It's hard for me to describe how little I have ever been concerned about anything relating to the British monarchy. The quaint notion of kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, is of such little consequence to me that I'd actually prefer hearing news about the latest Kardashian feud than what Prince Harry or Meghan Markle think (I wrote "princess" first, but I don't even know if that's what her actual title is) about climate change or whatever other issue they are blathering on about these days.
Frankly, I'm a little surprised there are enough Americans who do care that royal weddings and funerals are able to generate enough viewership to get the kind of coverage that they get from our mainstream press. With surging energy costs, debilitating inflation, and the rancid state of our own beleaguered politics, you'd think people would have more on their minds than getting worked into a lather over what's happening with powerless figureheads across the pond.
Yet when Elizabeth II died last week, I was floored by the outpouring of hatred and animosity that sprung up from the wokest corners of American society. Who cares this much about a remarkably impotent position? In what was perhaps the most incensed reaction, a Carnegie Mellon professor who specializes in "gender and race studies," Dr. Uju Anya, expressed this later-deleted bit of unhinged rancor:
To be clear, Anya is referring to the policy of British colonialism, which she lays at the feet of Elizabeth and the royal family. Though this past territorial and cultural conquest obviously did not prevent Anya from attaining academic and financial success, she tweets in solidarity with those who suffered under British rule. Group and class identification has always played a larger role in assigning guilt than that of personal responsibility in the kind of anti-western theory to which Professor Anya subscribes.
She's hardly alone. Here's Huffington Post opinion editor and former Washington Post writer Stephen Crockett, Jr. doubling down on the postmortem vitriol.
It got so bad that even a make-believe British bear got roasted for daring to pay his pretend respects online.
I mean, I don't know who this blue-checked "Raina" is but spitting fire at stuffed animals for not sharing your hatred of a deceased elderly English woman is an interesting way to spend your time.
And again, all this derangement because a soft-spoken elderly woman who had no impact on American law and public policy, and who in fact did little more than make public appearances as a figurehead for the last 70 years – a decidedly post-colonialist era – passed away quietly at the age of 96.
The collection of these needless expressions of contempt and hatred, flowing so freely from the keyboards of those committed to the current iterations of the spirit of the age – antiracism, modern feminism, LGBT+ activism – should remind anyone and everyone that there is only one truly radical ideology operating in the world today:
Christianity.
An ideology built upon a divine ethic of mercy, compassion, brotherhood, gentleness, and charity towards all. One that rebukes the self-interested desire to rejoice in the suffering of an enemy and instead looks in his eyes, even as he steadies the hammer to drive spikes into innocent wrists, and proclaims, "Forgive them, they know not what they do."
Everything else, all the rest of the world's religions, ultimately preach and promote the same self-glorifying values: bitterness, retribution, vengeance, resentment, cynicism, reparation, and retaliation. Always angry. Always spiteful. Always making demands.
There's a better way forward. And it's the one forged by a Man who willfully took the crown of thorns we all had earned – kings, queens, professors, and peasants alike – and offered us one adorned with heavenly riches in its place.
