Disagreeing about how to make things better is one thing, that's just part of the normal argy-bargy. But what if there is no interest in making things better, that you think it's all there just to be looted? In a parliamentary system, there is at least the occasional mitigating effect of minority government, so the 'winner' doesn't necessarily get all the say. Also, the 'winner' can be toppled at any time, not crowned for years. But as you say, if the people vote in a king and hand him the keys, well, that's that. All other countries can do is wall themselves off from the madness as much as they can.
In different news, the TV evangelist and occasional client of sex workers, Jimmy Lee Swaggart, has shed his mortal coil and is enjoying his reward.
Well the UK has a king, and he wields pretty much no power whatsoever. Many would see him go, along with his family, and that’s one opinion. However, in mine, every country really needs some kind of head of state that’s beyond politics - a sanitised version of leadership, if you will. I very much like the idea of historical leadership; if Britain has any heritage at all then it comes down to its history, to the kings and queens who led the nation into battle, through adversity, and in relatively recent terms, through two world wars. Yes, there was Churchill, and the first thing a grateful country did was throw him out. Had he not managed to sweet-talk the US to come in on the side of the angles, we Brits would today be speaking fluent German - well, fluent’s always doubtful - but you get the picture.
Though practically powerless, royalty today has a different kind of input: it can still galvanise a country into a state of self-respect - at least during the heat of the moment - and make it feel that it does have identity. In Spain, the next-in-line is currently doing her tour of playing a röle in the various armed forces. During her stint aboard a huge sailing ship, there was footage of her scrambling up the rigging, as high and as capable as anyone else except me: I can’t cope with heights. (There are lots of things with which I can't cope, but heights paralyse me.) Anyway, when her ship briefly came ashore somewhere, her mother, the current queen, went there to meet her, and it was beautiful to see mother and daughter throw themselves into one another's arms, just as would any other family. Unadulterated emotion. That’s credibility, humanity at its best. What does the UK get? Stiff upper lips - from all its members, except the late Diana, the absolutely classical misfit if ever there was one. But hey, that’s how Britain likes its leadership: stiff (hopefully, alive) and practically devoid of the passions of humanity. We want that; it makes us feel strong; emotion equates with weakness, they say.
But yeah, one type of desired benign royalty or another, the nice thing about it, for me, is that it exists through centuries of traditions, training, self-sacrifice and that thing called national identity. I almost wrote wonderful thing, but thought better of that. National identity can also be something very dark. Some hate royalty and look upon it as parasitical. I can’t see it that way. I know only too well that I could never live my life bound by traditions, mores, the inability to have and even perhaps enjoy one’s own little peccadilloes without some shoal of sharks with microphones and cameras trying to find - or at least create - scandal that it can record and syndicate across the world. Imagine the horror of absolute loss of privacy! Not in a million years would I envy any of them. They are, effectively, born to national service, with no honourable way out.
