What the hell is wrong with us?
We’re Americans. We’re not supposed to care about the royal family. We’re not supposed to worship masters based on an accident of birth. But Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, is on the verge of having a baby and we react as if a ten-story Moses appeared towering over the Washington Monument.
What is wrong with us?
Sure, you can blame the media. But it’s not just them anymore. America, once the land of hard-asses and pioneers, has become one big soft underbelly. Our people have little education and no sense of self worth, and thus have to project onto two perfectly normal strangers thousands of miles away all our hopes and dreams. Even American women, who caterwaul all day about equality and not needing any man and ‘yes, you can have it all,’ lap this garbage up. That their dream man is Middleton’s husband Prince William makes perfect sense. Rich without having to work, docile, a bit of a doofus, he doesn’t threaten with any sexual magnetism or do drugs. He’s the opposite of rock and roll, a perfect foil for the ball-busting modern liberal American woman, who is ostensibly independent but really wants to be pampered. The feminism just allows her to accept pampering while having an out to bust balls at will. I don’t remember my mother or grandfather giving a toss about the British.
I feel a very deep hatred toward British royals, and it probably has a lot to do with my father. My dad was an Irish nationalist. It began in the 1980s when he went to Ireland to write an article for National Geographic. Seeing the Emerald Isle and researching our family’s history, he discovered that in the 19th century British landlords had taken over County Mayo, where my ancestors had lived. One of them, John Brown, kicked Irish tenants off, divided up the land, and kept most of it for himself. (If you’ve seen the movie “Braveheart” you get the picture.)
Then my father made a startling discovery. The British had not only kicked them off their land, but had changed our name and hung one of my ancestors who had the courage to complain about it. Judge, my last name, doesn’t sound Irish, and there is a reason — the name was once Brehon. The Brehons were law givers in ancient Ireland (there were laws called the Brehon Codes), and when the British found out they called us judges. Then they booted us off our land. And hung the people who fought back. My father, a published poet, was so infuriated he wrote a poem about it. It was called “Ballinasmalla Abbey,” named after the place where the grave of Stephen Brehon lies, my ancestor who was hung by John Brown. The poem includes a long litany of awful British characteristics, from their bullyboy aggression to their “clapped-up queens,” i.e. the syphilis that Henry VIII passed on to his children. The poem talks about discovering the hanging of a Brehon, “for that is my erased name.”
British oppression is also why Irish people with a memory love the Catholic Church. The Church was a main bulwark between them and the British. England passed laws banning saying the rosary and teaching Catholic catechism. You could go to jail if a priest visited your house. That is why when Pope John Paul II visited Ireland he said to the people, “you kept the faith.” My sister once contemplated converting to a Protestant denomination. My dad didn’t talk to her for a week.
Do I even need to mention the Great Famine? In the mid 19th century Ireland’s main crop, potatoes, was infected with a deadly virus. The loss of that food staple caused massive starvation. The British, who were right across the Irish Sea, did nothing to help. Part of my required reading growing up was Paddy’s Lament, a devastating description of the famine.