"I'm going to call it: Europe is over. Not as a land mass, obviously.... But as a trading partner, cultural influence, serious political player and..."

"... most crucially, holiday destination, I think it is now safe to say that 'the Continent,' as we little Englanders have always somewhat solipsistically styled it, is finished... It’s on fire. Literally on fire.... And when it’s not on fire, it’s 45 degrees in the shade.... [A]ll my soppy liberal friends whinge on about how Brexit means their kids can’t go and live and work in Europe as easily as we once could.... But why would they want to? I spent a year working in Paris when I graduated, and it was ghastly. Couldn’t wait to come home. When Hemingway, nostalgic for good times with Gertrude Stein, Proust, Picasso, Simone de Beauvoir etc, called Paris 'a moveable feast' he meant if you’re a loaded, pansexual waster. But if you were a Jew or an Algerian around that time, it was more of a moveable abattoir. My family, mainland European on all sides, fled their homes for Britain between 1900 and 1939 because it was the only safe and decent place to be within a thousand miles. And I fear it is becoming so again...."

Writes Giles Coren, in "Our love affair with Europe is over, at last/They don’t want us to visit or buy their houses, and now they’ve dressed Harry Kane up as a Bavarian beer-hall bully" (London Times).

"Truss is a Conservative. She’s 47 years old, and has been an MP for 12 years and a Cabinet minister for eight..."

"... serving under three prime ministers. Her current gig is foreign secretary, meaning she’s also the country’s point person for post-Brexit EU relations — so if you’re reading this in Brussels, you may already be rolling your eyes at this turn of events. She starts work Tuesday as Johnson exits stage left, knife wounds still healing. Truss is married to accountant Hugh O’Leary, with whom she has two daughters. The incoming U.K. leader was born in Oxford, and grew up in Scotland and then Leeds, in the north of England, attending a school she later accused of setting 'low expectations' for its pupils. She also had a spell in Canada before belatedly settling into the tried-and-tested route to Westminster — a degree in philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University."

From "Everything you wanted to know about Liz Truss but were too afraid to ask/Swot up on Britain’s incoming prime minister as Boris Johnson heads for the exit." 

That's in Politico, the European edition, where I learned a new expression: "swot up." 

"This is the moment for a Rooseveltian approach to the U.K. The country has gone through a profound shock. But in those moments, you have the opportunity to change, and to do things better."

Said Boris Johnson, quoted in "A Surprising Role Model Emerges for Boris Johnson: F.D.R./The British prime minister, trying to regroup in the coronavirus pandemic, wants to bury Thatcherism and embark on a program of ambitious public works" (NYT).

Mr. Johnson is a Conservative populist who ran on a platform of pulling Britain out of the European Union and had, until now, modeled himself on Roosevelt’s wartime ally, Winston Churchill....

One of [Johnson's] closest advisers, Michael Gove, recently [said]... “Roosevelt recognized that, faced with a crisis that had shaken faith in government, it was not simply a change of personnel and rhetoric that was required, but a change in structure, ambition, and organization”....

“F.D.R. was someone who had an extraordinary intuitive feel for where the public was and what the mood of the country was,” said Robert Dallek, an American presidential historian who published a biography of Roosevelt in 2017. “Does someone like Boris Johnson have that?”

From The Guardian, "Absolutely fanciful': Boris Johnson's new deal not Rooseveltian, say critics/The PM wants to be put on the same pedestal as Franklin D Roosevelt as he unveils £5bn capital projects":

“The notion that he’s going to turn himself into FDR seems absolutely fanciful,” said professor Anand Menon, of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank. “FDR surrounded himself with experts, and drew on what they had to say, in a way that Boris Johnson so far has not.”

By the way, I'd avoid the figure of speech, "put on a pedestal." Things on pedestals are not doing well at the moment. They seem to be asking for a toppling.

But here in America, we don't put Franklin Roosevelt on a pedestal. Look, his statue is firmly planted on the ground, and he is seated in a wheelchair...



... not lording it over us at all.

"So this is it, the final chapter..."

"We love Europe, we just hate the European Union. It's as simple as that.... I'm hoping this begins the end of this project. It's a bad project. It isn't just undemocratic, it's anti-democratic, and it puts in that front row, it gives people power without accountability.... There is a historic battle going on now across the West, in Europe, America, and elsewhere. It is globalism vs. populism. And you may loathe populism, but I tell you a funny thing: it's becoming very popular."

"So graceless; so humourless. Au revoir EU."

Anyone feeling weirdly sentimental about our last day in Brussels should watch this. So graceless; so humourless. Au revoir EU. https://t.co/bRxJEj2PN2

— Isabel Oakeshott (@IsabelOakeshott) January 29, 2020

"We face the horror of Trump because the structure of American democracy gives disproportionate power to a declining demographic group passionately convinced of its right to rule."

"Trump, with his braying entitlement, his boastful ignorance, his sneering contempt for pluralism, is an avatar of a Republican Party desperate to return to the 1980s, or the 1950s, or maybe the 1910s. He can’t betray America if, to those who fetishize the 63 million, he embodies it.... Democrats didn’t want to impeach, but once they decided to, Trump’s insistence that his Electoral College victory grants him impunity didn’t work. For one night, democracy asserted itself....

Writes Michelle Goldberg in "The Tyranny of the 63 Million/Impeachment didn’t undermine democracy. It vindicated it" (NYT).

What happened to the reverence for the Framers and the Constitution? The Framers were not all for majoritarian democracy, exercised moment by moment. They came up with the Electoral College and presidential terms of 4 years.

Goldberg would validate day-to-day majoritarianism, but I suspect it's mainly because the people she likes are currently dominant in the most majoritarian part of the federal government. She is not taking into account the dangers and instability of majoritarianism.

(Look at the UK, with its Brexit, plunged into because they had a referendum and a surprise majority for the "wrong" side locked them into drastic change.)

"We broke the deadlock, we smashed the roadblock and a new dawn rises on a new day... getting Brexit done is the irrefutable, inarguable decision of the British people..."

"We will get Brexit done on time, by 31 January, no ifs, no buts, no maybes... put an end to those miserable threats of a second referendum," said Boris Johnson, quoted in The Sun, which has this front page displayed at Drudge:



Not sure what the dog symbolism there is, but don't let a dog put his tongue in your mouth. Does it have something to do with the non-Tories who crossed over and voted for Johnson to show they want Brexit? I understand the word "bollocks," and I'm guessing the "x" represents the x-mark on a ballot. If you listen to Johnson's speech (at the link) you'll hear him thank those nonconservatives who "lent" him their vote, and he talks about and gestures marking an "x" on the ballot. Is it The Sun characterizing these votes as saying "Bollocks!" to the resistance to Brexit? Still, why a dog?

I do some research. "Dog's bollocks" has an entry at Wikipedia. It's something irrelevant but interesting. It's this punctuation mark, which you can see in the Declaration of Independence:



Well... maybe the Declaration of Independence is a little bit relevant to Brexit, but there's no way the Sun's headline is about the old-timey punctuation mark.

Now, I see that there was a slogan "Bollocks to Brexit" in this last election. Obviously, that's the anti-Brexit side, the side that lost badly in yesterday's election. So the headline might want to express "Bollocks!" to the side that said "Bollocks to Brexit." Still, why a dog?

Maybe it's based on the idiom "a dog's breakfast." Fortunately, I have already done my research on "a dog's breakfast" — back in 2013. "A dog's breakfast" is just "a confused mess." But yesterday's election was very decisive, more a cleaning up of a confused mess than a confused mess. I abandon this line of thinking.

Googling, "dog brexit," I find "U.K. Holds A Pivotal General Election, And Voters Bring Their Dogs To The Polls" (NPR) and "Polling stations/Forget politics, focus on the puppies!" (Vox).

So, there you have it! Dogs are a symbol of voting in the UK, and that's been combined with the slogan "Bollocks to Brexit." The "dogs" (the people) voted for Brexit: — The "dog's" expression of "Bollocks!" went against those who were hoping to get the "dogs" to say "Bollocks to Brexit." The "x" drives home the idea that we're talking about voting.

IN THE COMMENTS: Nicholas said:

Ann, as an Englishman, let me help you out. The expression "the dog's bollocks" is pretty obscure and I cannot explain how it came into being, but sometime around the 90s, in laddish circles (i.e. typical readers of the Sun, which is like a simplified version of the NY Daily News) the expression began to be used as a term of approval and admiration. For example, a car that was "the dog's bollocks" was a car to be coveted and regarded as better than its competitors.

So... it's like "the bee's knees."

Attested since 1922, of unclear origin. There are several suggested origins, but it most likely arose in imitation of the numerous animal-related nonsense phrases popular in the 1920s such as the cat's pyjamas, cat's whiskers, cat's meow, gnat's elbow, monkey's eyebrows etc....

... the dog's bollocks.

It seems as though you can take any animal and add some body part (or — in the case of "the cat's pajamas" — an attribute that the animal doesn't even have).

“Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party appeared to be on course for a solid majority in the British Parliament...”

“... according to an exit poll. A victory in the general election on Thursday would cement Mr. Johnson’s claim to 10 Downing Street, paving the way for Britain’s exit from the European Union in less than two months. For the prime minister, whose brief tenure has been marked by legal reversals, scorched-earth politics and unrelenting chaos, it was an extraordinary vindication. Defying predictions that he would be tossed out of his job, Mr. Johnson now seems likely to lead Britain through its most momentous transition since World War II.”

The NYT reports.

Vegetable theater.

EU leaders: united over Brexit, divided over much else https://t.co/wYyrYLgrFs pic.twitter.com/aBqDqDqtYb

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) October 18, 2019

"That was how Theresa May’s premiership ended this week, wrecked by her blindness and secretive obstinacy, in loneliness, desertion and despair."

"That" = another damned "Game of Thrones" reference.

I'm reading "Theresa May Meets Her Lonely End/It would be understandable to feel sympathy for anyone so isolated and vilified. I don’t" by Jenni Russell in the NYT. Pretty melodramatic, no? We're in decline, I'm coming to think, and you see it in the need for TV-show-style narrative. I would prefer for our politics to be boring, but we've become addicted to politics as entertainment, and I don't think we'll find a way out. Writing that, I see that I'm being melodramatic... meta melodramatic. So far gone!

"McDonald's has made the decision to stop selling milkshakes when there's a Brexit rally nearby... Burger King U.K. came under fire after tweeting, 'Dear people of Scotland. We're selling milkshakes all weekend. Have fun.'"

From "Throwing milkshakes as a political statement makes a splash in Britain" (CBS News).

Is the entire cup thrown at the person or just the contents? I'm not sure, but this "milkshaking" seems to be the same activity as pie-throwing (where, usually, it's shaving cream in a pie tin, smashed into a person's face). I guess for milkshaking you don't need to get as close, and it's easy to buy your loaded weapon in a fast-food joint. In the UK, there's debate about whether this should actually be called "violence," but obviously it is.

Wikipedia has an entry for "milkshaking":

Milkshaking is a term that refers to the use of milkshakes and other drinks as a means of political protest in a manner similar to egging.

Well, with egging, the hard shell is always part of the projectile, and you've got to hit hard enough to break the egg.

The target of a milkshaking is usually covered in a milkshake that is thrown from a cup or bottle.

Usually... so perhaps sometimes the cup is also thrown.

The trend gained popularity in the United Kingdom in May 2019 during the European Parliament election and was used primarily against right-wing and far-right politicians and activists, such as Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage, Carl Benjamin, and members of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Brexit Party.

Robinson was the first one to be milkshaked, and when he got milkshaked the next day, he punched the person who did it.

In American slang, "milkshake," used as a noun, refers to a woman's body "and the way she carries it." Urban Dictionary has various entries for "milkshake," the verb, going back to 2005, including the idea of throwing a milkshake at someone, from 2013. That doesn't have the political-theater angle, just a mindless prank, done from a moving car, aimed at a random pedestrian. The British activity is also there, entered 2 days ago.

And here's the rather extensive Wikipedia article on pie throwing. Excerpt:

The probable originator of pieing as a political act was Thomas King Forcade, the founder of High Times magazine. In 1970, Forcade pied Otto N. Larsen, the Chairman of the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography; his action was called the first Yippie pieing[.] Aron Kay, also a Yippie, went on to take up Forcade's pieing tactics. Kay pied, among many others, William F. Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, and Andy Warhol....

Though pieing may not have been a political protest before 1970, pieing appeared — almost appeared — in the great 1964 film "Dr. Strangelove," and the context was distinctly political:

But for a last-minute change of Kubrick’s heart, the moment of reckoning was to be preceded with a riotous battle with pastries from the War Room buffet table. The fight, which was shot but cut out before the final print, begins with Soviet Ambassador de Sadeski (Peter Bull) responding to the threat of a strip search by hurling a custard pie at US general Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), which misses and hits the American president.

“Gentlemen,” rallies Turgidson, holding his wounded leader (Peter Sellers) in his arms, “our beloved president has been infamously struck down by a pie in the prime of his life! Are we going to let that happen? Massive retaliation!” Chaos ensues in fast-motion, in a manner recalling the silent slapstick of Mack Sennett and the Keystone Cops....

"Eventually, Strangelove fires off a gun and shouts ‘Ve must stop zis childish game! Zere is Verk to do!’ The other characters sit around on the floor and play with custard cream like children building sandcastles. ‘I think their minds must have snepped from the strain,’ Strangelove announces."

Pie throwing goes way back — to stage shows and silent movies. The first is the 1909 film "Mr. Flip." There are many many pie-in-face bits in the movies but (judging from the Wikipedia article) the ultimate was this 2-minute sequence from "The Battle of the Century" (1927) with Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy:



Stop! Stop! This has gone far enough! Love thy neighbor!

A beautiful and disturbing photograph.

"Ahmedabad, India/Muslim brides-to-be gather for a mass wedding ceremony" (The Guardian).

From an excellent collection of photographs, here.

ADDED: Here's a completely accidental juxtaposition I caused by dropping another one of those photographs into a message to Meade and then, several minutes later, dropping in this photograph — from Twitter — of an Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher:

I love the chiming colors! And the big pointy beaks are such a neat repetition.

By the way, "Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher" sounds very politically incorrect. They might want to change that. Not only are "oriental" and "dwarf" problematic words, but "Kingfisher" calls to mind the "Amos 'n' Andy" character.

"Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday suffered a humiliating defeat over her plan to withdraw Britain from the European Union..."

"... thrusting the country further into political chaos with only 10 weeks to go until it is scheduled to leave the bloc. The 432-to-202 vote to reject her plan was one of the biggest defeats in the House of Commons for a prime minister in recent British history.... Now factions in Parliament will seek to seize the initiative, an unpredictable new stage in the process of withdrawing from Europe, known as Brexit.... With no consensus behind any one pathway, and a vanishing window for further negotiation, more radical solutions are rising to the fore. One group of lawmakers is campaigning for a repeat referendum, which could overturn the mandate to leave, and another favors leaving the European Union on March 29 without a withdrawal agreement, a move that experts warn could lead to shortages of some foods and an economic downturn."

From "Theresa May’s Brexit Deal Is Crushed by Parliament, Sending Britain Into Uncharted Waters" (NYT).

UPDATE: A poll. Haven't done a poll in a while....

A revote is...

completely unfair. You can't have do-overs until you win.

absurd not to be able to do. If it's a bad idea, it shouldn't be that there's no way out.

I'm sorry but I don't like only having those 2 options.

 

pollcode.com free polls

An excellent press conference — Donald Trump and Theresa May.

"In the interview with The Sun, Mr. Trump second-guessed Mrs. May’s handling of the main issue on her plate: how Britain should cut ties to the European Union."

"He cast doubt on whether he was willing to negotiate a new trade deal between Britain and the United States, and praised Mrs. May’s Conservative Party rival, Boris Johnson, as a potentially great prime minister.... 'Well, I think the deal that she is striking is not what the people voted on,' Mr. Trump said in the interview, speaking of the approach Mrs. May is taking to Britain’s exit from the European Union, or Brexit, under which the British economy would effectively continue to be subject to many European regulations. Speaking of Mr. Johnson, who resigned this week as foreign secretary in protest over Mrs. May’s Brexit strategy and who has long been seen as likely to challenge her for her job, Mr. Trump said: 'Well, I am not pitting one against the other. I’m just saying I think he would be a great prime minister. I think he’s got what it takes and I think he’s got the right attitude to be a great prime minister.'"

From "As May’s Government Teeters Over Brexit, Trump Gives It a Shove" (NYT). The Sun article is here.

ADDED: Also in the NYT, "Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Rise of Radical Incompetence/Like America’s president, Brexiteers resent the very idea of governing as complex and based in facts," by William Davies (who has a forthcoming boook titled "Nervous States: How Feelings Took Over the World"):

A common thread linking “hard” Brexiteers to nationalists across the globe is that they resent the very idea of governing as a complex, modern, fact-based set of activities that requires technical expertise and permanent officials. Soon after entering the White House as President Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon expressed hope that the newly appointed cabinet would achieve the “deconstruction of the administrative state.” In Europe, the European Commission — which has copious governmental capacity, but scant sovereignty — is an obvious target for nationalists such as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary....

What happens if sections of the news media, the political classes and the public insist that only sovereignty matters and that the complexities of governing are a lie invented by liberal elites? For one thing, it gives rise to celebrity populists, personified by Mr. Trump, whose inability to engage patiently or intelligently with policy issues makes it possible to sustain the fantasy that governing is simple....

"If a country’s prevailing temperament is one of congenital, chronic emotional constipation, how would its inhabitants even recognize that they’re lonely in the first place?"

"The appointment seems to address an ill that Britain can barely admit it is suffering from, as if the United States government were to install a Secretary of Humility. Of course, the more serious commentary would go on to explain, loneliness is a real and diagnosable scourge...."

From "What Britain’s 'Minister of Loneliness' Says About Brexit and the Legacy of Jo Cox" by Rebecca Mead (New Yorker)("Jo Cox... a Labour M.P., had been a vocal advocate of remaining in the European Union; her killer, a local man in his fifties named Thomas Mair who was later discovered to have neo-Nazi sympathies, was heard to cry 'Britain first' as he stabbed and shot her").

"The working class have spoke, and I’m one of them, and I’m with them."

Said Johnny Rotten/John Lydon. That was about Brexit...

"Where do I stand on Brexit? Well, here it goes: the working class have spoke, and I’m one of them, and I’m with them,” he said.

But he also talked about Trump. He's "a complicated fellow." And:

“As one journalist once said to me, is he the political Sex Pistol? In a way. What I dislike is the left wing media in America are trying to smear the bloke as a racist, and that’s completely not true. There are many, many problems with him as a human being but he’s not that, and there just might be a chance something good will come out of this situation because it terrifies politicians. This is a joy to behold for me.”

When host Piers Morgan described Mr. Trump as “the archetypal anti-establishment figure”, Mr. Lydon said: “Dare I say, a possible friend.”

I like the way this story looked on Drudge:



Drudge arranged that great face along with other faces, including Trump's, diagonally and youngly:

Brexit passes Parliament.

"Members of the House of Commons voted by 498 to 114 to advance the bill that would give Prime Minister Theresa May the authority to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty -- the formal process of leaving the EU."

"Most people I know felt that 2016 was the beginning of a long decline with Brexit, then Trump and all these nationalist movements in Europe."

"It looked like things were going to get worse and worse. I said: ‘Well, what about thinking about it in a different way?’ Actually, it’s the end of a long decline. We’ve been in decline for about 40 years since Thatcher and Reagan and the Ayn Rand infection spread through the political class, and perhaps we’ve bottomed out. My feeling about Brexit was not anger at anybody else, it was anger at myself for not realising what was going on. I thought that all those Ukip people and those National Fronty people were in a little bubble. Then I thought: ‘Fuck, it was us, we were in the bubble, we didn’t notice it.’ There was a revolution brewing and we didn’t spot it because we didn’t make it. We expected we were going to be the revolution.... Actually, in retrospect, I’ve started to think I’m pleased about Trump and I’m pleased about Brexit because it gives us a kick up the arse and we needed it because we weren’t going to change anything. Just imagine if Hillary Clinton had won and we’d been business as usual, the whole structure she’d inherited, the whole Clinton family myth. I don’t know that’s a future I would particularly want. It just seems that was grinding slowly to a halt, whereas now, with Trump, there’s a chance of a proper crash, and a chance to really rethink."

Said Brian Eno.

In case you're about to comment "Who's Brian Eno?," let me send you back to my old post from 2005, "Music to read by: the suggestions."

You can play "Music for Airports" here. I like dead silence for reading, but if I'm in a place where the sound is distracting, this is probably the first thing I'd choose to plug my headphones into.

"The British government’s plan for leaving the European Union was thrown into uncertainty on Thursday..."

"... after the High Court ruled that Parliament must give its approval before the process can begin...."

The case is a constitutional one, about the powers vested in the government, the crown and Parliament, which is supreme. The case is not about whether Britain will or will not leave the European Union, but about the procedure for invoking Article 50, which provides a two-year period for negotiations on the split.

The plaintiffs argued successfully that leaving the European Union involved the revocation of certain rights granted to Britons by Parliament, and that lawmakers must have a say and a vote before Article 50 is invoked.

In his ruling, the lord chief justice, John Thomas, said that “the most fundamental rule of the U.K. constitution is that Parliament is sovereign and can make or unmake any law it chooses.”

Oddly enough, this was precisely the case made by those who wanted to end membership, who argued that only by leaving the European Union could Parliament’s sovereignty be completely restored. Now that same argument could delay the very exit so desired by those politicians and their supporters.

There's still an appeal to a higher court in the UK and "the ruling might ultimately be referred to the European Court of Justice."