The amount of assumptions you’re making without addressing or understanding what I’m saying is hilarious 😂.
“interesting” that you didn’t examine your own motivations in the same way.
I’m more than happy to say the UK acted in its own interest whilst in the EU (agreeing with your point), that there are hard elements of disruptive right leaning racists in the UK (agreeing with your point), that the UK is unlikely to be accepted back into the EU in the short term (agreeing with your point). However you’ve asserted that these aspects don’t exist (or exist in minor insignificant ways) within EU member states. Hungary aside, the EU has all the above problems that are very real and already disruptive. Far right minority parties winning significant ground in elections, harsh anti immigration rhetoric from all over the continent, significant othering and second class views towards non white Europeans (just look at how Turkish immigrants in the 1950s are treated still to this day), self interested countries vying for their own benefit rather than that of the whole, members being sanctioned by the EU for not following their own rules. None of these things are exclusive to the UK. This is what you don’t understand, or are unwilling to understand.
Please, sir, that not everything is a win lose situation and that other people have valid opinions too. If you want to end this with several paragraphs of prognostication not addressing the point then fair enough.
I think, or at least I hope, that we both agree the UK will someday rejoin. But this won’t be because it has suddenly become a more European Utopian country acting in the benefit of others (because such a thing doesn’t exist). We’ll rejoin for political and economic reasons which is how every other country has joined and no other reason. And I think you know that deep down.
I’ve said, reiterated and am now reiterating again, that the problem with the UK is not one of mere presence of certain traits and behaviours, it’s one of intensity of such traits and behaviours. In fact, the whole discussion around the mere presence of those things is a view that you yourself brough into the discussion and which is such a hyper-reductive take on reality that per that “logic” no country in the World no matter how bad their behaviour would be a bad fit for the EU since all bad things countries do are just extreme versions of behaviours and motivations done by or present in existing EU members.
I’m afraid you’re applying the Scociopath’s Excuse - “Everybody is selfish, so why shouldn’t I be able to do whatever the fuck I want when I can get away with it” - to nations and like for sociopaths, for nations too the problem is not the the mere presence of greedy and negative behaviors, it’s how much they do it and how far they take it.
You repeating that “they’re all imperfect hence the UK is a good fit” mantra is not a counter argument because it does nothing to address my point that the UK’s problem is NOT the presence of certain characteristics, it’s the intensity of them and how far they take them.
Your seeming obcession with Racism towards non Europeans, whilst a very valid critique of what’s going on in European nations in general, is irrelevant as a criteria to whether the UK would be a good fit in the EU, unless the point you’re trying to make is that the EU are all white Racists hence another country with lots of white Racists would be a good fit (which would be the very opposite of the direction I believe the EU should evolve towards and part of the reason why in my very first post I talked about the problem of how much the Far Right is dominant in Britain - we don’t need more Far Right shit in the EU, we need less of it).
I think in this discussion we’re failing to meet in the middle exactly for the same underlying difference in viewpoints that exists between most EU members and Britain and which was leveraged to convince so many Britons to chose to Leave: maybe because I’m from a small EU nation that on its own in the World stage would be absolutelly crushed by the big boys (especially in this era of Far-Right dominance in places like the US) and for which the EU provides the “safety of the pack”, I look at the EU as safety in numbers and hence at doing what’s good for the group as a whole as being something that justifies some self-sacrifice, whilst you look it as some kind of business arrangement, which was exactly as most Britons, especially Brexiters, looked at EU membership and IMHO, ultimatelly why Leave won since one of the main arguments was that “the UK pays more to the EU than it gets from it” (which was true in a strict fees sense but false in the bigger sense).
(Maybe you looking at it in a business-like way explains why you interpreted my take in business terms - as me seeing it all as a “win lose” - when my take is anchored on what’s good or bad for the “strength of the team” and a Games Theory view of what is the appropriate kind of way to deal with a member turning against and damaging the group, in order to maximize group stability)
I suspect our little discussion unwittingly reflects the very same difference in philosophies for being part of a group of nations between Britons and most of the rest of people in the EU: most of the people in the EU (who are mostly in small countries or countries less obcessed with their past as heads of “Empires”) see as part of the value of being in the group that the group itself exist and is strong as a whole, whilst the dominant view in Britain was and still is the transactional view of membership of the EU - as a business arrangement were each party tries to maximize their own upsides.
In our discussion I clearly went the long way around in my argument and wasted both your times in fluff and irrelevant side issues to get to the core point (so thank you for this discussion, since thinking about it all helped me mentally clean it down to the essential) which is that: Britain needs to want be in the EU for the sake of the EU as much as for its own sake, and as I saw first hand living in Britain before, during and after the Leave Referendum that was certainly and I believe is still not the case (inside Britain Remainers keep making the case in “what’s in it for us” terms), hence whatever needs to change in it for it the become so must change before it should be allowed back in.
If you disagree that for most of its citizens to wanting to be part of the EU also for the good of the EU and not just for their own good, should be a required criteria for Britain to be allowed back in, then we have irreconciable differences and we’ve reached the end of this discussion :/
The amount of assumptions you’re making without addressing or understanding what I’m saying is hilarious 😂.
I’m more than happy to say the UK acted in its own interest whilst in the EU (agreeing with your point), that there are hard elements of disruptive right leaning racists in the UK (agreeing with your point), that the UK is unlikely to be accepted back into the EU in the short term (agreeing with your point). However you’ve asserted that these aspects don’t exist (or exist in minor insignificant ways) within EU member states. Hungary aside, the EU has all the above problems that are very real and already disruptive. Far right minority parties winning significant ground in elections, harsh anti immigration rhetoric from all over the continent, significant othering and second class views towards non white Europeans (just look at how Turkish immigrants in the 1950s are treated still to this day), self interested countries vying for their own benefit rather than that of the whole, members being sanctioned by the EU for not following their own rules. None of these things are exclusive to the UK. This is what you don’t understand, or are unwilling to understand.
Please, sir, that not everything is a win lose situation and that other people have valid opinions too. If you want to end this with several paragraphs of prognostication not addressing the point then fair enough.
I think, or at least I hope, that we both agree the UK will someday rejoin. But this won’t be because it has suddenly become a more European Utopian country acting in the benefit of others (because such a thing doesn’t exist). We’ll rejoin for political and economic reasons which is how every other country has joined and no other reason. And I think you know that deep down.
I’ve said, reiterated and am now reiterating again, that the problem with the UK is not one of mere presence of certain traits and behaviours, it’s one of intensity of such traits and behaviours. In fact, the whole discussion around the mere presence of those things is a view that you yourself brough into the discussion and which is such a hyper-reductive take on reality that per that “logic” no country in the World no matter how bad their behaviour would be a bad fit for the EU since all bad things countries do are just extreme versions of behaviours and motivations done by or present in existing EU members.
I’m afraid you’re applying the Scociopath’s Excuse - “Everybody is selfish, so why shouldn’t I be able to do whatever the fuck I want when I can get away with it” - to nations and like for sociopaths, for nations too the problem is not the the mere presence of greedy and negative behaviors, it’s how much they do it and how far they take it.
You repeating that “they’re all imperfect hence the UK is a good fit” mantra is not a counter argument because it does nothing to address my point that the UK’s problem is NOT the presence of certain characteristics, it’s the intensity of them and how far they take them.
Your seeming obcession with Racism towards non Europeans, whilst a very valid critique of what’s going on in European nations in general, is irrelevant as a criteria to whether the UK would be a good fit in the EU, unless the point you’re trying to make is that the EU are all white Racists hence another country with lots of white Racists would be a good fit (which would be the very opposite of the direction I believe the EU should evolve towards and part of the reason why in my very first post I talked about the problem of how much the Far Right is dominant in Britain - we don’t need more Far Right shit in the EU, we need less of it).
I think in this discussion we’re failing to meet in the middle exactly for the same underlying difference in viewpoints that exists between most EU members and Britain and which was leveraged to convince so many Britons to chose to Leave: maybe because I’m from a small EU nation that on its own in the World stage would be absolutelly crushed by the big boys (especially in this era of Far-Right dominance in places like the US) and for which the EU provides the “safety of the pack”, I look at the EU as safety in numbers and hence at doing what’s good for the group as a whole as being something that justifies some self-sacrifice, whilst you look it as some kind of business arrangement, which was exactly as most Britons, especially Brexiters, looked at EU membership and IMHO, ultimatelly why Leave won since one of the main arguments was that “the UK pays more to the EU than it gets from it” (which was true in a strict fees sense but false in the bigger sense).
(Maybe you looking at it in a business-like way explains why you interpreted my take in business terms - as me seeing it all as a “win lose” - when my take is anchored on what’s good or bad for the “strength of the team” and a Games Theory view of what is the appropriate kind of way to deal with a member turning against and damaging the group, in order to maximize group stability)
I suspect our little discussion unwittingly reflects the very same difference in philosophies for being part of a group of nations between Britons and most of the rest of people in the EU: most of the people in the EU (who are mostly in small countries or countries less obcessed with their past as heads of “Empires”) see as part of the value of being in the group that the group itself exist and is strong as a whole, whilst the dominant view in Britain was and still is the transactional view of membership of the EU - as a business arrangement were each party tries to maximize their own upsides.
In our discussion I clearly went the long way around in my argument and wasted both your times in fluff and irrelevant side issues to get to the core point (so thank you for this discussion, since thinking about it all helped me mentally clean it down to the essential) which is that: Britain needs to want be in the EU for the sake of the EU as much as for its own sake, and as I saw first hand living in Britain before, during and after the Leave Referendum that was certainly and I believe is still not the case (inside Britain Remainers keep making the case in “what’s in it for us” terms), hence whatever needs to change in it for it the become so must change before it should be allowed back in.
If you disagree that for most of its citizens to wanting to be part of the EU also for the good of the EU and not just for their own good, should be a required criteria for Britain to be allowed back in, then we have irreconciable differences and we’ve reached the end of this discussion :/