Sounds like that recent 3-part movie version of Rand’s screed that someone bought up in a thread here the other day 
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And its predecessor, Grexit (at least, Grexit is the one I heard first). Why? Why is that needed?
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Now, let’s not get into comparing the wonkiness of our respective political systems, or I might have to spam this thread with pictures of Donald Trump, and none of us wants that.
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Because politicians don’t think that people can remember two words at the same time; they’re smug and condescending to the populace that Elexit.
And it only gets worse when people get upset at these corporatist deals, and someone eventually Objexit.
Of course, that smugness and condescension can result in the politicians getting thrown out of office when the electorate Detexit.
ETA: And yes, I know the second sentence is awkward; I couldn’t think of a better way to say it that fit the scheme. I just wanted to make sure people knew that I knew, so that no one posts a reply and Correxit.
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In no way am I claiming the high ground!!
Also, Trump has yet to be elected to anything, ever.
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the knowledge about the EU is generally depressing, a 2015 survey included three simple true/false questions:
- The EU currently consists of 28 member states.
- The members of the European parliament are directly elected by the citizens of each member state.
- Switzerland is a member state of the EU.
The result was horrible
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Is there much medieval French in Shakespeare?
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Too much English, and not enough French, Danish, Italian, Latin or Gaelic.
It’s ye olde Political Correctness gone mad
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If you put those 3.9M people to a vote about whether they were racist or not, not-racist would win, so clearly they can’t be.
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makes for much better reading than current translations though… still complete and utter bunkum but well written bunkum.
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I have to add a little to this discussion, as someone with an archaeology background. I am not particularly worried about actors playing the part of someone different than they are. that is the point of acting, in my view.
But the whole thing about making assumptions about historical figures based on the genetic or racial background of current residents of the persons area of origin is not always accurate. Population frequently get displaced or even eliminated. We would not assume that Pocahontas was a Caucasian, even though three quarters of the current population of Virginia is White. The same would be true of someone from Israel. There has been a bunch of conquest and genocide in that area over the course of history, so determining the likely appearance of a person residing there at a particular point in history is complicated. The population of Judea in the assumed lifetime of Christ was very racially diverse. It is pretty unlikely that he was Asian in appearance, but pretty much anything else is possible, from African to Nordic. As an example, I should mention this mosaic floor from the likely time and geographic origin of Christ
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I am not proposing that I know what he looked like. I am just proposing that such things can be complicated.
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I will not disagree. But it seems that the UKIP fans in the thread have many uncomplicated views and solutions…
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Am I right that those results are actually worse than chance?
Does this mean… all Europeans have negative ESP?
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Isn’t by chance 12.5 %?
You’d have an 87.5% chance of getting at least one correct, yeah… I was definitely looking at the chart wrong.
We should repeat this experiments with the European overlords. The handling of the financial meltdown in South Europe smells suspiciously like negative ESP.
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Because EUROPE IS FALLING APART is why!
Or people just like portmanteaus, I suppose… 
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As a part time pub quiz creator, I don’t really think those results are all that horrible - the problem is the questions. You call them ‘simple’ and superficially they are, but the problem - for me - is that they are binary (in that you’ll get the answer completely right or completely wrong) and they require specific, detailed knowledge.
The EU currently has 28 states? Fucked if I know - I think it’s the same as the number of stars on the flag, but there’s too many there to remember. If I really wanted to know I’ll check Wikipedia, but generally it’s irrelevant information.
The second one I’ll give you - that is the kind of thing that I agree people should be at least aware of, even if they chose not to vote, and/or don’t understand the specific voting mechanism being used (FPP? MMP? Fuck nose.)
Switzerland? I think I know the answer, but really, who the fuck ears? Does it matter whether they are or not? No, not really. I don’t know, and suspect they probably aren’t, given their famous stance on neutrality. But knowing whether they are or aren’t doesn’t seem to obviously link to any deep understanding of the EU.
As a side note (and, I realise, somewhat contradicting the point I make above), I suspect if you ordered those countries by date of joining the EU, and again by size of country, then you’d would see a strong correlation between those factors and ‘knowledge’ of the EU as expressed in the questions. In other words - recent joiners are likely to have recently been subject to a sustained propaganda campaign, and be aware of these things. Similarly, citizens of small countries tend to be hyper aware of their place in the world, and more likely to maintain this kind of knowledge.
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Imagine what would happen if they gave that quiz in the States!
I do not believe any U.S. state would have a majority of people who knew the answer to even one of those three questions. It would be a very depressing chart.
