Larssen
Member
+99|1857
The funeral of the queen and all the events preceding it did remind me how incredibly important symbolisms and historic near-religious rituals (I wrote traiditions initially but that doesn't quite cover it) are to (group) identity - and just how deeply the UK monarchy has managed to entrench itself in public life through them. Seeing all that made me realise that the royals are inseperable from the identity of the nation and its people, down to their very core.

Even though I'm absolutely republican it was about as close as I'd ever get to uttering words like 'god save the queen'. And the whole thing will be repeated with the coronation of charles. A procession full of history referencing pomp, clothing and symbolisms, the archbishop's blessing, the crowning and holding the crown jewels, the oath he'll make etc.

It's a sort of ceremonial showmanship that we've almost forgotten about this day and age. The effect is also astounding in a way; it appears to elevate the monarch above everyone else in such a manner that we're all seemingly okay with it. 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.


As for that video - yes pretty good but a mostly angry speech in front of a near empty parliament will hardly go down in history lmao.

Last edited by Larssen (2022-09-21 12:36:20)

uziq
Member
+492|3422
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)

Larssen
Member
+99|1857
It's hard to think of the abolition of the monarchy without the dissolution of the UK or even just England and its transformation into something else. It's too entrenched. Its attachment to national identity just being one part of that entrenchment.

It's just hard to figure out when that'll be or what comes next. No structures like these exist into perpetuity. History doesn't provide a clear answer here either on how those transformative processes come about. Some are nearly instantaneous and shocking, in other cases it's a very long and slow decline over hundreds of years. Probably the latter in our case.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
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
Member
+492|3422

Larssen wrote:

It's hard to think of the abolition of the monarchy without the dissolution of the UK or even just England and its transformation into something else. It's too entrenched. Its attachment to national identity just being one part of that entrenchment.

It's just hard to figure out when that'll be or what comes next. No structures like these exist into perpetuity. History doesn't provide a clear answer here either on how those transformative processes come about. Some are nearly instantaneous and shocking, in other cases it's a very long and slow decline over hundreds of years. Probably the latter in our case.
the UK takes pride on the fact that we didn't have a violent revolution during the great european age of the same and opted for a whiggish type of reform. it again makes up part of the fabric of our national character.
Larssen
Member
+99|1857

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.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i only mentioned the democratic framework insofar as to point out that it’s not monarchies and aristocracies from the feudal antique world that are the big problem. it’s the wealth proliferating and being transferred upwards in ‘democracies’.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
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.
https://cdn-ed.versobooks.com/blog_posts/000004/381/997306859-mao-zedong-portrait-tiananmen-gate-tiananmen-square-chinese-soldier-.jpg

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.
https://wordhistories.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/d803f-photograph-from-the-animated-film-animal-farm-1954.png
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
KEN-JENNINGS
I am all that is MOD!
+2,973|6602|949

We live in that system too. De facto class systems vs. de jure class systems.

Is the monarchy weird? Yes, just like your fake fealty to the catholic church or dilbert's desire to suck Elon's cock or my mindless hero worship of sports teams.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
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.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
erm, both junior wings of our royal family married commoners. one is now a princess and the other is a duchess. you can literally move into royalty.

it’s been possible to become a peer, aka the upper class, for centuries through public works and service. incidentally, the old hereditary peerages almost all aren’t as rich or powerful as the upper-middle class industrialists, media moguls, political donors, etc, class. another pointless and phantasmal enemy to achieving ‘equality’. it’s not the 19th century.

is the current system fair? hell no. but it’s one small family. i cannot possibly care about or spend my time getting outraged about the royal family. you and i encounter bigger and more relevant inequalities every single day. the existence of european nobility isn’t holding you or society back, macbeth.

Last edited by uziq (2022-09-21 18:09:16)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
I don't like parades
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
not sure we ever have military parades. they really are associated with precisely post-monarchical regimes that are established in the name of ‘the People’. the culture of military celebration is much more prevalent in american life: because, you know, you spend so much money on it.

you’re really just emerging from a populist wave and cult of personality around trump that led to an insurrection on the capitol and still weekly news stories, the guy still commands the attention of half of your media and he’s been out of office for 2 years … and you’re lecturing europeans because they spend 10 days remembering a monarch who served for 70 years?

lmao yeah your system sounds superb. the last time the royal family caused a constitutional crisis or civil conflict in the UK was 400 years ago, bro. /popcorn

Last edited by uziq (2022-09-21 18:50:47)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

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.
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i mean, sure, but i don't think you can downplay the automatic deference to the armed forces in the bush/cheney years and onwards. two decades of a society on a war footing, in which 'thank you for your service' was automaton-talk and the media was full of portrayals of all-american heroes and 'american snipers'. i'm not sure you can characterise the UK as being beholden to weird, totemistic parades when americans go weak at the knees over the stars-and-stripes or a man in military uniform. what's the difference when brits are equally susceptible to royal regalia?

don't you have fly-bys at football games? your biggest event, the superbowl, regularly has a military 'fuck yeah!' undertone, does it not? the 'look at our awesome military hardware and enjoy your corndog and the ball game' show? we don't call out the RAF every time there's a wimbledon final. now which society is more down the rabbithole of ideological bunkum? now who looks like north korea or the USSR?

and i'm still not being lectured by an american who is sitting in one of the most polarised, divided, angry, violent, and all-round populistic and frenzied nations on Earth at present. our constitutional monarchic system has been stable for centuries. you've got angry rednecks taking buses to the capital city to try and start a coup. i'll take Charles III, thanks. the pomp and fineries of royal funerals and coronations are specious, i agree, when they come around once every few decades; but having 40% of your society beholden to populism is plain retarded.

Last edited by uziq (2022-09-21 19:26:26)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6741|PNW

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: https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/16548296-original-1592854099.jpg?resize=980:* pm
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Now Italy has gone hard right anti-migrant.
About as far right as Mussolini's time apparently.

Why can't they see how great multiculturalism is? Sad!
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
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)

SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3689
https://i.redd.it/9lhmph0uv5q91.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
ehm, vietnam? afghanistan?
Cybargs
Moderated
+2,285|6686

uziq wrote:

ehm, vietnam? afghanistan?
this is nowhere close.
https://cache.www.gametracker.com/server_info/203.46.105.23:21300/b_350_20_692108_381007_FFFFFF_000000.png
uziq
Member
+492|3422
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'.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

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.
The simple explanation is Italians are fed up with being flooded with African migrants and the alt-right promised to blockade Africa.

Or maybe of course its something the Americans did decades ago.

And you call me a crackpot.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
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.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Seems to be happening across Europe though eh, and not forgetting Brexit.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!

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