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Why democracy? Monarchy isn't great, but neither is democracy when most of your population is idiots who don't believe in science.
Queen Elizabeth II has died
311–320 of 1001 posts
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#312To everyone who feels sad by these news, my condolences. I respect your pain. However, I have to confess that to whenever I hear that someone aged 90+ (80+, even) died, I don't really feel sad. Actually, I feel an urge to praise this person's achievements, as I'm aware we are all mortals, and death is unavoidable. I prefer to rejoice in how much this person has witnessed throughout her life, how she had enough health…
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Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#313It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
I feel the same. I think it’s because it really represents the end of an era. The 20th and early 21st century ushered in unprecedented improvements to quality of life in Britain but it has felt of late that that has peaked and the country is facing a serious decline: Brexit, the increasingly visible effects of climate change, the aftermath of covid, the possible break up of the union, rising costs of living, recessio…
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Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#314I was born in the UK, in 1963. Because of my step-father's love of first-wave UK punk, the first thing I did on hearing this news was to play the Sex Pistol's "God Save the Queen". It is remarkable how much the Queen's standing has improved during the time since that song (1977). My (UK) family are (as far as I know) staunch republicans, but the last couple of decades have seen all of us soften our disgust with the m…
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Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#315Brit here. I'm no royalist but by God, if you're going to have a monarch, I don't think you could have ever asked for more than Liz.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#316RIP. I've always believed that there was a place for constitutional monarchy in the world. As the world hurtles forward, having a tether to the past grounds us, reminds us that we are not ahistorical, but part of a continually unfolding story.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#317It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
as an American this also makes me sad, the Queen is one of the leaders of the free world and in her passing, the world has lost a great leader
The phrase 'free world' is ironically apt. It was developed in the Cold War to refer to the US-led anti-communist bloc, precisely because 'free' is equivocal enough to cover despots ruling over capitalist economies. Of course, a Queen by definition is not an emblem of free government.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#318Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's understandable, she's been a constant vague presence for a lot of British people. It feels like a minor part of our personal history died. I definitely feel saddened, even if I don't have a connection with royalty.
She's also been a moral authority. She avoided the soap opera situations that have dogged the rest of the moral family and frequently she's shown leadership. In WWII she trained as a mechanic so she could do something tangible to support the war effort.
I really don't want to go on criticizing the queen at length here because I think it's a bit insensitive, so I'll be brief, but I don't think that "avoiding soap opera situations" is really the same as "being a moral authority". Not that I think she was horribly bad either, but my standards for "moral authority" are quite a bit higher. Royal families tend to be neutral to a fault.
Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#319It's weird, I've never considered myself a "royalist" but this news has affected me quite strongly. I just burst into tears unexpectedly on hearing this news and I don't quite understand why I feel so very sad. I guess I have grown up and lived my whole life (as a Brit) seeing and hearing the Queen, singing "God save the Queen" etc, and this news made me suddenly feel very old, very nostalgic, with the sense that all…
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Re: Queen Elizabeth II has died
#320-- Queen Elizabeth was cool in my books because - she was pretty quippy -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgQpcC-ne64