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Let's get it out of our system right now and then we will never speak of this again: "FREEEEEDOOOOOMMMMMM!!"
So Scotland's greatest rebel was played by an anti-Semitic Australian nutjob, while one of the crunchy old farts who is in reality supporting a YES vote this coming Thursday is best known for his role as that tangiest of all limeys: 007. Go figure. Most of the debates around the referendum on Scottish independence have made just about as much sense.
In case you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, the big news is that the Scottish Parliament, seemingly out of the blue, has pushed successfully for a definitive vote, which will take place on September 18th, 2014, to determine whether or not Scotland will remain part of the United Kingdom or whether it will in fact, secede. Secession. Isn't that the sort of thing that only happens in history books or to countries whose names we can't pronounce? Scotland? Seriously? Yeah. Maybe. We'll see.
In a move I found really sort of dickish given how many Scots live and work far from home, though they were born in Scotland and have strong Scottish identities, only those with an active residence there in the past one year are being allowed to participate in the referendum. As for the promises of the Scottish National Party, I am really unimpressed. It seems to depend a lot on empty rhetoric and vague declarations of beneficial change, with too much focus on what they will not be and too little on what they will be. It's not even entirely clearly whether Scotland would keep the British Pound or drop it in favor of its own currency. Articles are appearing which call the SNP "pound foolish" due to the realities of fiscal and monetary responsibilities in the European Union, and how illogically divided these things might become in the event that Scotland was nominally free while keeping itself chained to the same currency. If they are going to go truly retro and fall back on outdated concepts like that of nationhood, then why not go all the way?
Yet if they had ever been about compromises, then it seems there would be no need to secede at all. The out-of-control market conditions in Europe and globally, tied to the grim reality that united they stand, and just as united (well, minus Germany) they fall, would seem to suggest that the better option here is to choose the evil they already know than to gamble on the potentially monumental evil they can't yet quite predict. And this is more than naked fear-mongering. Russia proved itself capable of eating a bite out of its neighbor, even when the EU was ostensibly in its full flush. No repercussions of any appreciable sort. What, then, will happen with a demonstrably weakened Union, in economic, military and human terms? Aren't things bad enough already without further destabilizing the balance? It seems almost selfish, really.
If Scotland goes, who will follow? Wales? Will the Euro-skeptics in the remaining UK finally win over? This could potentially set off a domino effect. But we just don't know. So why tempt the fates?
Fate has a name. She is called China. Does anyone actually doubt that opportunism, aggression and naked profiteering don't very much exist in our world? This sort of willful naivety really sort of frightens me. I would love to have the ideal that an independent Scotland might start talking sense to the rest of us, might set a good example in so many areas, in the economy, the environment, in health care and education, as the SNP has somewhat grandiosely, if vaporously, promised to do. But again, that nagging, dragging feeling. Why play ball in a mine field when we could just bed down for the night and hope we wake up somewhat more clear-headed in the morning?
So Scotland's greatest rebel was played by an anti-Semitic Australian nutjob, while one of the crunchy old farts who is in reality supporting a YES vote this coming Thursday is best known for his role as that tangiest of all limeys: 007. Go figure. Most of the debates around the referendum on Scottish independence have made just about as much sense.
In case you've been living under a rock for the last few weeks, the big news is that the Scottish Parliament, seemingly out of the blue, has pushed successfully for a definitive vote, which will take place on September 18th, 2014, to determine whether or not Scotland will remain part of the United Kingdom or whether it will in fact, secede. Secession. Isn't that the sort of thing that only happens in history books or to countries whose names we can't pronounce? Scotland? Seriously? Yeah. Maybe. We'll see.
In a move I found really sort of dickish given how many Scots live and work far from home, though they were born in Scotland and have strong Scottish identities, only those with an active residence there in the past one year are being allowed to participate in the referendum. As for the promises of the Scottish National Party, I am really unimpressed. It seems to depend a lot on empty rhetoric and vague declarations of beneficial change, with too much focus on what they will not be and too little on what they will be. It's not even entirely clearly whether Scotland would keep the British Pound or drop it in favor of its own currency. Articles are appearing which call the SNP "pound foolish" due to the realities of fiscal and monetary responsibilities in the European Union, and how illogically divided these things might become in the event that Scotland was nominally free while keeping itself chained to the same currency. If they are going to go truly retro and fall back on outdated concepts like that of nationhood, then why not go all the way?
Yet if they had ever been about compromises, then it seems there would be no need to secede at all. The out-of-control market conditions in Europe and globally, tied to the grim reality that united they stand, and just as united (well, minus Germany) they fall, would seem to suggest that the better option here is to choose the evil they already know than to gamble on the potentially monumental evil they can't yet quite predict. And this is more than naked fear-mongering. Russia proved itself capable of eating a bite out of its neighbor, even when the EU was ostensibly in its full flush. No repercussions of any appreciable sort. What, then, will happen with a demonstrably weakened Union, in economic, military and human terms? Aren't things bad enough already without further destabilizing the balance? It seems almost selfish, really.
If Scotland goes, who will follow? Wales? Will the Euro-skeptics in the remaining UK finally win over? This could potentially set off a domino effect. But we just don't know. So why tempt the fates?
Fate has a name. She is called China. Does anyone actually doubt that opportunism, aggression and naked profiteering don't very much exist in our world? This sort of willful naivety really sort of frightens me. I would love to have the ideal that an independent Scotland might start talking sense to the rest of us, might set a good example in so many areas, in the economy, the environment, in health care and education, as the SNP has somewhat grandiosely, if vaporously, promised to do. But again, that nagging, dragging feeling. Why play ball in a mine field when we could just bed down for the night and hope we wake up somewhat more clear-headed in the morning?
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