The Indyref

[digitalraven]

So, that happened. I was somewhat distracted by reasons, but it's worth a quick post-mortem.

I’m not sure what else to say, really. Fifty-five percent of the people living in Scotland threw all of us under the bus. Some because they’re racists. Some because they’re sectarian bigots. Some because they’re racists and bigots in suits. Some because they’re racists and bigots forced to mask their hatred in order to appear less hateful. Some because they idiots who betrayed the legacy that they were supposed to uphold. Some because they have a delusion of relevance. Some because they were scared, or believed provable falsehoods.

Some because they believed a promise that a fucking two-year-old could tell you was complete bollocks, a promise made illegally, without any will from the people making it, worth less than the fish-wrap it was printed in, desperately invented to pacify idiots who still believe that the English government give two tugs of a dead dog’s dick about Scotland and that will never fucking happen because now they’ve got our oil money and they can still keep nukes next to our most populous city, so fuck those tartan-wearing porridge-wogs who are too bastard stupid to remember 1979.

I know people who think that this promise will happen. I fucking despair that they can’t see a transparent lie when it’s shat into their mouths.

All of these people fucked us royally. You may be able to divine that I’m just a tiny bit narked.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that independence right now was a means to an end. I’m not saying that because I believe that Devo-Max — full fiscal autonomy, with only defense and foreign affairs reserved to Westminster — would be a desirable outcome. That would still leave us bombing brown people because the American government asked us and complicit in apartheid. Hardly ideal. Yes, the break-up of the Westphalian system is an obvious good, and a beneficial goal to aim for, but frankly Scottish independence isn’t going to be the spark that sets it off.

In the medium term, independence was just the easiest route to give the Overton window a hard shift left. A chance to remove nuclear weapons from the Clyde, a chance to invest in renewables rather than fracking, a chance to deal with the fact that some areas of Glasgow have an average male life expectancy of just 54, a chance to make things better.

Now, that might not have happened. That’s why it’s a chance. But look at it this way: the odds of any of these things happening under the Westminster government? Absolutely bugger-all. Not a fucking hope. If you believe otherwise, you are deluded. So our choices are chance of things getting better, but a chance of things getting worse, vs. things getting worse because people down south see Scotland as a handy place to put nuclear weapons and steal the oil from.

The need for change hasn’t gone away. The end goal is the same. The means has changed, though.

Comments

[heron61]

There's are two other big reasons for voting no (assuming people weren't lying about being racists) - wanting to keep the Pound and worry about pensions, also most of the people voting no are older. So, what you have are a bunch of scared old people, who know how unstable the economy is and how easily people can get screwed over, they voted no because they were (sadly quite rationally) scared of any sort of major change. They'd likely have voted yes if the UK economy wasn't quite so predatory towards the non-rich. (data from here.)

[digitalraven]

Those are not good reasons, because they were proven to be false scare stories ages ago.

[heron61]

Sure, but for someone not all that politically engaged (ie most people), trusting something someone in politics or the media has proven or disproven is an act of (not always well justified) faith, since truths there swim in a sea of lies. I'm guessing that a lot of these people (especially the ones on pensions) had little margin of safety and were unwilling to vote for any sort of major change, even one that looked positive, because their margin of safety was simply too small.


TL:DR - people make seriously sub-optimal (for them) decisions when under long-term stress. Too many governments and (especially) corporations have found that this fact is an awesome tool for control.
Late stage corporate capitalism is a wretched system to live in (although the UK still manages to be a somewhat better place to live than the US, in large part because the US is so horrible these days).