I was wrong (again)

When the referendum results came in with such a narrow margin I was actually a little relieved that it went to Leave. That seems like a strange thing for someone who voted remain but with such a small margin I really thought it would be best for the country.

The problem with watching any political decision on social media is the filter bubble. You only ever see things from people who agree with you and that gives you unshakable faith that you are right. This bubble exists in real life too. We surround ourselves with people who are just like us. I don't have any friends who don't like books and music. The Long Suffering Husband only knows golf players. 

Before the vote, people had become very certain that it was going the way that they were voting.

"Where are all these 'Leave' voters? I don't know any," or "Everyone I know is going out out!" people cried. 

When the result was announced there was shock and sadness. Those who voted to stay in the European Union are processing their grief at different rates and the seven stages of shock, denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance feel like they are all being played out at once in the media. 

Because most people in my bubble are mostly easy going, accepting nice people who voted to remain I thought that with a close vote for leave would cause less nastiness. I had seen considerable nastiness (especially of the violent and racist variety) from Brexiteers on Twitter whenever I had made a conscious effort to step out of my bubble. 

But it seems as though I was wrong, again and there will always be nastiness when there is division of opinion because this causes conflict and humans are really bad a dealing with conflict in a pragmatic way. 

If you voted to remain and are sad and angry, that is OK. You need time to get to an acceptance. You believed in democracy enough to vote, you have to believe in it enough to hope that what happens next is what the majority wanted. You are allowed to think they are wrong but it has to happen for the democratic process to ever be trusted again. It is not acceptable to publicly swear at or threaten anyone who didn't agree with you. 

If you voted to leave you also have a job to do. You need not to gloat. You need to not go back on your decision. You need to not be too sensitive. I say that with caution because if you are being verbally abused or threatened you should complain but getting into a bit of a huff and saying it's that all getting very nasty when all that has been said is that the other person thinks the decision can only have been made by people who weren't clever enough to read all the arguments is over sensitive.

It seems as though the vote has also given a mandate to racists to tell people to go home. There is nastiness out there and it's coming from some of the people that won. I was completely wrong to think that the leave voters that were voting purely on getting rid of immigrants would be nice when they won. Instead they think that everyone who voted with them supports their right to abuse human beings with darker skin or an accent.

A vote to leave was always going to cause political turmoil because most of the people in government wanted to stay. There will be difficult times ahead but I really hope that it doesn't end in violence.