American royalty – under the radar?
One thing I’ll give the British royals: they aren’t under the radar. The paparazzi give them no peace. Even if the media wasn’t always on their trail, the royals’ only job now is to appear at functions that keep the rabble away from members of Parliament so these illustrious individuals can tend to the country’s real problems (note that I said “tend to” and not “solve”—these bozos are only slightly more effective than our own Congress people, but that isn’t saying much).
We send the President, the President’s wife, VP Joe Biden, or Joe’s wife to similar events. The Brits recognize the importance of these state events and maintain a whole staff of royals to do the job. Great for country spirit. They’re one up on us, having separation of ceremonial wastes of time from state, in addition to church from state—since the Queen is head of the Anglican Church, it all makes some sort of Yorkshire-pudding sense.
One poll showed that only 6% of Americans seriously followed the circus-like events otherwise known as the royal wedding. If you still bother to watch or listen to our national media, you would certainly wonder how this number can be so low. It seemed that every reporter was on the case and interviewing absolutely everyone on both sides of the pond. Spending so much time on this frivolity when the rash of tornados made the Midwest and South look like the Japanese tsunami had moved through was obscene. On one hand, a fairy tale celebration—on the other, a horror story of destruction and human suffering. It took bin Laden to put the royal circus on the back burner.
Add to that the fact that the Brits spent 80+ million dollars on their fun and games and you have obscenity to the nth power. I don’t accept that the investment was good for London’s economy. That’s like saying a burdelo or a porn shop is good for a neighborhood’s economy. The British government pimps their royals, the common Brit eats it up as another excuse to down a few pints, and the rest of the country suffers through the same recession we’re suffering through. “Those pints do a good job of keeping the rabble content,” says Mr. John Q. Parliament-member. “And those rabble, the poor and middle class, are paying for it all anyway!”
We didn’t even get to see the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge off on their honeymoon in that cheap little Aston-Martin—they didn’t even get the James Bond model. I think Mr. Obama passed the word on to the old lady Queen about Osama’s future encounter of the first kind with the Navy SEALs. He knew there was going to be hell to pay after sending that cutthroat and murderer to hell. Britain and the U.S. are favorite targets for the jihadists—but they would love to take out some members of the royal family, so old Liz acted. Under those ugly hats, she does have a brain and she occasionally uses it.
As for the new titles, I know two Cambridges. One is the rowing team that competes with Oxford. In the other, you find M.I.T. and Harvard. Two university cities with the same name, but, in either case, why would the royals want to right to rule over all those stuffy academics as a wedding gift? Makes no sense. But these titles never make sense. Who knew Cambridge was vacant? I’d have applied. I look more like a fat Duke than William, that’s for sure, although my personal fortune is miniscule next to his.
Our American royalty and the true British royalty keep under the radar as much as possible, only coming out once and awhile to make pithy announcements about some frivolous event or events in their lives. They prefer to hide away in their multi-million-dollar mansions protected by body guards in fear that the rabble will rise up and attack them. “Oh, my Lord, what’s the country coming to with those blacks in the White House” or something similar is oft heard in the afternoon teas of the rich elite. Mr. Obama’s tenure has provided an opportunity for the worst aspects of aristocratic privilege to rear their ugly heads. Similar things are heard about all those commoners in Parliament in the British tea salons, I’m sure.
They’ll never be caught saying it. They know all about open mikes. They keep under the radar, but we know what they’re thinking in the country clubs as the old boys sit down for a beer after a leisurely nine or eighteen holes. I don’t know how they’re not cross-eyed—they look down at their noses so much at the rabble. They regret ever having to give in to that terribly messy thing called democracy, but they have adapted very well.
I’m not talking about blue blood. Instead, I’m talking about CEOs of major corporations, wealthy bankers and stock brokers, and so forth, many of whom belong to the nouveau rich. In America the richest top 1% own 34% of the country’s wealth and enjoyed 80% of the increase in wealth between 1980 and 2005. I have no idea what the stats are in Europe, and, in particular, England. Percentage-wise about the same, I’m guessing. These people are like the Illuminati, Dan Brown’s band of Vatican conspirators, but these people have no priestly virtues (Dan Brown’s have them in name only)—they’re more like people possessed by a demon that needs to be exorcised. The demon is called greed.
The world can only be stable—and the fledgling democracies of the world stable—if the rich elites recognize the errors of their ways and turn their backs on greed. The great Pakistani physicist Abdus Salam told me this and I believe it now more than ever. They can’t continue to steal from the poor and the middle class to enrich themselves forever. Something has to give. People get fed up with aristocracy, either out in the open like the British royalty, or tucked away like the true British and American royalty.
In Arab countries where the gap between the rich elites and everyone else is more pronounced, people are now rebelling. Syria and Libya are prime cases. As much as we hate to admit it, overthrowing the Shah of Iran was another case. Saudi Arabia is a pot of oil ready to boil and the royal house of Saud may be the ones boiled (ironically, Osama, now only a bloody footnote on the pages of history, was part of that royalty). The thunderheads are on the horizon and the tornados are approaching the rich elite.
I don’t like bloodbaths. I admire non-violent protest, in fact. I’m basically a big, gentle teddy bear, yet I can understand the wrath of the down and out and the struggling middle classes here, in Britain, and across the world. Why can’t the rich elite understand? They can’t control it. They just think they have control and maybe today they’re winning, as Warren Buffet has proclaimed. But it won’t remain that way.
The evolutionary forces of human culture are against them. It would be so much easier, fellows, to give in and recognize that sharing the world’s wealth is good for all concerned. Chaos and disaster will befall you otherwise. It’s time to come out from under the radar and fess up to your sins—greed, hedonism, and sociopathic behavior, the latter because you have little or no concern for your fellow human beings. “The times they are a-changin’.”
