More overwhelming than any of this, though, there will be an almighty psychological reckoning for the kingdom that she leaves behind. The Queen is Britain’s last living link with our former greatness – the nation’s id, its problematic self-regard – which is still defined by our victory in the second world war. One leading historian, who like most people I interviewed for this article declined to be named, stressed that the farewell for this country’s longest-serving monarch will be magnificent. “Oh, she will get everything,” he said. “We were all told that the funeral of Churchill was the requiem for Britain as a great power. But actually it will really be over when she goes.”
Unlike the US presidency, say, monarchies allow huge passages of time – a century, in some cases – to become entwined with an individual. The second Elizabethan age is likely to be remembered as a reign of uninterrupted national decline, and even, if she lives long enough and Scotland departs the union, as one of disintegration. Life and politics at the end of her rule will be unrecognisable from their grandeur and innocence at its beginning. “We don’t blame her for it,” Philip Ziegler, the historian and royal biographer, told me. “We have declined with her, so to speak.”
I must admit these two paragraphs left me wistful–of course, not for the British Empire per se, but as a citizen of a country that starting with my high school years has also been one “long uninterrupted national decline”. I don’t think I’m viewing the past through rose-colored glasses; the country of that era also had its share of problems and things were far from perfect, but the comparison of then to now on just so many levels in our national discourse is discouraging. Back then, we had people who were honestly addressing the flaws of the country and its culture–America was in many ways “a sick society”, from a common phrase of that time–but now even the supposed ‘left’ offers up hosannas about that same culture and only suggests a few tweaks here and there.
Just like the supposed left also worships at the feet of all our brave boys in uniform, for fear of the rightist lie that the hippies “spat on American troops returning home from Vietnam”. Instead of fighting the lie–and it is a lie, there is no evidence for it whatsoever, and people forget that Vietnam Veterans Against the War was at one time the nation’s largest veteran organization–the left caved to it and now say “we worship our troops just as much too!”
The West reported that the Putin regime broke off Mr. Gorbachev’s ‘legacy’. But that was not the case. It was a bad omen for Russia when Putin marched in to the casket of Mr. Gorbachev with a large bouquet of dark red roses and then bowed. As the former man was laying flowers, the Chinese internet made a verdict on the latter — a loser…
The regime that Mr. Gorbachev ushered in may not outlive him by much. That clown Mr. Dmitry Medvedev opined not long ago that the Ukrainian military has no choice but to oust the incompetent civilians, seize power and start negotiating with Russia. The irony is that this is exactly the choice that the Russian military has now. The choices are stark: remove the parasitic incompetent oligarchy that dismantled the Soviet Union and has lived since then in London while extracting wealth from the Russian people and Russian nature like a colony and preserve what’s left of the country or see the country fracture, as the regime loses its aura of legitimacy and respectability. There is something to think about for China as well, whether it wants to support a loser regime or throw support for a competent and patriotic opposition. Getting this choice wrong would mean loss of Russian hydrocarbons and appearance of small nazi states on the Northern border hosting our military bases.
To be sure, the previous months were full of bad omens for Russia. Putin’s decree to increase the size of the professional army — tacit admission to a lack of forces and lack of support from the population — many had called (still are calling) for a universal mobilization, but a regime that does not have popular support can’t mobilize its population. Putin’s decree to built two new plants for repair of military equipment — tacit admission to a lack of firepower and major losses of military equipment.
Of course, what is going in Putin’s favor is that Ukraine is another incompetent oligarchy. So, the front lines will stabilize at some point, and the Putin’s regime may start some counter attack. But this may not matter, the bravado and the appearances may have gone for good together with these idiotic notions that Russia is somehow playing chess and the Putin’s regime restored Russia to prominence. No the Gorbachev/Yeltsin/Putin regime has done no such thing. Russia and the Russians are suffering from a dinky oligarchy and bad leadership.
Ha ha.. the Putin’s support brigade in the West wants us to believe that the Putin’s forces ran as a part of some smart ass plan to preserve military and civilians… right…
On the Russia captured territories of the Ukraine, the Putin’s regime installed pro-Russian administration, appointed governors from Russia, gave local people Russian passports freely and was going to have referendums in Nov to join Russia… the message being — we are here forever… then the regime had a smart ass plan and ran, leaving the population behind to face the Ukrainian nazis… There are already reports from the areas ‘liberated’ by the Ukrainian forces of locals being taken to ‘unknown’ places. The civilian population from the areas that the Putin’s regime abandoned massively ran and are running to the border with Russia. There are reports of an evolving humanitarian disaster at the border, as the civilians are piling up without food or water or anything, because they had to run on a very short notice, leaving everything behind or face the Uke nazis. Smart, very smart… sure, sure, they will trust you next time too…
The Western Putin brigade would rather destroy what’s left of their credibility than admit to being wrong..
With very little reliable factual information to rely on, the War in Ukraine has been a war of narratives from the beginning, but I admit to being unaware until this moment of the “Western Putin brigade” and have no idea what their pre-suppositions might be.
In a war of narratives, people admitting that they were wrong is a short-lived phenomena, preceding the composing of another story.
Just on the surface, if a Russian withdrawal from some territory turns into a humanitarian disaster, does that not reinforce Putin’s preferred story about saving Ukie Russian-speakers from “genocide”? People might begin to suspect the Bucha massacre was carried out by the SBU.
Putin’s frozen conflict playbook may get thrown out. I doubt this will benefit Ukraine in any objective sense.
I would bet that the ranks of the admirers of the bare-chested man riding a bear are thinning as I am writing this sentence. Pretty soon, we will find out that no one really has ever truly admired the dude… besides, riding bears is animal abuse…
Narratives are for week men and women who can’t stomach or grasp the world…
I have no idea what the ultimate outcome of the war in Ukraine will be, but I do think it’s funny (not in the sense that I’m laughing about it of course, people are dying) that the pro-Russia side (including some commenters here) have been saying that the war will be over in 2-3 weeks for several months now.
The tragedy of humans and the Ukraine Russian War in particular is that these people are so much alike they were called brothers. But both of their economic/political systems are run to enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. The West seized the chance to dispatch their Russian rival. The end result is that Slavs are killing each other and whole world has been dragged into a neo-proxy world war with human inhabitation of the earth at risk.
In a new post Ian has weighed in with: Russia attacked at 1:3 local odds and for the entire “operation” has been fighting with less troops than the Ukrainian side.
This is a fact, but not one that is acknowledged in most mainstream narrative accounts. The NY Times, committed to the Ukrainians as underdogs story, will insist that defenders have been outnumbered.
Without basic facts constraining opinion, it is all spin and cheerleading. Which is horrific in war.
No surprise to see you gloating over Russia’s problems in the war.
Putin was a decisive break from the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, not a continuation of them. That’s ludicrous. Ask the Russians. They certainly noticed the improvement in their living standards. He has undoubtedly made some mistakes in regards to the war and I expect that he’ll correct them. He’s still a better leader than any of the leaders in the West. But he’s not facing any of them 1-on-1, his battle is against all of NATO, which is willing to use their own populations as fodder in this war, and the economic power of the dollar.
That clown Mr. Dmitry Medvedev opined not long ago that the Ukrainian military has no choice but to oust the incompetent civilians, seize power and start negotiating with Russia. The irony is that this is exactly the choice that the Russian military has now. The choices are stark: remove the parasitic incompetent oligarchy that dismantled the Soviet Union and has lived since then in London while extracting wealth from the Russian people and Russian nature like a colony and preserve what’s left of the country or see the country fracture, as the regime loses its aura of legitimacy and respectability.
Talk about weak (((and confused))) narratives, but then again, from my past exchanges on this site with you, coherence and truth have never seemed to be anything that you’ve had much interest in.
The US has been fighting Russia since WWII. Stopping Russia was the real reason we went into Europe. (Certainly NOT because we object to Nazis.) It is the reason we nuked Japan even though they were about to surrender and also the reason we bombed the entire industrial base of North Korea to rubble. (We also never agreed to a formal end to the Korean War, so technically it is still ongoing.)
Russia has committed the one crime our Slave-holding, Nazi-sympathizing misleaders can never forgive – they care about the well-being of their citizens.
Given their demonstrable stupidity and malice, our misleaders probably think that if they provoke WWIII, they will emerge prosperous as they did after WWII. Instead, it will go the other way this time.
On the bright side though, pretty soon vacationing or even buying property in Europe will be cheap. All the charming little shops will be gone of course, and there will be no heat in winter, but still – cheap. There will also be no chemicals to clean the human waste out of their water supplies, so they will have to dump untreated human waste into their rivers and seacoasts, but that is why property will be cheap.
It will be a little better for the US until the Asians and the global South stop using greenbacks, but we will probably coast along until then by plundering the carcass of what was a once prosperous and charming Europe.
It is, however, cute as a button to see someone suggest that the nation that defeated the Nazi’s can’t stand up to a broke-ass NATO and a US that does not even have an industrial economy anymore.
Wouldn’t be surprising that if part of the agreements recently made in Ramstein to send arms from NATO countries to Ukraine also included a back door bailout by the U.S. to Europe and the UK to soften their energy costs, which those countries will funnel to their citizens in the form of subsidies. The power of the U.S. dollar: just print up more of them to overpay for those weapons and salve Europe’s economic and domestic crises as well.
StewartM
From a prequel article on Queen Elizabeth’s death:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/16/what-happens-when-queen-elizabeth-dies-london-bridge
More overwhelming than any of this, though, there will be an almighty psychological reckoning for the kingdom that she leaves behind. The Queen is Britain’s last living link with our former greatness – the nation’s id, its problematic self-regard – which is still defined by our victory in the second world war. One leading historian, who like most people I interviewed for this article declined to be named, stressed that the farewell for this country’s longest-serving monarch will be magnificent. “Oh, she will get everything,” he said. “We were all told that the funeral of Churchill was the requiem for Britain as a great power. But actually it will really be over when she goes.”
Unlike the US presidency, say, monarchies allow huge passages of time – a century, in some cases – to become entwined with an individual. The second Elizabethan age is likely to be remembered as a reign of uninterrupted national decline, and even, if she lives long enough and Scotland departs the union, as one of disintegration. Life and politics at the end of her rule will be unrecognisable from their grandeur and innocence at its beginning. “We don’t blame her for it,” Philip Ziegler, the historian and royal biographer, told me. “We have declined with her, so to speak.”
I must admit these two paragraphs left me wistful–of course, not for the British Empire per se, but as a citizen of a country that starting with my high school years has also been one “long uninterrupted national decline”. I don’t think I’m viewing the past through rose-colored glasses; the country of that era also had its share of problems and things were far from perfect, but the comparison of then to now on just so many levels in our national discourse is discouraging. Back then, we had people who were honestly addressing the flaws of the country and its culture–America was in many ways “a sick society”, from a common phrase of that time–but now even the supposed ‘left’ offers up hosannas about that same culture and only suggests a few tweaks here and there.
Just like the supposed left also worships at the feet of all our brave boys in uniform, for fear of the rightist lie that the hippies “spat on American troops returning home from Vietnam”. Instead of fighting the lie–and it is a lie, there is no evidence for it whatsoever, and people forget that Vietnam Veterans Against the War was at one time the nation’s largest veteran organization–the left caved to it and now say “we worship our troops just as much too!”
NL
Putin’s regime is on the run in Ukraine…
The West reported that the Putin regime broke off Mr. Gorbachev’s ‘legacy’. But that was not the case. It was a bad omen for Russia when Putin marched in to the casket of Mr. Gorbachev with a large bouquet of dark red roses and then bowed. As the former man was laying flowers, the Chinese internet made a verdict on the latter — a loser…
The regime that Mr. Gorbachev ushered in may not outlive him by much. That clown Mr. Dmitry Medvedev opined not long ago that the Ukrainian military has no choice but to oust the incompetent civilians, seize power and start negotiating with Russia. The irony is that this is exactly the choice that the Russian military has now. The choices are stark: remove the parasitic incompetent oligarchy that dismantled the Soviet Union and has lived since then in London while extracting wealth from the Russian people and Russian nature like a colony and preserve what’s left of the country or see the country fracture, as the regime loses its aura of legitimacy and respectability. There is something to think about for China as well, whether it wants to support a loser regime or throw support for a competent and patriotic opposition. Getting this choice wrong would mean loss of Russian hydrocarbons and appearance of small nazi states on the Northern border hosting our military bases.
To be sure, the previous months were full of bad omens for Russia. Putin’s decree to increase the size of the professional army — tacit admission to a lack of forces and lack of support from the population — many had called (still are calling) for a universal mobilization, but a regime that does not have popular support can’t mobilize its population. Putin’s decree to built two new plants for repair of military equipment — tacit admission to a lack of firepower and major losses of military equipment.
Of course, what is going in Putin’s favor is that Ukraine is another incompetent oligarchy. So, the front lines will stabilize at some point, and the Putin’s regime may start some counter attack. But this may not matter, the bravado and the appearances may have gone for good together with these idiotic notions that Russia is somehow playing chess and the Putin’s regime restored Russia to prominence. No the Gorbachev/Yeltsin/Putin regime has done no such thing. Russia and the Russians are suffering from a dinky oligarchy and bad leadership.
NL
Ha ha.. the Putin’s support brigade in the West wants us to believe that the Putin’s forces ran as a part of some smart ass plan to preserve military and civilians… right…
On the Russia captured territories of the Ukraine, the Putin’s regime installed pro-Russian administration, appointed governors from Russia, gave local people Russian passports freely and was going to have referendums in Nov to join Russia… the message being — we are here forever… then the regime had a smart ass plan and ran, leaving the population behind to face the Ukrainian nazis… There are already reports from the areas ‘liberated’ by the Ukrainian forces of locals being taken to ‘unknown’ places. The civilian population from the areas that the Putin’s regime abandoned massively ran and are running to the border with Russia. There are reports of an evolving humanitarian disaster at the border, as the civilians are piling up without food or water or anything, because they had to run on a very short notice, leaving everything behind or face the Uke nazis. Smart, very smart… sure, sure, they will trust you next time too…
The Western Putin brigade would rather destroy what’s left of their credibility than admit to being wrong..
bruce wilder
With very little reliable factual information to rely on, the War in Ukraine has been a war of narratives from the beginning, but I admit to being unaware until this moment of the “Western Putin brigade” and have no idea what their pre-suppositions might be.
In a war of narratives, people admitting that they were wrong is a short-lived phenomena, preceding the composing of another story.
Just on the surface, if a Russian withdrawal from some territory turns into a humanitarian disaster, does that not reinforce Putin’s preferred story about saving Ukie Russian-speakers from “genocide”? People might begin to suspect the Bucha massacre was carried out by the SBU.
Putin’s frozen conflict playbook may get thrown out. I doubt this will benefit Ukraine in any objective sense.
NL
I would bet that the ranks of the admirers of the bare-chested man riding a bear are thinning as I am writing this sentence. Pretty soon, we will find out that no one really has ever truly admired the dude… besides, riding bears is animal abuse…
Narratives are for week men and women who can’t stomach or grasp the world…
NR
I have no idea what the ultimate outcome of the war in Ukraine will be, but I do think it’s funny (not in the sense that I’m laughing about it of course, people are dying) that the pro-Russia side (including some commenters here) have been saying that the war will be over in 2-3 weeks for several months now.
VietnamVet
The tragedy of humans and the Ukraine Russian War in particular is that these people are so much alike they were called brothers. But both of their economic/political systems are run to enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. The West seized the chance to dispatch their Russian rival. The end result is that Slavs are killing each other and whole world has been dragged into a neo-proxy world war with human inhabitation of the earth at risk.
bruce wilder
@NR
In a new post Ian has weighed in with: Russia attacked at 1:3 local odds and for the entire “operation” has been fighting with less troops than the Ukrainian side.
This is a fact, but not one that is acknowledged in most mainstream narrative accounts. The NY Times, committed to the Ukrainians as underdogs story, will insist that defenders have been outnumbered.
Without basic facts constraining opinion, it is all spin and cheerleading. Which is horrific in war.
Z
NL,
No surprise to see you gloating over Russia’s problems in the war.
Putin was a decisive break from the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, not a continuation of them. That’s ludicrous. Ask the Russians. They certainly noticed the improvement in their living standards. He has undoubtedly made some mistakes in regards to the war and I expect that he’ll correct them. He’s still a better leader than any of the leaders in the West. But he’s not facing any of them 1-on-1, his battle is against all of NATO, which is willing to use their own populations as fodder in this war, and the economic power of the dollar.
Talk about weak (((and confused))) narratives, but then again, from my past exchanges on this site with you, coherence and truth have never seemed to be anything that you’ve had much interest in.
Z
someofparts
The US has been fighting Russia since WWII. Stopping Russia was the real reason we went into Europe. (Certainly NOT because we object to Nazis.) It is the reason we nuked Japan even though they were about to surrender and also the reason we bombed the entire industrial base of North Korea to rubble. (We also never agreed to a formal end to the Korean War, so technically it is still ongoing.)
Russia has committed the one crime our Slave-holding, Nazi-sympathizing misleaders can never forgive – they care about the well-being of their citizens.
Given their demonstrable stupidity and malice, our misleaders probably think that if they provoke WWIII, they will emerge prosperous as they did after WWII. Instead, it will go the other way this time.
On the bright side though, pretty soon vacationing or even buying property in Europe will be cheap. All the charming little shops will be gone of course, and there will be no heat in winter, but still – cheap. There will also be no chemicals to clean the human waste out of their water supplies, so they will have to dump untreated human waste into their rivers and seacoasts, but that is why property will be cheap.
It will be a little better for the US until the Asians and the global South stop using greenbacks, but we will probably coast along until then by plundering the carcass of what was a once prosperous and charming Europe.
It is, however, cute as a button to see someone suggest that the nation that defeated the Nazi’s can’t stand up to a broke-ass NATO and a US that does not even have an industrial economy anymore.
Z
Wouldn’t be surprising that if part of the agreements recently made in Ramstein to send arms from NATO countries to Ukraine also included a back door bailout by the U.S. to Europe and the UK to soften their energy costs, which those countries will funnel to their citizens in the form of subsidies. The power of the U.S. dollar: just print up more of them to overpay for those weapons and salve Europe’s economic and domestic crises as well.
Z