An Old Man Died

An old man dies of natural causes.

This isn't news.

He's a member of an unjustifiable institution upon whose existence every social crime rests. It's unearned privilege props up institutional prejudice and social division. What else can excuse the abhorrent notion of chasing animals through streets on horses, terrifying local communities, trespassing on land, assaulting opposition, and smearing the blood of those animals, having torn them apart, on their faces. That's what orcs in Mordor do ffs.

No, because of the perceived virtue of this man's blood we have to put the nation on hold while many of it's occupants, including those struggling to get by, twist themselves up in emotional knots. This man grieved no one jot when your loved ones died. Yet, despite never having known this guy, we are expected to abase ourselves, further demonstrating our pitiful place in this sick society to our so called betters.

Wall to wall coverage of the very ordinary death of a very old human replaces reason. A good day to bury bad news, and it certainly will.

Are we that infantile as a species, still? Why on earth do we submit this: it must be out of a sense of reassurance. The same thing that religion provides. A framework of irrational certainty in a vast universe where things happen we don't understand endlessly threatening the perceived order. Philip was neither a good nor evil man, like most people he was a product of his society. A product of the institution. Of course he said (plenty or) racist things. That's what these ignorant overstuffed inbred caricatures do. That's why it needs to stop. I've no desire to gloat over a man's passing, but I'm sure as shit not going to lionise him in a vast telethonic eulogy; a contest of grief that makes the state enforced lamentations of the Kim Jon dictator dynasty seem reasonable. By all means feel sad if, for some reason, you feel the monarchy validates part of your existence, but please examine why that is. Philip and the rest of them, with his wife soon to follow I'm sure, are not public servants, they do not engage in any real 'duty'. It's a lifestyle of unimagined wealth and if that means having to talk to some annoying colonial or shake hands with a nativeperson then oh dear.

The best way to mourn the passing of a 99 year old who lived with none of the cares for existential security you or I have is to consign this ridiculous anachronism to the permanent dustbin of history. Let it remain in a museum for the children of tomorrow to point at with all the wisdom we can give them.