We Are All Refugees

       A Brexit omen hangs over the coming U. S. Fall elections but in a foreign language whose key few seem to know.  Gone is the progressive Sanders momentum; gone the dominant Democratic party; gone a coherent Republican opponent.

       The latest Quinnipiac Poll today (6/29/16) is verification of the approaching danger, showing Clinton and Trump deadlocked, even after a week of bizarre Trump pronouncements (Waterboarding?).  This may not be a surprise to everyone, but aside from Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton and the Democrats seem to be winning very few new friends.  Trump on the other hand is gathering-in the sheaves and seems already to have a solid Brexit-style support community. Like the “leave” majority in Britain, a growing dangerous number of U. S. voters have stopped listening to the professional political leadership and media pundits. They’ve stopped caring about the Marquis of Queensbury rules of combat.  The Brexit majority has much in common with Donald Trump’s supporters. 

        This emerging landscape created by the 52% to 48% vote in Britain to leave the European Union reflects a British population that is refugee averse, increasingly caught in the stagnation of declining income prospects, fearful of terrorism within and without.  The truth in plain terms is that the anti-refugee movement in Britain and the United States is fired by the dawning realization that they themselves have become refugees in a world of obscene inequality. Brexit is the name of the new god,

        It is both sign and graven image: a sign of possible disaster approaching and a bit like an economic futures contracts—you might win but you’ll have to take large risks, and the Brexit God is making no promises; but then neither have Cameron or Clinton.

       A case of very bad mythical theology has created this 1 percent God who reigns over the trampled majority who only lately have stopped believing in the respectability of the 1 percent.  Assistant New York Times business editor, Gretchen Morgensen, describes a now familiar example of acceptable fraud in U. S. banking, giving the particulars of just one case. Writing last Sunday, June 26^th—she describes how Angelo Mozillo, former CEO of Countrywide Mortgage, had over-charged 600,000 of its customers and was at the center of the 2008 mortgage crisis meltdown.   She asked

“What about thousands of loans with exploding interest rates made to unsophisticated borrowers who had no ability to repay them? The abusive foreclosure practices that increased the burden on struggling people? The shattered lives?”

        The answer of the Obama administration? Mr Mozillo was told last week by the Justice Department  “that he was no longer under investigation in connection with civil mortgage fraud.”

        While the Brexit vote is an omen of rebellion the question is whether it can do more than replicate the unjust system that has prompted it.  Can high principles of justice, equity and fairness be adopted by this emerging revolution, or will it be consumed by a desperate search by the disenfranchised for another idol made of clay to be worshiped until it too collapses?

For the time being we are all refugees in a strange land.