We Have Been Warned

     Anne Applebaum  is a well-regarded journalist and author.  She studied at Oxford and the London School of Economics, married a former Foreign Minister of Poland, and is an expert on Eastern Europe and Russia.  She wrote about her view that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is a warning to America in her bi-weekly foreign affairs column in The Washington Post three days after the British referendum.  Here, in part, is what she said.  Pay attention.

        I do realize that it’s facile to talk about the impact on a U.S. election that is still many months away, that it’s too simple to say ”first Brexist, then Donald Trump.”  But there is a way in which this election has to be seen, at the very least, as a possible harbinger of the future.  This [British] referendum campaign, as I wrote a few days ago, was not fought on the issues that are normally central to British elections.  Identity politics trumped economics; arguments about “independence” and “sovereignty” defeated arguments about British influence and importance.  The advice of one-trusted institutions was ignored.  Elected leaders were swept aside.  If that kind of transformation can take place in the U.K., then it can happen in the United States, too.  We have been warned.

Applebaum’s right.  We have been warned.