, with prices having risen 40%.”
Did you get that? Privatized water companies borrowed…56 billion…and paid shareholders all that and more…while the country’s running out of water. LOL. Who wrote this script? John Cleese…Galt?
The reason that nothing works in Britain anymore is simple — this is the future its fanatical leaders wanted. It once had a moderate brand of conservatives, like John Major — but now, it has this weird generation of fanatics, trained in America, radicalized into America’s favorite crackpot pseudo-philosophy: “libertarianism.” Only, they’ve now successfully gone further than America in many ways in building what the internet often mocks as libertarian utopia.
Don’t take it from me, take it from the former Prime Minister who describes Britain as a “failing state,” the columnist who calls it a “basketcase,” or the eminent economist who describes it as an “organized rip-off,” or the politicians who speak of “social catastrophe.” Or take it from the usually sober Economist: “Almost nothing seems to be working in Britain.” Welcome to libertarian paradise, everyone!! The next train is in…let’s see…27.3 hours…and it’s only stopping at the inferno, hell, and Satan’s man-cave.
Want to see libertarian utopia at work? Come to Britain. Like I said, even America has post offices. Britain has “post office” signs on…corner shops, because they’re supposed to double up. The incredible waiting lists for doctors…the fact that you might wait hours for an ambulance even if you’re (LOL) dying of a heart attack…is by design, it’s a product of underinvestment. Meanwhile, what libertarian offers as a fix for all this? “Freeports,” meaning…get this…zones where “normal” laws don’t apply, and you can…I guess…build sweatshops or use child labour or hope to do whatever else you like because no one’s really looking anyways. Hey, it’s a Freeport! Do whatever you like on your yacht, Vladimir. Guys, is that El Chapo docking in a nuclear submarine? Wait…Jesus…is that Xi Jinping himself on an 18th century gunship rowed by chained up 12 year olds? I kid, but you get the idea.
Now imagine what happens when the Trumpists get hold of this — that Britain’s gone further in building libertarian utopia in many ways than the States has, that It’s possible to be even more radical and ambitious in totally deconstructing the basic functions of a modern society. That no, nobody needs an NHS or BBC — it’s totally OK to wait six hours for an ambulance while you’re having a stroke and your face is melting off. That a society needs no working systems at all, and everything can be privatized, beginning with Post Offices to ambulances. Forget healthcare. Water systems? Food systems? Energy grids? The rule of law itself? Who needs them! LOL — it’s every for himself out here, I guess you’d better go get yourself an AK-47, tough guy! Hey, I hear there’s some gig work doing child labour down at the Freeport!
What happens then? Then they double down on their quest to “drown government in a bathtub” — except when it’s about building secret polices to check if kids and teachers are gay, or women are being “aided and abetted.” Bang. There goes any last vestige of a functioning society. Britain is a bumbling drunk at this project of social deconstruction — it doesn’t have the committed, hardened mass fascist movement America does. In America, it won’t just be about deconstructing functioning social systems — it’ll be about building shadow institutions, secret polices, morality polices, everyday vigilantism, the things of genuine authoritarianism. Imagine dystopian Britain’s attempt at libertarian utopia — but with guns, run by Trump, every neighborhood policed by a militant, and it all cheered on by the enraged Trumpets masses.
Are we having fun yet?
Meanwhile, the most incredible thing of all nobody in the country? Nobody much questions any of this. Not seriously, anyways. The people i quoted earlier are a minority in vast mediascape. Nobody much says things like, “Hey, guys? We’re a net importer of food and energy. So, uh, these Freeports? What are they exactly going to accomplish? We don’t net export! In fact, we struggle to get food and beer and cheese and wine from Europe.” Or, “Guys? Don’t you think it’s kind of a problem that Europeans don’t want come here anymore at rates of almost 100%? As in, doesn’t that say something about us, about the kinds of people we might have become? Do you think it’s good or wise to be so unfriendly, cruel, hostile? To even our oldest friends, who now don’t want anything to do with us? Is isolationism really wise on a burning planet”?
Nobody says it. Not enough, anyway. Because it’s taboo for the people who should say it — intellectuals, journalists, commentators — to mention it. You can’t talk about it in Britain. Any of it. From Brexit to the Big Lies to the way its fallen apart. Sorry, old chap. Bit impolite, don’t you think? In other words, social attitudes have changed. People have gotten used to all the above, and don’t really think it can be any other way. That’s what the fanatics wanted, of course. So imagine if that same sense of fatalistic despair sets in in America, too. Sorry, can’t talk about Trump’s latest abuse of power. How rude! Listen, that was in the past — you know, three whole days ago!
The result of all that? It’s been to break people’s spirits. It’s a terrible and sad thing to see. But the spirit of the British, has, after all this time, been well and truly broken. You see, Britain was the first country in the world to have a Labour party, and that mattered — a party of working people, not a Capital party, as in, a party of money. But now? The working people vote for capital, not, literally, Labour. They vote for privatization and being fleeced and ripping up their own social contracts and destroying their very own healthcare and water and energy systems. What the? Why would you do that? Why would anyone vote to..wait sixteen hours for an ambulance? To make their own cheese and beer more expensive?
Because they were seduced by the Big Lies of scapegoating. The poor bastards, they really fell for it. They believed if they just hated enough, things would get better. If they tore enough down, something would magically rise in its place. Think of how crazy a society has to be for the average working person to vote for a “Freeport” — a Shenzhen full of dormitory-slums pulling down your wages and standards and rights not just halfway across the world, but next door. These “anti-globalist” morons were voting for the very thing they loathed, they just didn’t know it.
Now imagine all that coming to America. That by virtue of that much scapegoating, that many Big Lies, people’s spirit breaks. They just give up on the idea it can ever be any other way. That’s not true in America yet — because Americans are, actually, more defiant and ornery than Brits. They haven’t succumbed to the fatalism that all there can be is dystopia, not quite yet, anyways, not fully — even if they don’t vote to be, say a modern social democracy like France, enough Americans still reject fanaticism, like Kansas’s referendum against the end of Roe, or the way America finally ejected Trump from power.
It’s not true in America yet, that Americans have finally given up on their future, to the point that most of them will just accept hate, spite, contempt, and supremacy as a substitute for a working society. I can’t get a functioning modern society, I get it — so just give me someone to hate, someone “subhuman,” I’ll settle for that, the cheap thrill of domination and subordination and superiority. I guess that’s the best deal I can get. Orwell chuckles from his little house in Kentish Town — because, amazingly, that’s not true about America today — but it is true in Britain. What’s remarkable about Britain today is that it’s fanatics didn’t just wreck its economy, systems, society, or even its politics — they broke its peoples spirit. And that is something which, once broken, is the hardest of all wounds to heal. In many societies, it never does. Once a society gives up on itself — the result is usually fatal, as it was in Russia.
So imagine that happens to America, too. Trump gets re-elected, purges government, and basically, as he does, one step at a time, accustoms Americans to the idea that he’ll be there forever, and then his kid Kim Jong Trump will. And Americans give up on the idea that they ever really had a democracy.
Want to know where it ends? Now you do. Say thank you to Britain, and then shed a tear for it. It’s hard to imagine a society teaching America a thing or two about collapse, but sometimes age doesn’t equal wisdom. It just equals decrepitude.
