Donald Trump makes a mess of his UK visit
I am no exponent of the Royal Family. The Royals, like the nobility, are fictions created to perpetuate a class system for people in power. They are mechanisms of social hierarchy designed to undermine the proper recognition of merit. They promote the idea of one’s “betters” by virtue of birth alone, and contribute to a sickening toadyism that is hideously debased and contemptibly masochistic. I refuse to scrape the ground before anyone. I reserve the homage of my admiration for people who have earned it through hard work and deft applications of their talents, and, even then, I do so sparingly, without the self-debasement of hero worship.
Nevertheless, I do acknowledge two indisputable facts. First, and it goes without saying, I suppose, that our Royals didn’t ask to be born. Second, that Queen Elizabeth II, by virtue of pure luck alone, just happens to be one of history’s remarkable humans. She has managed, in the course of 93 years of relentless public scrutiny, never to have done a single boneheaded, stupid or impetuous thing. She is the only head of state I can think of whose every public action and utterance is discharged with the best interest of her country at heart, as she understands that idea.
The Queen is about to again meet with a man who does half a dozen boneheaded, stupid or impetuous things every day before breakfast. A man for whom the best interest of his country is the last thing on his list. In fact, I doubt very much it makes his list at all.
While I have little time for the Abbott and Costello-variety buffoonery of the other Royals, I do not begrudge their right to live their lives free of undue harm or abuse or scorn. They are human beings after all. I do not know Meghan Markle personally and neither do you. But I am certain that much of the hatred she has attracted in the press and from the cretins commenting in the press is very much rooted in the tawdry ugliness of racism. That is unacceptable.
If Donald Trump’s recent attack on Meghan is itself not rooted in racism, then it’s only because he was caught with his ordinarily virulent racism napping. Trump referred to Meghan as “nasty” for the usual reason. She automatically became “nasty” the same way everyone becomes something disagreeable in the eyes of Donald Trump when Trump discovers they don’t like him. Trump had only just discovered that in 2016 Meghan threatened to move to Canada if Trump won the presidency.
It turns out that Trump will be meeting Meghan’s husband, Prince Harry. They will be having lunch together, a luncheon Meghan managed to get out of. It remains to be seen whether or not the Prince inherited his grandmother’s legendary restraint.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.