Tempest About a Teapot

The recent roughhousing over Britain’s vote to leave the European Union can be traced to one simple example of bureaucratic overreach: Some weeks before the vote, Brits were informed that due to climate change concerns (or something,) the ubiquitous electric tea pot was no longer efficient enough to be allowed to be sold anywhere in England. What?!?   A country that cannot roll without its cuppa tea several times a day is commanded to forget about plugging in a pot to boil water? Sez who? True story, some un-elected, un-named, un-answerable Belgian fellow decreed that electric teapots were not nearly green enough for the modern EU world.  So, on June 23^rd, 30-million Brits voted 53.4% to 46.6% to gather up their little country and go play somewhere else. Brexit.

The looming American election is similar in many ways, at least the mood and atmosphere seem to be. There is a vast army of quiet strivers in this country who want their electric teapots back. And their coal mines, their steel mills, their solid old doctors and their savings accounts which used to earn something at the end of the year.  Washington establishment bureaucrats ought to pay attention.  Americans have too often been scolded that their teapots don’t measure up while the scolders themselves are shown to be corrupt to the bone.

Oddly, those quiet strivers, while seething, have also been scheming. They, like their British cousins, decided at some point to opt out of polling and the prevarication it engenders.  They want no part of focus groups, town hall meetings, or phone surveys.  They want change and this time they will have it. Early Florida voters waited twelve hours two weeks before the election to get a glimpse of the Pugnacious One.

The very things that brought down many of history’s great empires are fast at work in America this autumn. Former controller general of the U.S., David Walker, described causes of the fall of the Roman Empire this way in 2007: “declining moral values and political civility at home, an overconfident and overextended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government.” Add the soul-crushing mountain of foolish decrees and orders and rules and wholly-unnecessary regulatory repression and you’ve got an angry bunch of people itching to vote hard against something that smells increasingly like, well, tyranny.

Is Donald Trump the solution? No, he’s just a symptom of the solution. Yet, the silent ones finally seem wise to the corrupting miasma of everything the Clinton family touches. They’ve had it with Obama era lies about health care, immigration, defense, trade and gangsta rap in the White House. It will take the United Kingdom years to extricate itself from the European Union.  Three men have been appointed to help the country grope out of its mess and no one is quite sure how to do it.  In America we’re also at a loss about how to proceed but groping is certainly not an option.  Still, while Donald Trump might not be most people’s cup of tea, upon quiet reflection, Trexit looks possible. And necessary.

[The illustration is the front cover of “Tempest In A Teapot: Falkland Islands War” by Robert Reginald, Wildside Press, LLC 1983]