Every American town during World War II had a "war nerd," a kid who mastered every move by all sides and kept a bedroom wall covered with maps bristling with paper flags pinned to cork-board, indicating whose forces were where. I filled that role for Greensboro, North Carolina.
I remember removing, with special gusto, the swastika pin from Stalingrad in early 1943. I remember planting three red-ball Japanese flags on the three Aleutian Islands taken by Japan – Kiska, Attu and Agattu. In my entire life there have been only two news stories that rendered me too flummoxed to deal with them coherently.
On my first full day in a foreign country, Norway, a fellow student told us the French government of Georges Bidault had fallen. "Good Lord," I remember thinking. "Does that mean we'll be seeing parades of women with shawls around their heads pushing baby carriages to escape from Paris? Will fearful mobs flee as far as Norway? Will panicky refugees be carrying infants through Lima, Ohio?"
I was equally unequipped to keep my footing when news broke last week that the U.K. had voted to exit from the European Union, this time, however, on the under-play side. If I hadn't had better-informed friends like columnist Curtis Ellis, I'd have concluded that Buckingham Palace's library had canceled its membership in the Book-of-the-Month Club and was scouting around for alternatives. Ellis quoted former Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee as having written the next morning, "Donald Trump won the election last night!" Ellis himself said, "The world has seen the biggest jailbreak ever witnessed!" He compared it to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the collapse of European Communism. "The people of Great Britain," Ellis summed it up, "have struck a blow against the globalist elite of Brussels, another clique with ambitions to rule the world." Curtis concluded the U.K. vote was "The Twilight of the Globalist Gods!"
What indeed is going on here?
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This is easier to explain to draftees who've just gotten out of the Army. People simply don't like other people telling them what to do and how to live, down to the most absurd detail. Our commanding officer in basic training gave us a straight-faced mandate on how to cut our toenails ("Square across the tops")! It's bad enough when such authority over the lives of others comes as a result of a clear battlefield defeat. But when you've lost no war – in fact when you were instrumental in achieving victory for the civilized side! – and faceless bureaucrats in Brussels or anywhere else issue orders orchestrating every semicolon of your life, your opposition is overpowering.
Donald Trump's message is "Let's make America great again!" That elicits Hillary Clinton's absurdly lame counter-punch that America is still and always has been great. It's no secret the world looks down on the United States with the utmost envy. The world, resentful of America's success, smolders in speculation. "Americans aren't as smart as we are. They're not as cultured as we are. And God knows they're no prettier than we are. Why does America have such a great deal going while we wonder if our Germans are going to bail out our Greeks one more time?"
Get over it, Europe. You're coming off like a 70-year-old male comic trying to win the love of an all-male audience with a wig and falsies. America was born shovel-ready for inclusive accomplishment. America needed immigrants at precisely the same time as the down-trodden world-wide needed decency. It was a lovely fit. Europe simply cannot be a successful United States of America! People in Alaska care about people in Key West, Florida. Do Norwegians care that much about Turks? Europe can't be a successful America. It can be a successful Europe, if Finns don't have to ratify the work ethic of Greeks.
Even Trump supporters are prone to pity Obama and Hillary as the chilling similarities between what happened to the EU and what's now increasingly expected to happen to the Democrats become apparent. The faces of Obama and Hillary look increasingly like the "Ghosts of Elections Past."
A pro-Hillary cheerleader on CNN was chortling that the defeat of the EU should in no way encourage Trump. His pitch was something like "White males indeed voted exit from the EU, but that demographic is nowhere near as 'large a slice of the pie' in the U.S. as it is in the U.K." I'd advise him to have an apologia prepared for election night interviews.
The most exquisite take-home from the U.K. vote is that the BBC had broadcast endless pro-EU propaganda for months. And they lost. Let's see if we "backwards" Yanks can rise up and be as smart as those voters in the Mother Country!
The question remaining is, "How do you feel about having your life shaped by those you don't know, don't like and haven't lost a war to?"
The defeat of the EU reminds us of the old codger in Idaho filling out a government form. When he came to the space that said, "Do not write in this space!" the codger took his big black felt pen and in that very space wrote, "I'll write anywhere I damn well please!"
Media wishing to interview Barry Farber, please contact [email protected].
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