Why do we need to confer god-like status on fools?
THE complete shredding of the reputation of that idiot and toxic British prince – Andrew, Albert, Christian, Edward Mountbatten-Windsor – arising from his grotesque and indefensible friendship with that vile convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has been utterly captivating.
Andrew’s jaw-dropping stupidity, his stunning hubris (even for a prince), and his audacious and smug imperiousness was paraded in all its suited-and-booted glory in that now famous BBC interview last week.
As one television commentator put it – the titled member of one of the most famous, and perhaps the most dysfunctional, families on the planet couldn’t have damaged himself any more than if he doused himself in petrol and lit a match.
This public act of reputational suicide has now resulted in Andrew getting his P45 from his adoring mom, Queen Elizabeth, aided and abetted and no doubt egged on by his devoted brother, the Shadow King, Prince Charles.
The debate about the latest catastrophe to befall the British royal family is, however, a distraction from the real question – what is so messedup with the human condition that we constantly yearn to create deities, here on earth and in the next world?
Ever since we crawled out of those primeval swamps we’ve insisted on conferring god-like status on a select few in an attempt to create order, decipher the inexplicable and give ourselves a reason to live.
It’s one of the most unattractive characteristics of mankind – a magnificent act of self-hate.
Thomas Jefferson was scathing in his views of blueblood ridiculousness, hereditary hocus pocus and monarchy malarkey.
He told George Washington after a trip to Europe that he was now a ‘thousand times’ more opposed to royalty than he’d ever been.
‘There is scarcely an evil known…which may not be traced to their king as its source,’ he said. With the mask slipping again on the ugly face of the House of Windsor, it makes you feel good to live in a country that has no truck with absurd monarchical daftness.