Blind Leading the Blind: Donald Trump Explains Brexit

It's two bad ideas up close and personal. For the Americans-Donald Trump. For the Brits: Brexit.

"This week, the people of the United Kingdom might choose, for no obvious reason, to inflict grievous harm on their own economy. On Thursday, voters in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland will head to the polls for a referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union, the group of nations with which the U.K. does a plurality of its trade. If the so-called Bremain side wins, nothing changes — Britain remains in the EU, and those trade relationships will be undisturbed. But if the Brexit camp wins and the U.K. says so long to Europe's economic community, economists expect a lot of unpleasantness to ensue, beginning with significant short-term financial dislocations (read, markets tanking) and in decades ahead making the average Briton significantly poorer — thousands of dollars per year in lost income — than she would otherwise be. As of Monday evening, the markets give Brexit something like a 40 percent chance of happening."

"Why would the British choose to do something so obviously against their own self-interest? Why would they voluntarily take money out of their own pockets? What’s the matter with East Anglia? Those are not easy questions to answer, but the rise of Donald Trump here does help to explain what is going on across the pond."

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/06/how-donald-trump-explains-brexit.html

Indeed. After all, Brexit and Trump are both things totally against the nation's self interest, yet here they are.

"If voters decide to leave on June 23, the United Kingdom would secede from the 28-member European Union and would then be stuck trying to figure out what kind of new ties it wants with Europe and the world. This would be complicated, to say the least — and there are no great options. It could go it alone, setting up new trade and immigration deals nation by nation — but it would do so with market clout equivalent to about 4 percent of world GDP, versus the European Union’s one-quarter. Or it could try to go the way of Norway, maintaining free trade and open borders with the bloc, abiding by a bunch of European regulations, while losing its influence in Brussels. But since the EU's regulations are a major reason why many Britons are dissatisfied with the relationship, it's difficult to imagine that route."

I think to make sense of this you have to go back to Stephen Colbert: it's not about 'Truth or facts' it's about Truthiness.

"Truthiness, as defined by Colbert in the segment, is the quality of knowing something in your gut, or your heart, as opposed to in your head. “I don’t trust books. They’re all facts, no heart,” as Colbert put it. He added: “We are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart.” Later, Colbert made fun of George W. Bush’s disastrous nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, a move Bush defended by saying, “I know her heart.”

"In other words, in its original definition, “truthiness” was really about the power of emotion in guiding reasoning and our beliefs — and trumping calmer, more rational reflection. Later, Colbert elaborated:

Truthiness is, ‘What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.’ It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality."
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/04/09/460253/stephen-colbert-scientific-pioneer-the-truth-in-truthiness/

Or as Colbert would put it: Think about it. I haven't. 

See how, years ago he used the word 'trumping.' It's not about the truth, but truthiness. And in terms of truthiness, Trump and Brexit make a lot of sense.