How to easily manipulate people into voting for something utterly against their best interests

I almost cried when I saw the final tally. It is a traumatic day for many Brits and most Europeans who are utterly stunned and shocked. This article briefly covers the problems. Imagine your reaction if Texas voted to leave the US.

To have an understanding of what it means to have a country pull out of a union (and lose your freedom of movement) you have to think back home. Imagine if you live in Ohio and they vote to leave the US. Americans would be horrified by this...and those from Ohio living in California or New York would find their right to live outside of Ohio in other states jeopordised with the possibility of being deported to Ohio.

That's what millions of British people and people with British passports (myself) face. 

British people have been hounded at for 20 years...communicating endless blatant lies about the EU and the boogeyman vampire blood suckers in Brussels. It's not democratic (except for the directly voted parliament and commission made up of elected heads of states). It imposes laws on the UK (except for the fact that UK representatives in parliament and in the commission and council all agreed on the laws in play).

In reality...the only thing keeping the conservative government from making more social cuts, freeze minimum wage, give enormous tax cuts to companies and other law changes that will result in more income inequality and job loses and salary decreases....are the EU protections that the UK agreed to. Now they are gone. Now the conservative government can do what they want.

The tragedy is that the people who voted out...are the people who will suffer the most from new policy changes. They've been manipulated by horror stories of the tyrannical EU out to take the pound and queen from England, millions of Muslim refugees pouring into the UK and Turkish accession (lies), endless EU regulations that take away UK freedom (freedom for conservative governments to attack labour rights and cut programs) and the lie that the UK will lose everything that is British. They are being controlled by the EU (despite none of them being able to list more than three policies that aren't optional which actually hurt the interests of average british people. The lessons and the worries:

1: It is incredibly easy to manipulate voters in English speaking countries into voting things that objectively will hurt them (poor people voting for Bush and Trump, Australians voting against larger educated qualified immigrant quotas when doctors and countless other highly trained specialists are needed. Canadians voting against proportional representation for no rational reason. New Zealanders voting in an Austerity government. 

2: The EU is better off without the UK in the long run...having been held back for years with the UKs temper tantrums, special deals and unique rights only for the UK (and exceptional protection of their financial sectors). Add to that the UK's utter incapability of compromising on policy decisions (effectively stopping such EU wide policies) despite the ability of the other 26 countries to find consensus.

3: If you let loud mouth racist morons drone on for years and years with propaganda nonsense and don't hit back until it is too late...populism will win. How stupid could pro-EU british politicians be?

4: Half the population of the UK are bloody fools.

5: I and millions of UK citizens have been abandoned by fellow Brits and will wait to be stripped of our freedom of abode...with no knowledge of how or when it will happen.

6: The humanist project of the EU will still continue.

7: Average British citizens will get what they voted for. It will be sad (though darkly satisfying for jaded continental Europeans) to watch the UK deflate.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Adam on June 24, 2016 at 11:45am

Bro Brits just saved themselves from millions of brown people taking over your country. Now all their economic and financial problems will be magically solved,

Permalink Reply by Davis Goodman on June 24, 2016 at 12:49pm

Not just that...they've also saved the pound...and the queen...and most importantly the queen on the pound coin! FREEEEEEEEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Permalink Reply by Pope Beanie on June 24, 2016 at 1:45pm

If/when Trump loses, maybe they would welcome him as king?

Permalink Reply by Noel on June 24, 2016 at 3:25pm

Not so fast Pope Beanie! The Stupid is alive and well in 'merica too...

Voting against your own self interest. Go to most any right wing rally in the middle of the U.S.  Poor people without health care, jobs, or schools voting to kill programs that would benefit them.

The Stupid... 

Permalink Reply by Pope Beanie on June 24, 2016 at 3:41pm

I mostly agree, but I'm practically pathalogically empathetic with a lot of humans, even stupid ones. I'm strongly set on the idea that most stupid people are stupid because we humans no longer live in the kind of social environment we evolved in. Recently I've even been thinking of ways to help educate stupid (and newbie smart) people. My eyes sometimes gloss over with daydeams like Captain America's. (Memories of my mom now, telling me to stop thinking so much!) 

Meanwhile, I realize that our Trumps truly are hopeless.

Permalink Reply by Simon Mathews on June 24, 2016 at 3:38pm
I was very saddened by the result. I personally voted to stay in not for economic or political reasons (I am not informed enough to understand the ramifications) but because I think it's better to be part of a flawed community mucking in to make it better rather than isolating oneself.

Also, from a pure emotional point of view voting out felt like a big "fuck you" to other EU countries. I don't want any part of that.

What's most depressing is I've seen at least three separate interviews now with people who voted Out but in the morning were shocked by the result and wanted to change their minds.

Equally saddening is the news that Google reported that people from the UK were Googling "What's the EU?" following the news of the result. There's not much you can say to that.
Permalink Reply by Davis Goodman on June 25, 2016 at 6:48am

One of my clients in Madrid is a multi-national company filled with members from all over the union. When I went into the office there was absolute gloom and doom and heartbreak. I'd never seen anything quite like it. Stunned silence. No one believed the UK would actually pull out. They never thought the bitchy whinning of Ferage and his anti-EU stooges would actually get to enough British people to end up with an exit vote.

What is the EU? It's now the EU minus the UK now. An injured one...but an EU that can finally move forward with plans the UK have held back all this time.

Cross your fingers please for people like me who hope that freedom of movement will still be allowed after exit negotiations.

Permalink Reply by Strega on June 24, 2016 at 5:27pm
I'm trying to wrap my head around the choice of timing for this vote.

The U.K. Just celebrated the Queen's 90th birthday celebrations with all its patriotic flag waving, and we are in the middle of the European Cup (soccer) where the English are massively emotional about the 'enemy' being every other European country.

Both events were known about and yet the date for the vote was slap bang in the middle of the most 'patriotic' events in Britain. If Cameron had picked mid to late September, when families had just been on their annual vacations to European resorts and were full of pleasant memories, the whole picture might have been very different.

I'm glad Cameron is resigning. He's unbearable. However, the Brits get no say in who his replacement will be, as it's mid-term and not a general election. If Boris Johnson gets in, I'll probably throw up a little in my mouth when I read of it. He's not quite as bad as Trump, but he's definitely in that vicinity.
Permalink Reply by Davis Goodman on June 25, 2016 at 6:50am

You'll have trump and Borris, blonde haired buffoons who wouldn't shut up if you gave them a billion dollars. We just now have to find a blonde haired buffoon for Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand and the Anglo-Buffoon-Circus will be complete! We can see the total demise of anglo-saxon power and influence exit from the face of the Earth.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on June 29, 2016 at 1:37am

...anglo-saxon power....

In the US of A, Davis, that translates to "government of, by and for investors".

I will welcome its demise, and employees who own the companies they work for are slowly digging the grave.

Permalink Reply by Davis Goodman on June 29, 2016 at 7:26pm

As the commission of the EU changes (it changes after almost every national election of one country or another) it will slowly shift from left to right (though what we consdier left and right is quite a modest change to what North Americans consider left right being a notable change). That means the so called elites in the commission will slowly morph from a leftish one concerened about humanist ideology towards a right caring about "austerity". These shifts happen slowly over a long time and notably...its difficult for sudden radical and unwise changes.

When there is a rightist commission...then yes...there certianly are decisions made that take the interests of the wealthy over the non-wealthy. Thankfully however to the parliament...it isn't easy to pass truly aweful austerity...as well as the standing laws and policies agreed to with previous commissions and parliaments.

There is no shortage of highly questionable decisions made in the EU...like any other healthy democratic organization.

Permalink Reply by Tom Sarbeck on June 29, 2016 at 11:40am

Thank you, Davis, for deleting my reply to your term "anglo-saxon power".

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