I
find all this depressingly regressive. We should be looking forward,
like the Occupy Movement, not wallowing in nostalgia. It's not even
proper nostalgia: we don't yearn for the days when kings and queens
really had power, but for some rosy mid 20th century worldview. A time
when empire still meant something, but without the excesses.
I find flag waving equally banal. Flags are inherently divisive; you wave them to brag and to boast that yours is the richer territory, often when riding onto another's territory you wish to claim as your own. To say they have been 'reclaimed' or otherwise divested of negative connotations with the far right is spurious. Of course they haven't. The point of waving a flag is to say 'I be Engerlish!'. Well we know you're Engerlish, because we're all standing on Engerland right now! So what's the point, other than an expression of subconscious insecurity. I hate flags and the jingoism they represent, and right now I'm surrounded by them as the neighbourhood is bedecked in this nonsense.
I feel like I'm stuck in this morning's Radio 5 Live Your Call phone in, in which dissenters were subject to heckling, jeering and abuse from people that claim the monarchy is so precious that no one should be allowed to exercise the democracy they claim the queen champions.
er!
ER?!?
Interestingly enough, it was very very very quiet in my part of T'North for the Jubbly - and in my part of T'North the local people usually enjoy a bit of flag waving (and it's not always the Union Jack either . . . ). Perhaps too quiet it was.
ReplyDeletePossibly saving the energy and anger for more direct action?
DeleteNot quiet around here, sadly.
DeleteThe whole affair has done my head in.