“The British political class has offered to the world an astounding spectacle of mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers.” This is a direct quote from last week’s New York Times, a newspaper that is known for being anti–heterosexual white male, anti-Christian, and now anti–British ruling class. Mind you, normally when someone attacks the British I smile, and more often than not I mumble that no one hits the Brits harder than themselves. This time, however, let’s take a second look as to why the venom.
Under the heading “The Malign Incompetence of the British Ruling Class,” some clown I’ve never heard of takes up half a broadsheet page denouncing Britain’s past in general and the ruling class in particular. (The poor jerk mixes up past and present ruling classes, but never mind.) Why now? Search me, but a little bird tells me that Brexit has something to do with it. The real rulers of today, Davos types and members of the international deep state, or IDS, are never mentioned. The article seems to have been written by someone who might have been insulted by some upper-class twit long ago and has never gotten over the insult. My, my, how many shrinks did this poor soul consult to come to such conclusions as: “English Brexiteers are chasing imperial virility”? When I called my friend Robin Birley and asked him why he was chasing imperial virility (Robs is the quintessential English gent and very patriotic), he let out his unique loud ululation and asked me what moron had come up with that one. And it gets better. The reason people voted the way they did back in 2016 can be traced, and the Times writer quotes E.M. Forster, to “privately educated men, callow beneficiaries of the country’s elitist public school system.” Now he tells us. Boo, down with Eton, and here I was thinking that it was working-class people in the north of England who voted to get out, but now I realize it was an upper-class plot, elitist public school buggers.
Taking into account that leading Brexiteers like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Daniel Hannan, and Jacob Rees-Mogg are the four richest-in-cash-and-land people in Britain—the four alone control 90 percent of all British land and 70 percent of the cash available—I understand the frustration of the Times man scribbling away in some dump in the Bronx. But fair’s fair. Here’s the Bronx recorder yet again: “Britain’s rupture with the European Union is proving to be another act of moral dereliction by the country’s rulers. The Brexiteers, pursuing a fantasy of imperial-era strength…have repeatedly revealed their hubris, mulishness and ineptitude….” Gunga Din, where in blazes is my pith helmet?
The flatulence goes on, exposing the elite’s “arrogant obduracy” and explaining to us how “egotistic and destructive behavior by the British elite flabbergasts many people today.” I don’t know about you, but I’m sure as hell flabbergasted, and so is my manservant Gunga Din. (Poor man, he insists on wearing only his loincloth and almost froze last week.) But let’s get serious. The Bronx Balzac blames the Brit elite for untold suffering, and he could be right. They even blackballed Robert Mugabe at White’s, and poor Bobby cried. Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa along with Sudan, now has people starving in the streets, but this clown blames the Brits for it. I say maybe he—the Bronx scribbler—drinks too much firewater. The best thing that could happen to Zimbabwe and Sudan is to be recolonized by the Brits. But no such luck for those poor bastards.
