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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/03/king-charles-iii-coronation-canada-britain>
"Say it out loud and try not to snicker: “The coronation of Charles the Third.”
In a time of post-post-colonialism, of anti-racist iconoclasm, a time in which
the very notion of gender as a legitimate distinction is contested, and
Christianity has been reduced to a scandal management system with costumes, a
74-year-old British gentleman will ride a fancy carriage to an old church where
a few other elderly British gentlemen in gilded dresses will declare him
emperor, patriarch and head of state because God says so.
You might think you live in a time of truth and reconciliation, or perhaps
even, if you’re feeling optimistic, progress. But this week if you’re British
or a member of the 56 sovereign states that still, somehow, find themselves in
the Commonwealth, you’re waking up in a country where a priest is going to
smear oil – vegan oil from Jerusalem – on a rather pinkish, rather broad
forehead to signify one man’s status as the Lord’s anointed.
The coronation cannot be described as a popular event. In April, various polls
gauging the public mood around Charles’s ascension found that only 15% of the
British population were “very interested” in the coronation. In Canada, where I
live, the majority of citizens are in favor of severing ties with the monarchy
altogether (up to 70% in Quebec). The crown itself seems embarrassed by all the
fuss. The coronation ceremony has been curtailed, and will last a little over
an hour, we’re promised, as opposed to the three hours allotted for Queen
Elizabeth II.
For Canada, the absurdity of the coronation is basic: we are not a British
colony, but we have a British king. For the British, the national pride
supposed to underlie a coronation has been exposed and harried: UK GDP cut by
4%, a lost £100bn a year in output, the pound losing a fifth of its value, all
since Brexit. It’s hard to celebrate when inflation is at 10.1% and the Bank of
England has to raise interest rates again, especially when it costs £100m.
As of April, only 34% of Britons still believe that Brexit was the correct
decision. And underlying the recognition of their error is a dawning
realization of the failure at its root: the British people – not the press, not
the politicians – failed to understand their place in the world. Nostalgia and
vanity, and ultimately self-deceit, led them into a calamity which seems, at
the moment, impossible to recover from."
Via Lisa Stranger and Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
