This is what happens when you take away hope.

If it can happen in England, it can happen in America too. In the United States, as in the United Kingdom, those who have been denied their dreams may stew quietly for years (like a raisin in the sun?) or they may explode in anger and helplessness.

What happens when you take away hope? When you kill the dream? What happens when a whole people has nothing, and nothing to lose? You get a riot.

That’s what the Brexit vote was: A riot, a lashing out against The Man, the oppressor, the one who stole your dreams. Burn it down, baby.

Donald Trump: Brexit Similar to U.S. Taking Country Back

The people of the U.K. are a free, and relatively prosperous people, but many have lost any hope that they or their children will have the brighter future that was promised when the U.K. evolved from the greatest empire in history into just another member of the European Union, a Great Britain no greater than Malta or Moldova.

The globalization of commerce, labor and finance, the opening of borders, and the ever-greater union of European states was supposed to make the Brits better off. It was supposed to make everyone better off. That was the promise.

The promise wasn’t kept.

The promise hasn’t been kept anywhere. Not in Birmingham or in Detroit. Not in Athens or in Damascus.

Read:How Brexit (and Donald Trump) could upend the global economy

Will leaving the European Union bring back the hope, restore the dream? No, not a chance.

Burning down the neighborhood won’t bring prosperity or end the oppression, but it sure feels good for once to just do something, to hold up your middle finger to the rich man who shipped your last job to China, and to strike back at the fresh-off-the-boat immigrant who will compete with you for your next job.

Read:Donald, Hillary and Bernie are lying to us about those lost manufacturing jobs

The experts said leaving the European Union wouldn’t make your life any better (and probably would make it worse), but those are the same experts who promised that globalization and immigration wouldn’t hurt a bit. The experts were either fools or liars. And so you hold your middle finger up to the experts as well.

God it feels good to tell them all to bugger off.

But then what? After the fires burn down and the TV trucks have gone on to the next photo-op, what then? You still live in the same squalid neighborhood, except some idiot burned down the grocery store, and someone else looted the only factory left in town.

Sure felt good, though. Maybe we should help Donald Trump build that wall, and make America great again.