A post about that stupid thing

I consider “the Royals” to be not only a viscerally disgusting topic, but a politically insidious phenomenon in a non-trivial way.

You can treat the rapt fascination in this country — I don’t claim to analyze the situation in the UK, which I realize is much more culturally complicated for historical reasons — with the British royal family as just another dumb piece of empty celebrity worship, like keeping up with the Kardashians etc., but I think it’s a lot worse than that.

Why? Because the modern is basically an ongoing battle about the meaning and value of the French revolution, and the entire concept of aristocracy is at the core of the wrong side of that battle. Keeping that concept alive, even in the farcical and Disneyfied form it takes in re the British royals, is actually bad.

So every one of the million stories today about Prince Harry’s ghostwritten nonsense expose of a bunch of totally useless parasites who should be forced to get real jobs is a bad thing. Including this one I suppose.

Also ghostwritten books are a terrible thing in their own right, but that’s a topic for another rant.