BF2S Forums Where are all the whiny peaceful "Enlightened" European now?

i mean, yes, the pomp and ceremony has been used as long as the incense and swinging thurible has been used in orthodox/catholic churches. everything down to the ceremonial architecture and design of these places has been set-up to impart a maximal sense of awe. the choristers singing and their voices echoing up through the clerestory, the light coming through the stained-glass windows at just the right angle, the organ pipes pumping great body-vibrating sounds through the large cavernous space, etc. it's all there to inspire what the Romantics used to refer to as 'the sublime' in the subrational, dark corners of our animal minds.

and it works very well, too.

the sense i get, also, is that if britain is a dwindling post-imperial power, the one thing we can still be relied on to do very well are to put on a show of pomp and ceremony. how many tin-pot and fabricated monarchies in the developing world have taken our royal traditions and iconographies as a blueprint? from the shah of iran to the royal family of thailand, they're all a bunch of little brits putting on brit affectations. (not to say that there's anything particularly desirable about this state-of-affairs; i'd just as happily see both britain and thailand be republics, more so in the latter case where they still enjoy authoritarian rule over public life; but it's been part of our national projection of soft power for centuries).

for better or for worse, it really is just part of who we are as a nation now, and the travails of the royal family – and, i suspect, their dwindling approval in the decades to come – will aptly mirror another chapter of gradual decline and break-up. unless we can reform, variously, the voting system, the devolved relationship with the separate kingdoms, the entire relationship with the EU and world trade agreements, etc, then i think we're in big trouble. hopefully charles III will do as good a job as elizabeth II in being a voice of reason and careful stewardship through these immensely challenging times.

And for generations after his or her progeny will be secured immense privilege and wealth simply by being born, deriving from that notion that they're totally apart and different from - even above - the rest of society.

this should trouble any right-thinking person, too, but the fact that western societies such as the UK's and US's are some of the most unequal societies in modern democratic society troubles me much more. because, take away the celebrity and the royal seals and coats of arms, and that description fits exactly for just about any rich or upper-middle class family today. modern societies completely without aristocracies or nobilities are capable of creating vastly unequal systems perpetuated through inheritance and birth rights. is it any more more fair that someone has a trust fund for life because their great-uncle, fourth removed, or great-great-grandfather did very well on wall street in the 1920s? that someone goes to harvard/yale because it's 'been that way' in the family since the 1840s? because your family name is an 'old' name in boston circles?

the privileges that this entire semi-anonymous class enjoys as a whole, because of the way democratic systems are set up, trouble me more than the absurdly gilded lifestyle of one small family. the royal family are the nation incarnate, and with their wealth and privilege comes the responsibility to always be in the public eye, etc. there's a sense of sacrifice and service there, even if it does seem faintly ridiculous to mention it. it's not like jeff bezos's grandkids or the zuckerberg clan in 2200 will have to spend their entire lives in public service to justify their inherited wealth.

Last edited by uziq (2022-09-21 12:56:00)

the queen was also, paradoxically, a great (unelected) representative and diplomat for the UK on the world stage. i don't think there's been many world leaders that enjoyed quite such a regard, for so long, from just about every other country on earth, regardless of ideology or creed. we would have been greatly diminished, diplomatically speaking, without her.



can you name any other topic or person that obama and trump have emphatically agreed upon in the last 20 years? lmao.

uziq wrote:

And for generations after his or her progeny will be secured immense privilege and wealth simply by being born, deriving from that notion that they're totally apart and different from - even above - the rest of society.

this should trouble any right-thinking person, too, but the fact that western societies such as the UK's and US's are some of the most unequal societies in modern democratic society troubles me much more. because, take away the celebrity and the royal seals and coats of arms, and that description fits exactly for just about any rich or upper-middle class family today. modern societies completely without aristocracies or nobilities are capable of creating vastly unequal systems perpetuated through inheritance and birth rights. is it any more more fair that someone has a trust fund for life because their great-uncle, fourth removed, or great-great-grandfather did very well on wall street in the 1920s? that someone goes to harvard/yale because it's 'been that way' in the family since the 1840s? because your family name is an 'old' name in boston circles?

the privileges that this entire semi-anonymous class enjoys as a whole, because of the way democratic systems are set up, trouble me more than the absurdly gilded lifestyle of one small family. the royal family are the nation incarnate, and with their wealth and privilege comes the responsibility to always be in the public eye, etc. there's a sense of sacrifice and service there, even if it does seem faintly ridiculous to mention it. it's not like jeff bezos's grandkids or the zuckerberg clan in 2200 will have to spend their entire lives in public service to justify their inherited wealth.

Yes I've become convinced in the last years that a new aristocracy is in the making and it'll be the families of today's ultra billionaires. I wouldn't say democracy is at the root of the problem though - it's the economic system. Global capitalism without an overarching governance mechanism is seemingly spawning its own new global ruling class.

The response from some of the Europeans here to the death of the Queen really underscores how every person has some something they are stupid over.

It is a cult of personality. It just doesn't seem like that when you are in the middle of it.


Uzique can say nigger nigger nigger every time I point it out but it doesn't change the fact that it is a shame that you live in a system where some people are more equal than others.

It is possible to move from one class to another in the U.S. I don't need a king's permission to move up the class system in the U.S.

I don't like parades

Military parades aren't really an American thing either. Much talked about at the time, Trump tried to get one and hit a lot of pushback. 1991 broke a lot of years of silence on that front.

I'd watch some of the Russian ones on livestream and get running commentary from a friend on who some of the uncaptioned officials were or what the purpose of this or that segment was (the WW2 families bits were pretty cool), but I don't really think it's something my country needs to do. We have other avenues of lip service to veterans living under bridges.

Yeah I mentioned that we have other avenues for that stuff that ironically don't really do much to help the veterans (in our long history of not doing much to help veterans) we supposedly hold in such esteem. A pigman magat standing for the anthem at a ballgame with a belligerent twist to his expression will still use another exit at the supermarket to avoid a vet and his hard times sign. Or, in a precarious working situation themselves, roll down the window and shout "get a job!"

Keep in mind that I'm not really weighing our brands against each other. Just clarifying that routine red square type military parades isn't really an American thing. What mayor wants his road to turn into this in one short day: pm

italy's effective GDP has halved in the last few decades. they were once richer than france but are now a sick man in europe. that is attributable to the actions of the italian elite and the EU, as meted out through german banks principally, not migrants. there's also, as in francoist spain, a deep and malingering element, unaddressed historically, of fascism in its institutions and public bodies. a lot of these beliefs and organisations never went away, never mind refugees from libya or syria.

you're really light on analysis here, unsurprisingly. 'everyone in europe is going far-right because of multiculturalism'.

the failure of the left in italy is just as big a part of the story. if the left had made their alliances better in this election they could have steered it centre/centre-left. a story we have seen many times before with left-of-centre electoral politics. it was wholly avoidable. the left wing, incidentally, was crushed in italy and the far-right nasties allowed to flourish thanks to ... the USA. but that's a history lesson for another day.

Last edited by uziq (2022-09-26 07:15:39)

ehm, vietnam? afghanistan?

america lost tens of thousands of personnel and a global loss of face in its military, regime-changing capabilities in vietnam. it was literally the most humbling experience of the cold war.

many thousands of americans fled across the border for fear of lottery or general conscription, refuseniks seeking border crossings to canada rather than finland or georgia.

the vietnamese were propped up by their ideological and regional allies with arms and materiel, along with intelligence, which had pretty devastating effect on an army which presumed itself to have the upper-hand in might and right.

i say afghanistan because both world powers, pretty much at their military peak, became bogged down in that place for a decade and left with their tails between their legs. what hawks in the state dept or pentagon could have imagined afghanistan flopping back to the taliban within about 2 weeks of america leaving? that's got to be a fail in strategic aims at least comparable to putin being told by his own yes-men that regime change and a quick integration of kyiv/ukraine were possible in '2 to 3 weeks'.

you have a fatal propensity for 'simple explanations'.

i said the history of italian politics are relevant, it has been a very polarized place since ww2 and the fascist element has not gone away – rather, at times it has been supported and encouraged to grow. you talking about italy having 'had enough of africans' might be superficially true in a 'current affairs' kind of way, but there's also decades of history behind the rise of neo-fascism, which isn't so much a rise as, of course, a return; and the history of the Left is very relevant here, too.

as for 'simple explanations', you seem to struggle with simple statistics: it was the lowest turnout of any italian election in modern history, at 64% of the total population, which would suggest that the 'simple explanation' is that your average italian is totally turned-off from the options on the table altogether, not foaming at the mouth to finally get retribution against the arabs and blacks. the far-right party won 25% of the vote. which hardly suggests that 'europe is rising up and have had enough of multiculturalism' is quite as 'simple' a truth as you continually applaud and wish for ... odd how excited you get when fascists win badly attended elections and threaten to turn europe back 75 years to a continent of 'god and the family'. by the way, why are you so excited about those 'barbarian' bible thumpers you keep going on about now, of all times?

in electoral politics it is a very worrying news story. italy is in real trouble. but you taking it as a passport to say that europe is 'sick of multiculturalism' is merely a way of sweeping longer historical sicknesses, as well as other present ills, under the table. it wasn't a single-issue election and only 25% of a meagrely attended vote seem as passionate about migrants as you, dear dilbert.