Brexit, Pursued By a Bear

On Brexit, I am more conflicted than I expected.  The EU occupies a hellish middle ground between national autonomy and political unification.  The euro, while it doesn't directly affect British monetary policy, encapsulates the hubris of the European project.  It was imposed on a reluctant populace in the hopes that it would force further unification, and instead it imposed bad policy on everyone and destroyed sympathy among its participants.  The Danes are never going to feel about the Greeks the way New Yorkers feel about Florida, and with good reason.  Policy harmonization makes sense, but the European project is far more ambitious, ruthless, prescriptive, and inflexible than necessary or desirable.  It is a system designed by and for technocrats, giving them vast power with little or no accountability.  They reflexively hate democracy and have nothing but disdain for ordinary politics.  Meanwhile the EU uses its crippled but still mammoth economy to bludgeon its members into submission, not to mention what it does when it has even more powerful levers to pull.  Look what it did to Italy, much less Greece.  The fact that the only way for British voters to exert any influence on the course of events is to engage in brinkmanship should be seen as an indictment of the whole structure.

But of course brinkmanship is exactly what the "leave" vote is, and inevitably the movement is characterized by reality-denial and irresponsible sloganeering, the triumph of hope over experience.  I suppose that I would be a reluctant "remain" voter if Great Britain were foolhardy enough to give me a vote.  What a shitty situation.