The queen is no longer alive.
You see the English people. You like some of them The Day of the Scorpion was written by Paul Scott. Many of you are not interested in what’s going on. Even though you like them, they do not matter. They are indifferent to us as individuals because they are hidden in England. Are the officials over here controlling us? You are incorrect.
Too bad she didn’t take the monarchy with her.
America’s slavish admiration and devotion to an institution with which it had to go to war in order to gain independence is something I have never understood.
The empire was built on greed, arrogance, and unrepentant white Christian supremacy and was dotted over the surface of the globe.
I grew up believing that Queen Elizabeth II was a representation of power, wealth and prestige because of the superiority of western superiority.
I didn’t know much. I didn’t understand the evils of empire and the persistence of myths when I was younger.
I have been entertained by the presentations of “Hercule Poirot” and “Miss Marple.” I’ve never been a fan of either “Downton Abbey” or “The Crown”, but friends and family members tell me that early seasons of the Crown are quite compelling.
As an unreconstructed anti-monarchist, I found the drama “The Jewel in the Crown” compelling, based on the decline and fall of the British Raj from 1942 until partition.
This week, after Elizabeth’s death, I found myself empathizing with a user who said that Queen Elizabeth is not a remnant of colonial times. She was involved in the colonization of Africa. She tried to prevent colonies from leaving the Commonwealth. She did a lot of evil.
I sympathize with the mourning and sense of loss many of her subjects are feeling after she died.
A young woman I’ve known for a long time got in line with her husband before 6 a.m. so she could see the queen.
I didn’t think she was a monarchist.
I believe that Elizabeth II profited from her Empire’s sins and was involved in its persistence.
The British colonialist impulse was one of many from which the world is trying to heal, even though there is no time or space to catalog the calumnies visited upon the peoples occupied and oppressed by the British Empire.
As Elizabeth lies in state, I wonder how many people are from other countries.
How many descendants of the 3,000,000 Bengalis who died because they were denied grain by the Empire are included in the mourners?
It is important for Americans to remember that the alliance between the US and England in World War II was critical to the survival of all democratic nations, but it is also important to understand that the queen of England was coming of age at that time.
It is time for a change. There should be a full accounting of the plunder, the desecration, the scars and sins inflicted upon the victims of lightly-constrained monarchies and colonization.
With the passing of Elizabeth, we have an opportunity to look at the effects of empire and colonization in the 21st century.
The moment is ripe for us to seize it.
In 2009, as President Barack Obama moved into the White House, he had a bust of the British Prime Minister removed from the Oval Office and replaced with a bust of the Rev.Martin Luther King Jr.
Many Americans don’t know about another Churchill, even though they think he’s heroic. Outside of the Euro-Americo-centered world, many people know that Churchill was a racist, imperialist, white supremacist.
The Empire and the non-imperialist world know that.
I would have chosen Martin Luther King over him.
Too bad she didn’t take the monarchy with her.
Robert Azzi can be reached at the other.azzi@aol.com. The otherazzi.wordpress.com has an archive of his columns.