English love Brexiting, especially when it hurts

English love Brexiting, especially when it hurts

Brexiting. A series on being English. # 07

(See corroboration below.)
English favour heroes that suffer. In real life and on film.
Wasn't The Charge of the Light Brigade in the Krimean War in 1854 the pinnacle of heroism? Aren't the existential losers like Mr. Bean, Monthy Python, Basil, Tommy Cooper, The Absolutely Fabulous immortal heroes of the screen?
The most favoured heroes of the English culture have a plus and a minus. They are safe to love

Impeachment at the root of Brexit, and the Dutch are to blame

Impeachment is at the root of Brexit and the Dutch are to blame

Brexiting. A series on being English. #06

There are striking parallels between Trumpian events in the USA, Mayan events in Great Britain and what happened in the 17th century in England. Only, the English have remained consistent in their forward motion on the time stream, while the Americans seem to back up against the current. Freedom and justice for all are not a natural given but have to be fought for constantly. We see these fights now emerging in the USA as a kind of cold civil war and in Great Britain, especially England, as Brexit, which is in essence a fight for freedom from continental supervision. And all this flows from a series of events in 1588 and 1689 that firmly established what it meant to be English.

The deepest roots of what it means to be English may be found in

Find your station in life. A reality check on the toffs.

A funny reality check on life with toffs

Brexiting. A series on being English. #05

As we have seen from earlier blog messages of mine in this series, the essence of the English class system is two-fold. The people that are 'in' want to keep lower-graded people 'out' of their class. At the same time, the ones who are 'out', except the monarchs and landed gentry (dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts, barons and their ladies), are trying to get higher up by means of emulation of some class above them or, traditionally, by buying (men) or marrying (women) themselves into it. For foreigners, this is an odd game, and for English, it is a frustrating one.

Of course, one can never really emulate the next level without actually being there. The little secrets that distinguish one class from another, are

Dictators like uniformity, dominators like loyalty

Dictators like uniformity, dominators like loyalty

Understanding Donald Trump Series #05

Dictators and Dominators Series #01

You can always assess whether a government leader is a suppressive controller or simply someone who wants to dominate a variety of people. The latter trait is clearly visible today in the 2017 President Of The United States (of America), the POTUS, Donald Trump.
The dictator, by contrast, likes uniformity for he has given up on loyalty. Obedience to a dictator is not gotten from merit but from fear. Often, it starts with obedience from trust that they all work toward a shared vision of the future. Generally, this includes more freedom ("Free China", "Cuba libre", "Lebensraum", "Liberté, Fraternité, Égalité"), but when that vision has been realized, it continues by enforcing

The law of bombing civilians

The law of bombing civilians

People hate the people who are bombing them, regardless who they are.
Late July 2006 Israel bombed a city in Libanon and it happened to kill a lot of children. There are not many people in Libanon left who do not hate the Israeli.
The Germans started to bomb London in 1940 and the British started to drop their firebombs on Dresden and Hamburg and in the Ruhrgebiet. Deep mutual hatred ensued. The Russians bombed Berlin, just for fun and without any need, actually, for the German army was very weak. The result was that people in Berlin who first were against the Nazi's and Hitler and pro Allies, all of a sudden started to resent and hate the Russians.
The United States bombed North Vietnam almost flat. Yet it lost the war. Every Vietnamese had started to hate the Americans.
Now, 2017, we have an American president who is a great fan of "bombing the shit out of" anybody who opposes him.

All of the governments of the above instances are, apparently, oblivious of a natural law of social psychology. And that law is

The superior English Mind (Jenny and her shotgun)

Brexiting. A series on being English. # 04

The superior English Mind (Jenny and her shotgun)

Nothing enrages conservative English people more than the idea that other people in the world may know better. The notion is scoffed at, laughed about, ridiculed. To an Englishman who considers himself well-educated (Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen and wanna-bees) that is simply inconceivable.
This conviction is ingrained so deeply in the English mind that 'a foreigner' is being considered an inferior being, just by the mere fact that he or she has not been born and raised in England proper. Anyone familiar with Agatha Christie's Poirot detective stories remembers how the English invariably put Poirot away as "a foreigner" and therefore, ipso facto, a person who, by his nature, is incapable of understanding what is going on.
During my studies in England, I stayed with some students in a country house run by an old lady who, in her younger and more vulnerable years, had been raised in India. There, she had learned to fend for herself and had become a good shot.

The emergence of the stiff upper lip

Brexiting. A series on being English. # 03

The emergence of the stiff upper lip

It may be hard to imagine when looking back from our 21st-century perspective, but before the 19th century, rationality and restraint were unusual traits with English people. It was the opposite of stiff upper lip which means to take it on the chin, or not letting on, keep calm and endure. To show one's emotions used to be considered interesting and good manners. For instance, like most of Europe, the English had held the French in high esteem as an example to be followed. All over Europe, the upper class spoke French and this was for a reason. The French had shown no restraint whatsoever. Its nobility never took the plight of their subjects into account and saw no bones in exploiting them ruthlessly. No wonder these subjects showed no restraint either when they started to unleash their wrath against the nobles in 1789.

More or less coincidentally, precisely at that moment in time, in English society a

Two fine factors defining English society

Two fine factors defining English society

Brexiting. A series on being English. # 01

English people entertain a superiority complex that goes back at least two thousand years. And they have corroborated it. Especially in the late 19th century when Britain undisputedly was the most powerful nation in the world, having dominion over the largest empire this planet had ever seen, comprising 25% of the landmass and population of Earth. (See map of 1901 below.) In 1810, English shipping tonnage was, at 700,000 metric tonnes, higher than that of Germany, France, Russia and The Netherlands combined. At its peak, just before WW I, almost half of all foreign investments by all nations combined, were British. In the 1890's Britain controlled 44% of all of the investment money in the world.

England used to be, and to a very large extent still is, run by people from Oxford University, politically, and Cambridge, scientifically, and from some lesser known universities like Aberdeen, more businesswise. For instance, all of the British prime ministers until this day (2017) have studied at Oxford. As people outside of England may have noticed, an English person coming from these

A note on lingua franca

A note on lingua franca

On the Human Condition Series # 01

The subject of lingua franca is an interesting one as it is the only means by which people can start to understand one-another in order to get some kind of world peace.

The term lingua franca

Lingua franca means ‘free language”. 

A lingua franca is a language that can be used freely by anyone without being considered part of the people, race or area from which the language originates. Using a lingua franca, then, does not reflect one’s race or culture. It simply is a