Paranoid on Netflix: Pre-Brexit

We streamed Paranoid on Netflix - we never pass up a British cop drama, and this one was uncommonly good.

First, it was good to see Indira Varma in a starring rather than supportive role.  She impressed in everything from Rome to Luther, and she's excellent as the lead detective (Nina) investigating what may be a murder by a homicidal maniac.   Even more interesting in many ways is her private life, with all kinds of unexpected alliances and vulnerabilities and twists and turns, including with the young guy on her team, Alec (played just right by Dino Fetscher).

Speaking of moving up to a more major role, Robert Glenister, who played a sometimes arch superior in MI-5, is down in the trenches as a hard-bitten, heart-on-his-sleeve detective on Nina's team, and the drugs he's taking for his anxiety may be making him a little paranoid himself.   Leslie Sharp is also sharp, definitely memorable, as his quirky love-interest Lucy.

But the villain in this story [mild spoiler], as soon becomes apparent, is big pharma, and its reach extends from England to Germany, which soon pitches the narrative into a tale of two detective units, one in a smallish town in England, the other in Dusseldorf, with all kinds of helpful and otherwise interactions.

It occurred to me, as I was watching and enjoying this, that this kind of cooperation, conducted via Skype and the occasional in-person visit, was pre-Brexit.   I suppose there's no reason it couldn't continue, but this subtle subtext of Paranoid, that the Brits and the Germans are almost just two different units of some same transnational police force, somehow seems a little more wishful thinking now than it did earlier this year.

Which makes Paranoid even more appealing as a cop show.   See it.

Why Brexit and Waldo Won't Play as Trump in the U.S.

A lot of bitter-end Trumpists, clinging to any last hope they can find as their candidate goes under, cite Brexit as what will happen in the United States on Election Day.  If they were more literate, they might also find comfort in Black Mirror's science fiction episode, "The Waldo Moment," in which a cartoon character disrupts the political process in the U.K., and comes in second in a three-way heated campaign.   Indeed, Black Mirror creator and Waldo writer Charlie Booker has gone on record saying that Trump could well win.

Here's why I think not -

First, as far as Brexit is concerned, although the pro-Brexit "leave" vote was trailing the anti-Brexit "stay" vote in the lead-up to the U.K. referendum, the two were closer (just a few points in the polls) than Trump is now to Hillary Clinton in the United States (he's ten or more points behind in many states, including some swing states).

But those numbers aside, the electoral system in the U.K. is very different from what we have in the U.S.  In the U.K., everyone voted once, pro or against, Brexit.  The potential for surprise that goes against the polling is much greater in that kind of system than in the U.S., in which the Presidential election takes place months after the conclusion of a series of primaries.

Why is that important?  Well, not to be too cynical about it, but our U.S. system gives more people more time to come to their senses, and not vote their first impulses.   Indeed, Trump won the primaries because people were indeed voting their first impulses, which they didn't have all that much time to think over, and in the Republican Party were not all that antithetical to Trump in any case. But Americans including Republicans now have had lots of time to find out about Trump's treatment of women, his refusal to say he'll abide by the election results, and lots of other very disturbing factors not many people knew about during the primaries.

Nothing is impossible in elections.  But John Milton and Thomas Jefferson's belief that if truth is in the market place of ideas with all the falsity, sooner or later a majority of rational human beings will recognize it, seems to be at holding sway in the United States, where the truth about Trump has had time to get known.

We all have to vote, but I'm looking forward to watching Waldo where he belongs, not in the White House but on Black Mirror's darkly satirical television.

Why Brexit Victory Does Not Necessarily Foreshadow Trump Success in US

There's been a lot of concern expressed today about why the victory of the Leave the EU voters in the UK may signal the upcoming success of Donald Trump in the US Presidential election later this year.

There's no doubt that Leave the EU (Brexit) was fueled by anti-immigration sentiment in the UK, and that the Brexit victory was carried by white labor voters in the UK.  Further, Trump has indeed built his campaign on the same kind of anti-immigration views, and white Americans, especially men, are among his biggest demographics.

But there's a crucial difference between the demographics of the UK and the US.   In the UK, the white vote comprises about 85% of the voting population;  in the US, the white vote is closer to 70%. Further, the non-white vote in the US - in particular, African-American and Latino - are strongly anti-Trump.

That minority has already served Hillary Clinton very well, bringing her landslide victories in the US South, and an impressive victory in California. There is no reason to think that even a sliver of that vote will go to Trump in the Fall.

In addition, Hillary does far better with white women in the US than Brexit did with white women in the UK.

We still have a very long way to go until our election in November, and the forces of progress need every vote we can get.   But there's every reason to think that Trump and his pandering xenophobia will not have the same result his spiritual brethren got with it in the Brexit victory last night.