In the wake of Britain’s vote to exit the E.U., those who wished for their country to remain—a view held by 75% of voters between the ages of 18 and 24, and 56% of ages 25 to 49, according to a YouGov poll—started to speak out about what they saw as a tragedy. One brief lament, written by a commenter named Nicholas on the Financial Times’ website, seems to have captured the core of that sentiment. It is being shared thousands of times across Twitter. It reads:
A quick note on the first three tragedies. Firstly, it was the working classes who voted us to leave because they were economically disregarded and it is they who will suffer the most in the short term from the dearth of jobs and investment. They have merely swapped one distant and unreachable elite for another one. Secondly, the younger generation has lost the right to live and work in 27 other countries. We will never know the full extent of the lost opportunities, friendships, marriages and experiences we will be denied. Freedom of movement was taken away by our parents, uncles, and grandparents in a parting blow to a generation that was already drowning in the debts of our predecessors. Thirdly and perhaps most significantly, we now live in a post-factual democracy. When the facts met the myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in a HG Wells novel. When [British Conservative, pro-Brexit politician] Michael Gove said ‘the British people are sick of experts’ he was right. But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti-intellectualism has lead to anything other than bigotry?
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