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A Very British God
The comfortable worship of failure defines contemporary life on the rainy island
Britain is a very dull place in which to eke out an existence. Not only is the weather truly dire but, aside from a few precious exceptions, the people are equally uninspiring. It appears to be the height of British ambition to be very slightly less obese, much more apathetic, and far less aspirational, than their US counterparts. As I’ve now endured a dreary sixteen months within the cloud-covered isle I’ve formed some conclusions about why being British appears to be synonymous with having abandoned any semblance of hope shortly after birth.
As Dean Acheson so aptly remarked, after WWII the British meandered into a psychological dead-end: “they have lost an Empire, and failed to find a role.” This led to both loss of hope for the future and a perpetual backward-looking nostalgia for an imaginary past when everything was better for white people and lesser races knew their place. The 2016 Brexit referendum was the apotheosis of this pathetic psychological compensation mechanism, when millions of ignorant halfwits voted for national suicide under the delusion that it was better than continued peace and prosperity within the European Union.
But nostalgia and ignorance can’t entirely account for the peculiar British love of…
