Who do I blame? Eight reasons we ended up in this Brexit mess

FULL STORY by Ian Jack: The GUARDIAN…..

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3. Cultural dementia 

The phrase is the title of a new book by a historian of modern Europe, Professor David Andress, who argues that France, the US and Britain are all engaged in “particular forms of forgetting, mistaking and misremembering the past”. This is more deadly than straightforward nostalgia, which is a form of homesickness. As a population we are older than we have ever been, but in Andress’s words we seem to be “abandoning the wisdom of maturity for senescent daydreams of recovered youth”, and along the way “stirring up old hatreds, giving disturbing voice to destructive rage and risking the collapse of [our] capacity for decisive, effective and just governance”. An example of the daydreams is the belief that the nations of the old empire are “queuing up” to sign trade deals with the country that once ruled them. Empire 2.0.