Brexit and the diseased liberal mind: 

 

Brexit and the diseased liberal mind

 

The enraged liberal reaction to the Brexit vote is in full flood. The
anger is pathological – and helps to shed light on why a majority of
Britons voted for leaving the European Union, just as earlier a majority
of Labour party members voted for Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

A few years ago the American writer Chris Hedges wrote a book he
titled the Death of the Liberal Class. His argument was not so much that
liberals had disappeared, but that they had become so coopted by the
right wing and its goals – from the subversion of progressive economic
and social ideals by neoliberalism, to the enthusiastic embrace of
neoconservative doctrine in prosecuting aggressive and expansionist wars
overseas in the guise of “humanitarian intervention” – that liberalism
had been hollowed out of all substance.

Liberal pundits sensitively agonise over, but invariably end up
backing, policies designed to benefit the bankers and arms
manufacturers, and ones that wreak havoc domestically and abroad. They
are the “useful idiots” of modern western societies.

Reading this piece
on the fallout from Brexit by Zoe Williams, a columnist who ranks as
leftwing by the current standards of the deeply diminished Guardian, one
can isolate this liberal pathology in all its sordid glory.