Isolationism Is So 1941

If you're like me and you're waking up today (or, if like me you turned it to CNN right after "@midnight" and saw the news, you went to bed) with the news that the UK has left the EU, all because of something called the "Brexit vote," you are not alone. Also, you may want to make sure you didn't have anything invested in any English businesses, because their economy is in the shitter. Literally.

I have to admit that I'm not well-versed on what Brexit means (it sounds like a synth-pop duo from the Eighties, albeit a very racist and xenophobic one). But judging from the way it's being described online, it sounds like a really, really, really fucking stupid idea. Kind of like electing Trump over here.

By the way, that sentient bag of human fecal matter tweeted some sort of nonsense about the UK "taking their country back, like we will take back America." Can he be forced to stay in Scotland for the rest of his life? They know what to do with power-hungry despots over there (hey kids, ever read "Macbeth"?).

Anywho, it seems like the more the world is becoming connected, the easier it is for people to bemoan that connection (or, assuming that they don't know the meaning of the word "bemoan," bitch and complain about it). I know it's scary, and I know that it's not always fun to have connections to the outside world. But it's time for all of us to put on our big boy(or girl) pants and admit that hey, we're all connected. And not in a pseudo-hippie bullshit kind of way, either.

Isolationism, as sold to us most recently by Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and now Donald Trump, sounds fantastic. Hey, screw the rest of the world, we don't need nobody! But ask any of the members of famous bands who went off to do their solo careers (and whose names aren't John, Paul, George, or Ringo) how that worked out. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I heard all the time apocalyptic warnings about "the coming one-world government." It was supposed to set the plate for a ravenous Satan to feast upon all our souls, presumably while James Taylor blasted in the background.

Seriously, does anyone actually think the Evil One gets down to heavy metal? Please, Satan is an earworm junkie. How else to explain Justin Bieber?

Like I said, going it alone sounds like a great idea, whether you're a moody teenager or a country. But you need people (and other countries) in today's world. You cannot do it alone. Even solo acts need backing musicians.

I would like to point out that all this citation of musical metaphors is meant to cover the fact that I still am not 100 percent sure of what "Brexit" is. But I do know what isolationism is; it's an outmoded, outdated, and thoroughly discredited ideology that essentially gives a middle finger to the rest of the world and then shuts itself away in its room to listen to Goth music. Britain done fucked up, and I think we should take some pause before we similarly fuck up by electing Reichsfuhrer Trump in November.

I still think "Brexit" is a fantastic name for a synth-pop duo, by the way.