The Queen's Funeral

[ZoWie]

Is that it?

I seem to have missed all the good parts. Damn 8 hour time difference. I'm waking up to the British upper class trying to remind us why God made them the Lucky Sperm Club and intended for them to rule everyone else on the planet. They're in some old building out in the boonies, all dressed up, playing the organ and singing hymns and going on and on about Jesus Our Lord and Saviour. (British spelling.) Right now they're passing around The Orb, sounds like an old Woody Allen movie, but apparently it's a priceless bejeweled object which represents the planet that God anointed the British monarchy to rule. Here's the Earth, Charlie, now make them all Christians. We have nukes for that now, don't even need swords.

I liked it better when it was ordinary people spending 24 hours in line to pay last respects to a mortal whose ancient and largely ceremonial monarchy contributed to the national identity and stability of the country, and the rest of the planet was no longer a British asset.

[ZoWie]

OOooooooo. Next up after The Orb is The Scepter. Yow, that thing is a weapon. Damn. With all those jewels and priceless hand sculpted geegaws all over it, it would hurt for a week if Charlie hit me with that thing. He's not getting any younger, but with that club he'll sure show me my place, and why God made him the boss of bosses. It's the British class system. God didn't make you the duke of wherever, now go do your menial labor and let your peers run everything.

Honestly, people, there's a place for this stuff, but right now with all that's going on, it still seems like just a bit much.

[Drak]

Just wait till the 2 week long Crowning of Charles Ceremony.

[ZoWie]

No, I'm changing the channel now. I've had my dose of the 1600s for this year. Charlie will have to take up the white man's burden without me.

[Number6]

While Americans may not be enthralled with the final ceremonies for Queen Elizabeth we have to remember they're not designed for our consumption or entertainment but they are part of the culture of the British.

Customs, rituals, and ceremonies are more for the living than the dead. Humans have developed a number of rituals, customs, and ceremonies to honor their dead whether the person is a "nobody," someone one of minor importance, someone who is a celebrity, an elected official, head of government, or even a monarch. In addition to paying last respects to the late Queen, it provides a smooth transition for the British citizens from a monarch Queen to a monarch King.

[ZoWie]

The monarchy does a lot to stabilize Britain. It's not that it doesn't contribute. I just didn't take well to having my nose rubbed in its history of classism. Once away from the public and safely inside the inner sanctums of its screened-off churches, the dukes and the Most Reverends and all the other assembled lords spiritual and temporal really laid on that upper class By The Grace of God Sovereign of All Christendom stuff that we fought a revolution to get out from under. I especially took issue with the long reading from Revelation, when recent scholarship gives a credible argument that it really shouldn't even be in the Holy Bible.

Therefore my critique should be deconstructed as relating not to the contribution of the monarchy to Britain, which is real, but to how antiquated it feels not having separation of church and state. I like our way better. The president-elect puts his hand on the Christian Bible to take the oath, but there's still the undeniable fact that he's a secular head of state and the church is on its own. I like having our leaders selected by the voters, not anointed by one single official religion's idea of divine grace.

[carmenjonze]

I'll be glad when somebody mourns all the people this monarchy has murdered, raped, bought, sold, enslaved, set at each others' throats, and suppressed over the past 400 years.

[ZoWie]

It didn't escape me that the people doing the fifteenth-century mumbo-jumbo with the orb, scepter, and crown are 100% white Protestants, which is a lot more than I can say for the British population.

White supremacy does seem kind of essential to the concept, especially in England. Rudyard Kipling comes to mind. Lucky for them that, in a world taken over by empires, the British one seemed to come out on top. But that was then and this is now, and it all seems kind of, well, over.

I've spent quite a bit of time in London, and the disconnect between the traditional upper class and the real world is very unsettling there. There are situations where I can feel very out of place, and I'm as pasty-white as they come. The upper class still parties like it's 1850. Even second-level twits like Boris Johnson who will never be in Burke's Peerage carry on as if their idea of a deity gave them a Get Out of Jail Free card. Makes me nervous to be around them.

Sorry guys, you're not God's elect. You're just the Lucky Sperm Club.

[Glennfs]

I have never been able to understand why people are so fascinated with the royal family.
I would think the people of the UK would be sick of them by now

[ZoWie]

Elizabeth was an engaging personality, and since she was crowned at something like age 20, she'd had a lot of time to get it right. My understanding is that the monarchy was kind of surprised at its sudden popularity when Diana died and suddenly you couldn't buy flowers anywhere in the UK. Photos show huge piles of them at all the usual royal sites. In LA I know that the wait to sign the book for Diana was so long that the Salvation Army set up a field kitchen. For whatever reason, the tragedy made people rally around the monarchy.

Charles from what I've read might not be as popular. He has kind of a sour personality. He was old when he was 30.

[ZoWie]

OK, I found minimally edited BBC recordings of the streaming video from the two funeral ceremonies. There are something like 5 hours of this stuff. No announcers or narration. Just ambient audio. Lots of march march mourn mourn, but it's compelling. It has all the usual spectacular production values that you expect from the BBC. You can fast forward past all the Crown Imperial sermonizing crap, which actually is refreshingly short. I highly recommend the parades (the part I slept through originally). As an event, they're a good way to spend time. The march is in an almost perfect disco beat, and there's a lot of it. The periodic cannon salutes will make you remember why you popped for a subwoofer in the first place. DO use a wide gamut monitor if you have one, and the biggest sound system in the house.

The first one starts about 6-8 minutes in, or at least it did when I ran it. You can skip ahead to the start.

State funeral at Westminster: https://youtu.be/TN2vT_jpW1o
Committal at Windsor Castle: https://youtu.be/G1mi7J-VtHk

[Motor City]

What mass delusion looks like.

[ZoWie]

Every country does mass delusion in different ways. There, a large number of people apparently convince themselves that a hairy old white guy in the sky picks their hereditary monarch. Here, a large number of people definitely convince themselves that demonstrably free and fair elections were actually rigged.

The only defective political system is all of them.

[bird]

It would be interesting to see people treat the office of the president in the same manner as the British monarchy should be treated.

[ZoWie]

The president is legitimately elected through a constitutional process ratified by a majority of the existing states. The process is not perfect, but then neither is hereditary primogeniture. I'm glad that our leader is not determined by who was the first cute little baby head to come out of the royal vagina as determined by the grace of the official government deity.