What is a Brexit?

An unpleasant-sounding portmanteau.

How will the Brexit affect the Grateful Dead?

It won’t.

How will the Brexit affect Enthusiasts?

On which continent?

North America.

It won’t.

At all?

Well, if you’re heavily invested in the currency markets, then you’re probably having a stressful day.

What if you don’t quite understand what a currency market is and just use money to buy stuff?

You’re golden, Pony Boy.

Okay, but what about Enthusiasts in the United Kingdom?

They should be getting their information from someone other than me. And quite frankly, they should have done it weeks ago.

…

Are you going to be helpful?

I’m trying, but–like most Americans–I have very little actual knowledge of British politics or the inner workings of the European Union.

Doesn’t seem to stop anybody from having an opinion.

The right to be ignorant at the top of your lungs is the pretty much the subtext of the First Amendment.

Do they have a First Amendment in England?

They don’t have any amendments.

So why are we talking about it?

Because no American conversation about politics is complete without at least one misreading of the First Amendment.

Can we get back to the UK?

Sure. Flights are cheap now.

What’s going to happen to Britain?

Who am I, Nostrildamus?

Nostrildamus?

Jewish psychic.

Nice one.

Listen: no one knows. That’s the problem, really. Hell, the referendum wasn’t legally binding, so Parliament might just decide to ignore the vote.

Will that end well?

Oh, God, no.

Is there a overarching takeaway from this?

Yes. 2016 is the year the 20th century ended. What we referred to as the “Post-War” years? They’re over.

So what comes next?

Pre-war years, I guess.

A financial note:

Donate Button will no longer be accepting Pounds.

Please use a currency worth something, like Zim dollars, or expired green stamps, or Deutschmarks from the Weimar Republic. Also permissible are shiny beads, half a leftover steak sandwich, or coal-mining scrip that you can only use at the company store.

A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.

An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty.

An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust.

On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.

History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants

• Lin-Manuel Miranda, Federalist #1