R0yal W3dding

Has the entire country abandoned its critical faculty over this revolting charade?

I lose some of my right to complain, considering I'll be watching. My excuse, however, is that I'll be playing a relevant drinking game and will be mostly unconscious by the middle of the afternoon.

Anyway... I realise that I'm perhaps more misanthropic than the average citizen, but I struggle to see how can people be so shameless, joyously celebrating a wedding of the ruling elite without irony, without cynicism.

My only hope is that this is a massive media shit-storm, dreamed up in the offices of the Maily Express, and that it bears no relation to the "average" person's interest in the matter. After all, these pages of worthless, aimless hate can rarely be said to actually represent the country at large.

They should have no position of authority or prominence, being that they are parasites on the country. We denigrate benefit scroungers, but not these free-loading inbreds?

Again, I sincerely hope that the media have over-stated the strength of pro-monarchist feeling in this regard.

Mark Twain: The Misanthropic Years pt.2

A couple of quotes from "Satan" in The Mysterious Stranger, which (put criminally simplistically - I'm tired) show Twain's dissatisfaction with the human race, among other things:

For a million year the [human] race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense - to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave to master; who are worshipped by you with your mouth, while in your heart - if you have one - you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilisations have been built.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race - the individual's distrust of his neighbour, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbour's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities.