(Late) Monday Smackdown: Why Does Clive Crook Think the EU Has a Duty to Sacrifice the Interests Rights of Its Constituents in Brexit Negotiations?
I did not punish this a year ago because it seemed... intemperate. Now it seems not extreme enough. Perhaps if Clive Crook and his colleagues had dared to say: "The Brexiters are bad people pursuing bad policies. They need to be stopped." Instead he and his ilk talked about how important it was that the U.K . have "a fundamentally new relationship" with the E.U., and that the E.U. should bend over backward to make the Brexiters look as good as possible. Not a good look:
Live from the Orange-Haired Baboon Cage: Across my desk this morning comes this. And it makes me ask: Whatever happened to the sharp, thoughtful, and witty Clive Crook of 2000? Brexiteers lied, and said that Brexit would bring £350 million a week to boost Britain's National Health Service, that Britons would still be able to live in Europe at will while kicking undesirable continentals out, and that Briton would have a hard border with the EU while still having a soft border with the Irish Republic. It was always a grift. Clive Crook now seems to want... what? For the EU to work hard to make Brexit as small a catastrophe as possible? For the EU sacrifice the rights and interests of its citizens to promote the careers of a bunch of neo-fascist nativist grifter politicians in Westminster? Crook seems to think that the EU should be negotiating as if this were an "on what terms will Britain remain in the EU?" deal. But Brexit means Brexit: Clive Crook: The Harder Brexit Gets, the More Necessary It Seems: "The U.K. has been an ill-fitting member of the EU all along...
...Britain's discomfort was bound to grow. The U.K. did need a fundamentally new relationship.... The costs of Brexit in 2019 will be high; on the other, it might be now or never.... Europe's chief negotiator has a mandate to achieve "sufficient progress" on the exit payment, the status of EU citizens in the U.K., and the Northern Irish border before moving to discuss the future relationship. This makes a deal much harder to strike. Complex talks succeed through bargains made in parallel across the full range of issues in contention—not in rigid sequence, with the hardest questions up front....
You can strengthen obedience by making examples and threatening reprisals, but you don't build loyalty that way, and loyalty is what the EU most sorely lacks.... Britain... [should be] granted terms that cause the minimum disruption to trade and commerce.... The EU should believe that the U.K. will see the error of its ways in time, even if the exit goes well.... The EU would surely be better off having a prosperous friend, trading partner and military ally just off its coast, rather than a beaten and resentful enemy. Britain's tactical choices have been terrible and it faces severe consequences. But, judging by this process so far, the EU isn't much better at seeing where its interests really lie...
Other recent things are not much better. Here are two examples. Can Crook seriously mean any of his claims that Trumpists are fiscal conservatives, that Trumpists are not trying to stand athwart demographic and cultural and economic history crying "STOP!", that Trumpist grifterism is not a bad faith enterprise, et cetera?:
Clive Crook: Why People Still Support Trump: "Trump's support[ers]... good citizens with intelligible and legitimate opinions...
...who so resent being regarded as racist idiots that they'll back Trump almost regardless. They may not admire the man, but he's on their side, he vents their frustration, he afflicts the people who think so little of them—and that's good enough.... This sense that democratic politics is futile if not downright dangerous now infuses the worldview of the country's cultural and intellectual establishment. Trump is routinely accused of being authoritarian and anti-democratic, despite the fact that he won the election and, so far, has been checked at every point and has achieved almost nothing in policy terms.... Why aren't the intelligible and legitimate opinions of that large minority given a hearing? Why must their views be bundled reflexively into packages labelled "bigotry" and "stupidity"? Why can't this large minority of the American people be accorded something other than pity or scorn?... This automatic attribution of stupidity and bad faith is just another kind of bigotry.... It sure isn't racism to believe that the laws on immigration should be enforced.... It isn't racist to say that many of the Charlottesville counter-protesters came looking for a fight. Casting Trump supporters as fearful of change is risible—he was hardly the status quo candidate. And I cannot see what principle of political economy makes it stupid to be a fiscal conservative if you live in West Virginia...
And consider Crook's claim that Google has a moral obligation to employ James Damore:
because not employing him is Google exercising "thought control":
Clive Crook: Google Moves Into the Business of Thought Control: "I followed the controversy over Google and James Damore... fired after circulating a note complaining about the company's policies on gender balance and diversity...
...Google's response seemed to set a new benchmark in the ongoing efforts of America's educated elite to deem opinions it disagrees with not just wrong but illegitimate.... Damore's memo argued that Google's policies on gender balance failed to take account of biological differences between men and women that could lead women, on average, to be less interested in engineering than men. The argument could be wrong but it isn't crazy or intemperate.... It's broadly correct on the science. That, perhaps, is what made it so offensive.... Google couldn't bring itself even to acknowledge the points Damore was making.... Sundar Pichai... was so transparently attacking a note that Damore didn't actually write that his message, in effect, was this: "We all know that my representation of Damore's note is dishonest, but let's agree in any case that what he did was very, very wrong." The willingness to go along with that kind of intellectual dereliction is the same as the willingness to put that sign in the window. Fortunately we don't all work for Google yet. But it's pretty chilling, if you ask me, that a company so intimately acquainted with all our thoughts is willing to fire an employee for Incorrect Assumptions...
What happened?
The smart and thoughtful Henry Farrell was trying to understand it back in 2009: Henry Farrell: Centrism as tribalism: "Crook['s]... is demonstrably happy to engage in rage-filled, irrational and delegitimizing rhetoric when it is aimed against the enemies of the “We” who “approve of consensual politics.” His tribalism is one of the center rather than the partisan left or right, but it is perhaps more pernicious for being completely unselfconscious..."
Ryan Cooper had given up on Crook by 2014: Ryan Cooper (2014): Will the vanity of centrists doom us to climate disaster?: "The striking thing about this tone of high-minded, serious moderation is that it contains no engagement with the evidence.... Political moderation on climate change is... incredibly risky... courting tremendous damage to human civilization to avoid admitting that the greens might be right about something..."
And Ryan Avent gives no quarter in 2014: Ryan Avent: "Capital" and its discontents - Inequality: "WI suppose if you only read the book's conclusion you could miss these details, but who would do that?..."
#journamalism
#orangehairedbabooncage
#mondaysmackdown
#globalization
#brexit
#neofascism
