1 Schadenfreude is down 30% due to a glut on the market.

2 I wonder if you can sell schadenfreude futures?

You can, but don't be shocked if people laugh at you when they go pear-shaped.

3 There's some jokes about "throwing off the yoke of oppression" and other things to send to the Brits, but the situation is actually far more similar to the events that lead to the American Revolution than people really want to admit. So the impulse that set off one world-changing event is still there in the Isles.  Which is good.
The only problem, tossing in another American Revolution reference, is that this is only the Lexington & Concorde moment in the European Nationalist vs Globalist war.  History presses ever onward, and we, at times, are just witnesses. 

4 And David Cameron has announced he'll be resigning as PM once the party chooses his successor.

5 UKIP is the big winner in this election.  Expect them to pick up plenty of seats.

6 Excerpt from comments by the head of BBC political research:

"There are many millions of people in the UK who do not enthuse about diversity and do not embrace metropolitan values, yet do not consider themselves lesser human beings for all that. ... the metropolitan political class, confronted by them, seems completely bewildered and at a loss about how to respond ('who are these ghastly people and where do they come from?' doesn't really hack it.)"

So, flyover country has spoken.  In Britain, at least

7 Although the global markets are convulsing now, the only scenario I can see for long-term negative economic impact of Brexit is if the remaining EU members decide to "punish" the British voters with high tariffs or trade embargoes.  And what are the odds of the EU ruling class being that vindictive... 

8 Pretty good.  After all, our president said there'd be consequences.   And one of those should be President Trump adding Britain to NAFTA, in effect if not name.  (Of course, some Brits might think that's worse than the EU, but it doesn't come with our bureaucracy....)

9

I am indifferent to Brexit, though I am inclined toward the Brits staying the Brits.  But there are always opportunity costs, and I know people who do not like 'Leave' winning, because their stocks and bonds, and businesses are now under threat.  In fact, it appears that some companies have already announced relocation plans from the UK.

Also, there are renewed eagerness among the Scottish nationalists and Irish Republicans for an independent Scotland and/or a reunified Ireland.  Those might be good for England - but it will not be a United Kingdom any longer.

The American Interest (William Russell Mead and company.) noticed an observation made by a professor in the UK - UKIP went in big among the working class communities usually represented by Labour MPs, and got a correspondingly high level of support from them.  Parliament might have no choice but to vote on Brexit - and approve it.

10 After the result, was there a meltdown on Metafilter similar to the one Megan McArdle saw from journalists and pundits?

11 Yeah, pretty much. The demographics are different but the hyperbole is about the same.

12

What is really ironic is that amidst the ranting about 'Leave' voters being stupid and racist, the Mirror published exit polling that shows that 53% of 'Leave' voters put 'laws being made in the UK and not in Brussels' as their most important reason for voting - something that sounds very much like what Boris Johnson and his group was saying.  Immigration, despite Nigel Farage (Who I dislike because of his association with the Kremlin.) and UKIP, came in second at 34%.

Meanwhile, 67% of the 'Remain' voters regarded 'economics' as their most important reason to vote.  If 'Leave' supporters were really the stupid racists that 'Remain' voters suggest (And I see a lot of that - from  Americans - on my Facebook feed.), they would be calling the 'Remain' supporters a bunch of greedy, money-hungry pigs.

13 One interesting thing is that the vote didn't follow the usual political patterns.  Both Leave and Remain were basically 50/50 left/right.  Which is why the conservative PM resigned and the left-wing Labor Party is tearing itself to pieces today.

14 Wait, Labour party.  The Australian version dropped the U for whatever reason.  We have an election here in a week...  Joy.

15

The one smart thing that UKIP did this time was to go big and heavy for 'Leave' votes from among the working class communities in traditional Labour seats - and it worked.  The fact alone is why I doubt Parliament can put off voting on Brexit - or voting it down.

I have been seeing Democrats trying to use Brexit and Nigel Farage as a rallying cry against Trump, not understanding that the America version of the 'Leave' voter base would see the majority of working class Democrats voting against Hillary.

Given the unique nature of Britain's membership in the EU means I am unsurprised that many in the rest of the EU have no problem seeing the UK go.  Germany probably prefers one less nation drawing subsidies from it - which is the other big reason why I doubt an independent Scotland will be allowed into the EU (The other being a desire from certain members of the EU not to give ideas to domestic separatist movements.).

16

It will be a lot easier to extract the UK because the UK kept the pound. Extracting a nation which uses the Euro will be more complicated.

All the people who are talking about how this will end the UK, with Scotland and Northern Ireland wanting independence -- well, maybe. But they seem to imply that this would be unprecedented, and that's bogus.

First, the USSR broke up. Remember that? Then there was Yugoslavia, though a lot of that was because of outside military force.

But there was also Czechoslovakia breaking up -- peacefully, and apparently successfully.

17 USSR had a common currency, too. But I think that Austo-Hungarian empire is a more appropriate example. It included many of the same peoples stuck in EU now.

18

Czechoslovakia is the odd duck among them, due in no small part to Vaclav Havel.  The other two required a certain amount of violence to achieve, and any further secession among the nations of continental Europe will, with the possible exception of Belgium breaking up, not follow the example set by Prague and Bratislava.

(As a sidenote, I amused a few years ago when the progressive left was calling for Obama to follow Boris Yeltsin's example and use force against Congress.  Given that Yeltsin had the military shell the White House to cow the Russian legislators, and the progressives might not like the imagery that comes to mind.).

Pixy, I feel your pain.  Your choice seems to be similar to what faces us here in the US.  Tim Blair may be on to something when he took 'delcon' and ran with it.

19 Oh, we're a lot better off than you in the US.  We have two disagreeable but mostly adequate choices (plus the batshit-crazy Greens, as always).

They're remarkably unexciting candidates, but neither one is or wears orange.

20 The famous shelling only happened in the finale of the struggle. The commies based there started taking over key positions in the city, such as the City Hall (former SEV Building). They tried to take over the central TV station in Ostankino, but the police unit that defended it lasted for a couple of days that was enough for the army to see that the commies didn't have enough support base. The army units stopped to ignore their deployment orders and started pushing back. In a couple of weeks of low-intensity street fighting around city landmarks culminated in the ultimatum and shelling.

In American terms, it would be equivalent to Congress was full of Muslim terrorists and took up arms against the rest of the U.S. Government, laying waste to Supreme Court chambers, as well as Georgetown University. I'm not exactly sure if talking about this sort of thing as "Constitutional" or not even makes sense.

I defended the White House when it was Yeltsin's HQ in 1991, but I did not participate in the 1993 uprising on either side. Gradually getting wiser, I guess.

21

I'm glad that kind of thing doesn't happen here. The last time I know of that anything like that happened here was in 1957 when the governor of Arkansas called out the National Guard to prevent black students from entering a traditionally white-only high school, and Eisenhower responded by sending in the 101st Airborne.

But no shots were fired. (Thank goodness.)

22

Eisenhower had placed the 101st Airborne on standby for deployment to Little Rock if the Arkansas National Guard had not followed federal orders.  Fortunately for all concerned, Creighton Abrams (Yes, the officer that the tank is named after.) had his orders obeyed.

Lyndon Johnson had apparently did threaten to send the military against Congress.  So did Richard Nixon secretly at the height of Watergate, only for Abrams to tell him on behalf of the services chiefs that they would pretend that they had not heard that.