A mixture of cheers and boos greeted the royal couple in Montreal on Saturday, although Toronto papers are putting the negative stuff up front in their headlines. Mostly I’m grossed out that anyone thought it was a good idea to make a ruckus at a hospital.
Evidently nobody told the princess you pin your hair up or tie it back before working in a kitchen…
Later: lots of pictures from the Daily Mail and People Magazine and a more sober report from the Guardian. And I hope that’s it for this story.
qatzelok 10:05 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
My favorite Royal Visit meme was “Prince gives royal nod to Afghan effort.” I like how he (He?) emphasizes the importance of trashing the third world in order to maintain Anglo hegemony.
Kate 11:00 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
One of the major roles of royalty, here as well as in England, is to support the armed forces, so that gesture is part of the prince’s job.
I realize the question of what armed forces are for is complicated, and the question of Afghanistan is also complicated in a different way, but the Canadian forces were arguably doing more for Afghanistan than merely “maintaining hegemony.” Rex Murphy is right in that column that there was never a clear definition of military aims for Afghanistan (if anything, the current adventure in Libya is even worse in that sense): we never hammered out the old Clausewitz thing about war being force used for political ends because it was very hard to discern what those were going to be.
This blog isn’t really the place for a debate on what Afghanistan is, but it seems to me part of the problem that in the west we want to force Afghanistan to define itself as a nation in the same terms, say, as England or Canada (or Denmark or Brazil for that matter) whereas it never has been a nation, but rather a vaguely defined mountainous area populated by tribes that exist in a constantly changing pattern of alliances and feuds. Democracy is supposedly an ideal, but democracy also means that you have an answer when another country asks “Who’s in charge here?”: the rest of the world gets antsy when there’s no clear response to that.
Whether we should be forcing Afghanistan into the same pattern as other countries is a moot point. It doesn’t work, but nothing else does either. I have no answers here, but the role of the British royal family is pretty negligible in terms of the whole issue.
qatzelok 11:06 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
“the role of the British royal family is pretty negligible in terms of the whole issue” Not really. A strong military is necessary to maintain nepotism. The reason the royals support the military is because militarism is all about grabbing status out of the dying hands of “others.”
Kate 11:23 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
Except the places that have tried to replace this kind of thing end up with much the same mess, human nature being what it is.
qatzelok 11:35 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
Kate, I realize that “nature” makes some ants queens and others, soldiers. But humans appear to be physically too similar to one another to say that it’s our “nature” to have parasitic celebs for soldiers to worship and to die to enrich with status symbols. If this system was natural, we probably wouldn’t be so near extincting the globe.
Kate 12:30 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
“Natural” doesn’t necessarily mean beneficent.
It appears to be our nature as a species to create nations. I have no worked-out theory here, but it seems to me that a system like the UK-Canada-Commonwealth thing has, so to speak, rubbed off the sharper corners of its political system in the years since 1215. Yes, this risks having things stagnate and I’m well aware of that, but on looking at the 20th century’s various experiments – Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Hitler and pals, China’s cultural revolution – even the U.S.’s oddly balanced government, which unifies the head of state with the head of political life in a way I think we can all agree creates problems – I think our system is doing better for us than almost anyone’s – yes, even with Harper in charge.
Yes, it is a shame that privilege gets passed from generation to generation with no regard for whether the ensuing generations deserve it, but just try to devise a system that breaks this pattern without spilling blood and without landing us in exactly the same situation again within a couple of generations, and I’ll give you a prize. We are a corrupt and nepotistic species.
qatzelok 15:26 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
The most corrupt thing about our species is how we’ve lost touch with nature. And to say “everything is natural” (invading Afghanistan based on lies is natural) is to destroy the meaning of the word.
Kate 17:01 on 2011/07/03 Permalink
We can’t lose touch with nature. We are nature.
I could segue here into whole philosophical essay that I’ve been percolating for awhile, but this blog is not the place for it. Suffice to say that we are natural beings and that our institutions grow out of what we are. Sure, it would be nice if we were kinder and gentler and our institutions were more just. But we’re not like that and it takes a huge effort even to slightly redirect our efforts into what some of us feel is a fairer pattern.
qatzelok 10:26 on 2011/07/04 Permalink
“We can’t lose touch with nature. We are nature.” Is this true of cattle that spend their entire lives in a box? Do they remain connected to nature?
Kate 00:54 on 2011/07/05 Permalink
That’s our nature. We’re not nice.