I can be such a fucking hater.
The Queen of England is celebrating her Jubilee. No, not the annoying little girl from X-Men, but her “ascension… to the thrones of seven countries upon the death of her father, King George VI, on 6 February 1952” (thanks wiki). When I first noticed Sky News was nothing but footage from beside the River Thames and of an old lady waving, I felt I had to voice my opinion on the subject. It sounded a bit like ‘God Save The Queen’ by The Sex Pistols. Ultimately, though, all it pointed out was what I said above: that I am sucking on the teet of the hate cow as it marches through the streets on a hate parade.
Here’s what I tweeted around the time the urge crept up on me to comment:
English folks’re high-fiving each other for living under the bootheel of an old lady for decades? Why do SAfricans wanna live there again?
Check me out, bros & hos, with my amazing hyper-critical response to something happening fifteen million miles (that’s an estimate courtesy my math-brain) away from me and mine. I bet I could’ve written that under a clever pseudonym or said it through one of those weird latticed confessional booth windows and you’d still have known it was me saying it. Cos it’s that obvious. I mean, who’s my next target? The Mars Rover!?
When you get down to it, my opinion is informed as much by my modern sentiments that the budget spent getting a boat chugging along the banks of a river that’s so poisonous it killed a poor defenseless humpback whale could be used to clothe destitute homeless people, as it is by my 16-year-old self’s love of The Sex Pistols. I mean, ok, the Queen isn’t “pure evil” or anything so simplistic, but she does represent humanity’s obsession with looking up to people who’ve failed to do anything to earn their respect. It’s not like she actually does anything. She’s supposed to sign a bunch of documents and help select members of government, but it’s more likely the UK’s folks in charge have a stamp of her signature or a handy wax seal that they let their secretary use to make sure everything seems legit. There’s a part of me that wants to hold onto the simple binary state thinking that says there’s a good guy and a bad guy, and the bad guy always wears a cloak and yellow toothy grin as he prances around in his palace, eating caviar while the poor die in the kingdom’s streets.
I know that’s not how it really is because I’ve grown up, but you’ll have to forgive me for ever thinking that there was no future: I mean, I was 16!
I pitched this opinion to a close friend while we skipped channels together on a Saturday night – the spiritual equivalent of hanging yourself alone in the desert when you could be earning eternal salvation just by watching a dude get whipped and beaten in the street. Since her opinion on these things so often runs counter to mine, I tend to feel a sense of enlightenment when she shares her thoughts. Her opinion is that, while it’s not necessarily the best thing in the world for the people on the streets, it’s also nice that we have some illusory throwback to the old days of kings, queens, princes, princesses, horses, ogres, dragons and the like. I’m sure she’d rather they poured the Diamond Jubilee money into a massive housing project for the poor, but let’s face facts, Prime Minister David Cameron would sooner use that cash to buy new cuff links for every rich man in Britain than clothe a homeless man.
And here’s the thing, some part of me completely agrees with her.
What the Jubilee does that not much else in dreary England can is, I suppose, provide that little fantastical imaginary sense of hope for little girls and boys everywhere; it’s the belief that they too can ascend to a lifestyle where they can sit around all day, watching their favorite shows on telly and drinking a million cups of tea while actively going out of their way to not do work (I think I just explained the existence of the dole). And while I’d rather we stick a sandwich in the mouth of every hobo with that money, I’m also far from the kind of guy who wants you to abandon all hope at the gates. If the Queen’s Jubilee gives you some small measure of pleasure in your life, then by all means, revel away at the banks of the Thames.
I'm pretty sure THIS is the nature of reality.
Growing up (but never old) has taught me that there is no opinion worth having that’s worth believing is completely true. If you stick by the blacks & whites of existence, all you end up with is a calcifying tumor where your soul should be. Ironically – because I just said binary state thinking is foolish – anything but acceptance and understanding is probably hypocrisy and prejudice. Still, I can’t help but continue to question the nature of pretty much everything that comes my way, and that’s where the voice of “hate” seems to be coming from. I honestly can’t work up the anger to actually hate anything, but I’ll never really stop critically observing the nature of my reality, testing it, prodding it, poking it and whatever else because that’s what makes me happy.
A wise friend once said to me, during one of my critical rants about some or other kind of person, that “there’s enough love here for everyone” and that’s pretty much what I hold tight to when I start to sound like the same cranky old man I know I’m tired of. So, yeah, my roots may’ve taught me that everything was some black & white paradise/hell, but I know it’s not. There’s enough love in here for me, the Queen of England and, hell, even Bullet For My Valentine while we’re at it.
Ok. Maybe not that last one.