The Sun Sets
Whatever power the City of London will continue to exercise over the world, it will not be British.
I was in Westminster and Whitehall on this trip, the centers of government power, supposedly. Between the two, I cut across St. James Park for the glimpse of Buckingham Palace in today’s featured photo. The traditional symbols of London were kept fresh and visible, and for sale everywhere. Big Ben, Beefeaters, the Union Jack, red phone boxes, red double-decker buses, little black taxi cabs, gilt pub signs, the Crown, lions. Lions everywhere, including the new one at the entry to Westminster Bridge, with a dopey, sheepish, cartoonish expression. A bit like Boris Johnson, now I think of it. The strong, wise gaze into the distance on the faces of the lions of Trafalgar Square is made a mockery of. And why not?
There is no power in nostalgia.
There is, still, 147 billion pounds a year in it, ‘they’ say. There is also the illusion that there is an English civilization. The latter is still important, I guess, but the day is coming when even that illusion will be dropped. As far as I’m concerned, it has already.
My research department commented that England looks like a fairytale. I’m wondering if my disgust with London is due to all that I’ve heard online, and read online, or due to what I observed.
What did I observe directly? I first observed that the streets around Westminster and Whitehall were packed with tourists, and that the vast majority of them were not white. The non-tourists seemed to be a little over half white, and the rest black. I expected to see plenty of non-white people in London of course, but not that most of the tourists would also not be white. I don’t know what this means, but it feels like the English have lost possession of their capitol. They’re a little like creatures in a zoo.
To be accurate, they lost possession in 1666, when the Free Coinage Act was passed. That was just after the Great Fire of London, which destroyed the vast majority of the capital. The new possession was solidified by an unholy partnership of English and Jewish bankers from the Netherlands, with the Church and Crown in full cooperation, keeping it essentially invisible. The results are now visible.
It isn’t much different from wealthy French, British, and American tourists making white mobs on the Nile in the 19th century, enjoying the lost civilization of Egypt. Or of course the white sahibs in India, looking at the Taj Mahal. Everyone has payback on their minds. It came up, that very word, in the session I attended at “The Battle of Ideas,” on women in publishing. Payback. It is like a religion. Who are the priests?
After I was done at “The Battle of Ideas,” I ate in the pub across from this useless phone booth, and it was quite nice. It is off a pathway from the Mall, at Admiralty Arch.
The event is supposed to be a celebration of engaging in free speech, with everyone welcome and nobody censored. Well, ehem. When a young man spoke up at the aforementioned session about women in publishing, and pointed out there weren’t any opposing voices at all, he was booed and hissed at. I thanked him for speaking up, afterwards, and a man also stopped and apologized to him, saying he was one of those who had booed. So that was a good thing I got to witness. However the first, outspoken young man didn’t seem to appreciate the apology. There isn’t even a desire for common ground now?
The next sessions I attended didn’t even pretend to have any present who opposed their goals, and openly said they were just strategizing sessions. The last session was about the rise of Populism. The panel was just three writers with new books out on Populism, all printed with big advances by major publishers. The idea was that maybe the Reform Party could do some good. I stood and took the mic and made some observations about their academic distance from “populists” and the obvious agreement among them, and the moderator, to not mention the actual leader of Reform by name, who is sure to betray real populists. I said my American perspective has proven that any belief in Populism is encouraged to keep the lid on the pressure cooker, and is a lie.
That froze the whole panel and got me a long, stony glare from the moderator. It also got laughter at my praising their courage in going out to places distant from London to talk to real populists. There was applause when I finished. Then others started telling the truth too. Afterwards a man from the University of Bath gave me his card, but I don’t know why.
On the way back to my hotel, I passed again through Parliament Square Garden. There stand Winston Churchill and Lloyd George. They are responsible for today’s welfare state. Supposedly, on a visit to Germany, Churchill saw that Bismarck had transformed the German working classes into a happy, healthy body. He knew the UK couldn’t field an army with its scurvy, beaten down working class that could stand up to the Germans. Next these two buffoons engineered WWI. And every town and village was emptied of its finest young men, best friends and brothers, for no reason at all. Or, reasons that are so banal and vacuous that this country stopped being able to face the truth about anything right then. So, the British Civil Service exploded in size and most of the heavy, grand, white buildings on Whitehall date from that time.
There were a few white people in Trafalgar Square, back beneath the newest statue there.
They were happily drumming, and making high-pitched ululations. Just above them, and blissfully unaware, her face blankly gazing into the distance, was The Lady in Blue, a black woman in high heels.
At the base the statue has a plaque that reads, in part:
“She is a woman walking forward into our collective future with ambition and purpose. She is a Londoner, who represents the city’s spirit.”
