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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31241 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Uh, anyone in the UK willing-and-able to comment on this?

From my warped, media-driven perspective across the pond, like... it looks something like this.

  • Boris Johnson is a frighteningly intelligent person who managed to become PM and pull off Brexit, freeing the UK from the placid bureaucratic tyranny of Brussels but also from a variety of economically beneficial arrangements with the continent

  • During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Boris Johnson ultimately failed to heed Dominic Cummings, turning about-face on a number of lockdown policies which Boris did not, apparently, regard himself as bound by (channeling a lot of U.S. Democrats here)

  • The economy, predictably, suffers; whether this is due to COVID, Brexit, both, or neither, is a question that will help many economics professors secure tenure

  • Maybe there is some philandering by someone important in here somewhere? Recollection vague...

  • A bunch of people resign from positions in Boris' administration

  • Liz Truss becomes PM

  • Six weeks later, someone gets manhandled in the Commons over a vote?

  • Liz Truss resigns as PM

  • Maybe Boris is coming back?

It's just not clear to me, at all, how Boris managed to get himself removed in the first place; it feels like he was removed for little tiny stupid stuff after massively succeeding on all the issues that genuinely mattered to him and his supporters. He apparently should have heeded Cummings on COVID (and perhaps many other things, too) and it looks like Boris reaped the consequences without actually learning his lesson. But Truss is apparently just wildly incompetent, or maybe she's just catching the blame for what is really Boris' economy?

What's really happening, there. Help me out.

It was reported at the time that Boris privately instructed his loyalists to support Truss in the contest to be his successor, precisely because he thought exactly this would happen, she'd be a tremendous fuckup and pave the way for his own return.

If the mechanism by which her successor is chosen ends up being the MPs rather than the party membership, it'll probably be Sunak though. Because there's a greater proportion of rootless cosmopolitans among MPs than there are amongst party members, and rootless cosmopolitans can't sense the metaphysical catastrophe that a reverse-colonialism Sunak premiership would represent.

Because there's a greater proportion of rootless cosmopolitans among MPs than there are amongst party members, and rootless cosmopolitans can't sense the metaphysical catastrophe that a reverse-colonialism Sunak premiership would represent.

Please explain to a yank what "rootless cosmopolitans" means in this context.

Because usually that term is used as a euphemism for "Jews," and if that's what you mean, you should say "Jews," not use euphemisms. We're not on reddit anymore, and the advantage of that is that you don't have to use euphemisms, and the disadvantage of that is that you don't get to use euphemisms.

But perhaps I am misunderstanding you. I look forward to being educated about this "rootless cosmopolitan" faction of the UK Parliament.

I might describe myself as a "rootless cosmopolitan", as someone who travelled a fair amount and has a pretty international family. I don't associate the word to jews, tho according to Wikipedia it seems to be that way originally. If I use it it would be semi-ironic, because I'm aware it has (mild) negative connotations, I just don't think that those connotations are particularly warranted.

I'd consider it somewhat equivalent to "citizen of the world", tho that version has a positive spin to the point of sounding haughty.

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