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Okay. Let's move into some light culture war. So Jeremy Clarkson seems to be going soft in his old age - he apologized for a column in the Sun newspaper in which he is less than gentle on Meghan Markle. The column is taken down but wayback machine remembers.
https://web.archive.org/web/20221217031028/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20782114/harry-meghan-netflix-series-truth/
Imo - it is pretty tame even if colorful stuff. And if you are a British citizen with attachment to the monarchy - I think the sentiment is understandable.
And his apology is here.
So it is non apology. Of course the mob is not appeased. At least he didn't try to be more apologetic afterwards.
"At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!�? and throw lumps of excrement at her.!
I sincerely cannot understand what can make a grown person have such an intensity of emotion for someone who isnt a murderer or rapist og war criminal or the like. Meghan Markle is very annoying, sure, but this is beyond unhinged. I realize brits love their royal family, but surely after all the Diana/Charles escapades and then recently with prince Andrew, they learned to temper their emotions just a bit?
I always find this itself pretty strange. American's can hardly even keep a culture of respect for their founding fathers who at least have the mysticism of time to lighten their dark marks but the brits are able to be unendingly in favor of a hereditary elite constantly involved in scandals. My most downvoted post on this site was comparing them to the Kardashians but I stand by it. If the Royal family was based in America it would be a very hated institution, we even hate the people who earned their billions here.
In the words of Arthur Fleck: "You wouldn't get it."
Royals are a connection to a deep tradition of organic government that has lasted for more than a thousand years. Elisabeth was with the Brits for most of their life, an anchor of stability and continuity in a chaotic world that connected centuries through unbroken tradition.
Americans being such a young and exuberant nation do not really have the ability to appreciate the value of this. The king is not a founding father, it goes much deeper than that.
The loss of such things can deeply scar a people. Take it from the guys who killed their King two centuries ago and still aren't really over it.
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Peterson of all people said it very well. There are actually four heads of government power: Judicial, Legislative, Executive, and Symbolic. In America, the last two are assigned to the POTUS, which causes a bunch of problems, but in England it keeps celebrity nonsense stuff safely contained and away from the formal power (and causes a different set of problems instead).
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And progressive Texans love their lone star culture markers even if they would be considered red tribe elsewhere in the country. Why? Because loving football, cowboy boots, pickup trucks, and the oil industry is a unifying cultural institution. Just because the USA doesn’t have unifying institutions, doesn’t mean they can’t exist somewhere- the monarchy is for Britain what soccer is for Argentina.
I was trying to explain this on reddit last week. Texas has state patriotism like no one else. Regardless of my opinions on the local government, I love being part of the state’s culture. That was not the case back when I lived in South Carolina.
You’ll see it to a lesser extent in Oklahoma and parts of Louisiana(particularly Cajuns- and the 10 or so white creoles who haven’t been folded into Cajun identity by now- are likely to identify with Louisiana or Cajun identity over a national or local identity). I do agree that other southern states don’t have the same level of state patriotism, much less northern or western states. And in any case both Oklahoma and southern Louisiana have absolutely enormous amounts of Texas influence, culturally speaking.
There's a fair amount of state patriotism in Wisconsin, in my experience. We love being macho about the cold, the Packers, wearing cheeseheads, how much we can drink compared to other states, etc. I left because in all honesty fuck the weather... but I do miss my home state and love it dearly. And my experience with other people from Wisconsin is that they are generally the same way.
I wouldn't say we're on the level of Texas, because who is really? But it's still significant.
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It's part of the ontology of what makes you British, like fish and chips or poor dental health. Rejecting monarchism causes an existential crisis in the British psyche - which would be bad enough on its own, but when one starts to think "OK, I'm No True Scotsman because I don't like the monarchy" then as a Western European this puts you dangerously close to being French, which the British (or post-British) psyche also recoils from.
If you don't yell God Save The King, are you really British? Or are you just some guy with a lame piece of paper signed by (chortle) Rishi Sunak that confers upon you legal citizenship on a rainy island?
But surely there is some giant set of seething academics who hate that their society idolizes literal colonizers? Or to look at it from the other way, where did all the people who transparently hate America and everything it stands for come from in the States and why doesn't this same process happen elsewhere? Where is the equivalent of the person who every thanks giving delights in shitting on the settlers? Isn't the UK one of the countries that sneers at the US for being backwards and unenlightened?
Sure. There has long been a minority of republicans in the UK. The problem is that they mostly come off as seething radicals, and though there are a good number of republican politicians, they mostly choose to downplay it or hide it, because they know how poorly it goes down with voters. And of course there are plenty of radicals on the left in papers like the Guardian who don't hide their contempt for the Royal Family (or for anything they judge as too white and too old).
This is good background but doesn't answer my question of why the 'republicans' of the UK as dismissed but the 'America is an irredeemable country' people in the states are not.
Aren't they dismissed in the US? Yeah there are people in academia or what have you that openly hate the country. But by and large, politicians (even Democrats) have to act patriotic if they want to have political success. That seems rather analogous to what @Mewis was saying about the UK.
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The USA doesn’t stand for anything. Certainly parts of the USA have unifying myths or culture based nationalism(and politicians in these places are quick to praise those myths or nationalism even when it’s aligning with the other team nationally), but a New Yorker, a Californian, a Texan, and a Floridian probably will not be able to agree amongst themselves which of them apply to the whole country.
What does the UK stand for then? They're certainly not without their regional troubles.
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