That green and pleasant land

British historian, Simon Michael Schama, said tonight (paraphrased), those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make willfully ignorant. He was talking about the first results in the British decision about whether to leave or remain in the European Union. Those who want to leave are largely influenced by their xenophobic fear of immigration. The first voting indicators tonight are for leaving, although the Scots are voting to stay.

The English pound has been falling in the last few hours in its relation to the dollar. All this means that maybe the Scots will ask for another referendum about whether to stay in Great Briton. If they leave, England goes back to being a rather pretty, but isolated and impoverished island. What a pity.

Whatever self destructive impulses motivated Venezuela to follow Chávez, and have created a following for Donald Trump in the United States, now are at work in that “green and pleasant land.”

Shakespear put into the mouth of John of Gaunt in his play “Richard II”:

“…This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out – I die pronouncing it –
Like to a tenement or a pelting farm.
England,... 
is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds.
That England that was wont to conquer others
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.”