Bitterly Clinging

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Today, I am pondering why so many in the UK hate Americans so much. I've been watching quite a few BBC programs on Youtube about UK history, and the sidebar suggests a plethora of anit-American videos for my next choice, and I wonder at why there are so many. Our fates like our histories are tied together by a plethora of confluence and circumstance, but we allow ourselves to be balkanized by the overemphasis of stereotypes. People need to be taken as individuals or not at all, because they are far too complicated to be boiled down to a few subjective adjectives.

Jealousy? Why are they jealous? I hear a lot of things about Americans that you hate. It makes very little sense to envy someone you hate. More to me it sounds like they are bitter because they are no longer as important as they wish they were. What makes you think I want to be important? America was not always so, and truth be told I wish someone else would belly up to the bar and pay the tab.

Irresponsibility? Clearly the British have forgotten that they tried to press us as colonists for responsibility of foreign wars. I’m sorry, but since we didn’t have any say in parliament, we couldn’t stop those wars. Why should our language be corrupt? Who says they speak British perfectly? What exactly is the origin of your language? You claim our way is silly and stupid, as if your language were pure. I can understand Firesian and the language of Schliesswig-Holstein because they resemble English, which contains some French as well because of the Norman influence and Aquitaine and Brittainy. English changes with time, and the preferred parlance provides perchance for pernicious and persnickety purloinment of new phraseology.

Ignorance? I think that mainly depends on whether or not you educate yourselves. As a largely agrarian society from the get-go, there was little need for that in America, but I have now seen two BBC documentaries that are mutually exclusive, one detailing the Anglo-Saxon invasion and the other attempting to debunk it. You have however never bothered to ask me about Walton on Thames or Wessex or Worchester nor looked at my library to see I have books by Bacon, Lock, More, Burke, Smith, Newton, Whitehead, ad infinitum including a copy of the Royal Standard English Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary. Furthermore I actually lived and attended school in Britain, so if I’m ignorant, you’re at least partially negligent. Stop interviewing politicians or broadcasting the most asinine of impromptu answers as if they are reflective of the entire population. I’m sure that same treatment could be tendered your neighbors to the same result evincing ignorance on the isles.

Fox news v. the BBC? I watch far more BBC than fox news, but I mostly watch BBC shows that I find on the zarkin’ internet. Perhaps what you mean by “news” is “what corroborates my preconceived notions”, in which case you are probably correct. I have come to realize that most journalists, most scientists, most politicians, and indeed most people have an agenda if not an ulterior motive. Most of them are not looking for what is actually true; they secretly hope the truth will corroborate what they already happen to believe. Any profession is only as virtuous as those who profess it. How is the BBC impartial because it’s public funded without advertisements? Do you honestly think that Al Jazeera is impartial just because it’s compulsorily funded by ‘the people’ without commercial interests? Studies have shown that people will believe almost anything prefaced with the phrase, ‘studies have shown’.

So many of you engage in stereotyping, comparing their strengths to our weaknesses. As if it’s our fault that we don’t “have a history”. We have their history too, excuse me. Plus we have our own. They talk of their restraint as if it’s a virtue in itself. I think the Zulu would argue the notion that you’re restrained or perhaps the Algiers. What was restrained about your treatment of Arabia in 1919? Just how many wives did Henry VIII have or how many illegitimate children did John Lackland bear? As for war mongering, yes, we have been engaged in many wars. From which would you have us abstain? Perhaps from war with Ferdinand’s Austria or Hitler’s Germany? Should we have given Napoleon more help? Maybe the world would be better without the Emancipation Proclamation. History is not a la cart.

On occasion, I have been ashamed of my countrymen. I find it hard to believe that every Brit is proud of every other Brit ever. That strikes me as somewhat Neville Chamberlain of them. You might find it interesting to know that my only friend at church is from Sussex; I have other fine British friends. In fact, the further your origin from mine, the more likely we are to be friends; familiarity with my own people sometimes breeds contempt. I am very fond of Burke and More and Newton and Tennyson, all of whom are yours as well as Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson who were all British before they were American. Our heroes are actually some of YOUR people. I have a rich British heritage from Ireland, Scottland, and Essex most predominantly, and I can trace my lineage back to 1028AD in body of Wlm the Conqueror. This means that like you I have black marks in my family tree. They are offenses I did not give against people who are not alive to be offended. However, it is perhaps natural albeit bad form to whitewash your own side and paint the other as villains or miscreants. That is how most people rise to power, by conflating the misdeeds of “others” to make your own beneficence appear greater. Pointing out the mistakes made by others does nothing to fix you own.

Ignorance and enlightenment do not correspond to strictly geographical domains. Other people manufacture labels to describe us quickly without having to get to know us. Each man is far too complicated in his facets to be so accurately distilled. I will agree that my knowledge of some things is limited. It is not because I don't study at all; I study specific things of personal interest. Regional stereotypes are often as unproductive as the rest because they are not predictive. Who could have seen Oliver Cromwell coming or Thomas More or Eric Liddel? They were as equally unlikely based on stereotypes as Ivarr the Boneless’s rise to prominence or Pope Benedict’s resignation or Joan of Arc or the defense of Jerusalem by Balien of Ibelin. The localized supposition of virtue requires only shifting our view of the door, and the more subjective the angle the more subversive the adjective’s objective. As Franklin suggested to his fellows, I suggest to my friends across the pond: in these troublesome and turbulent times, all descendents of Britain must hang together or assuredly we must hang separately.