"The Reaction to Brexit Is the Reason Brexit Happened."

A writer for the New York Times visits Sunderland.

 ... when the decision to pull out of the European Union sent markets into a tailspin, Ken Walker, a retired construction worker, was unfazed.

“I don’t have any money in the stock market,” Mr. Walker, 59, said as he drank a pint of beer in a pub. “So what’s it to me?”

The pub, called the Speculation, still had “Vote Leave” posters on its walls, and a fellow drinker exclaimed “Aye!” and banged the counter in agreement.

There's a novel idea. Leave be the social wedge issues, and concentrate on chipping away at the stock portfolios of your "betters." Hit 'em in their wallets. Make 'em squeal. Are you hurting yourself by doing so? Maybe, but you were hurting already.

The Reaction to Brexit Is the Reason Brexit Happened, by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone)

If you believe there's such a thing as "too much democracy," you probably don't believe in democracy at all

... Because the vote was viewed as having been driven by the same racist passions that are fueling the campaign of Donald Trump, a wide swath of commentators suggested that democracy erred, and the vote should perhaps be canceled, for the Britons' own good.

Social media was filled with such calls ...

... You have to be a snob of the first order, completely high on your own gas, to try to apply these arguments to present-day politics, imagining yourself as an analog to Plato's philosopher-kings.

And you have to have a cast-iron head to not grasp that saying stuff like this out loud is part of what inspires populations to movements like Brexit or the Trump campaign in the first place.