Thyunda said:
Starke said:
How many times am I going to have to say this? I AM NOT ENGLISH. English-born, yes, but everything else about me is NOT ENGLISH. I'm Scots-Irish, god damn it, and nobody has been fucked over more often by the English than her Gaelic neighbours. Stop trying to tell me that I'm somehow pro-England, because I'm NOT. HOWEVER, the people in the Middle East are no more upset about the Empire than they are about the Crusades. It's history. It's over. You're incredibly patronising - why the fuck do you think that full-grown men are upset about something that happened two hundred years ago? It's not happening now, it's over. They DON'T CARE!
The ones I've spoken to over the years had a pretty strong and specific hatred for the UK. You're right of course, in that they don't care what you did two hundred years ago, but the shit you pulled fifty years ago? That's still fresh in their memory. They're not going after you because they can't get to us, they're going after you because they want to go after you as well.
Thyunda said:
No. Islam4UK hate us because they want Sharia law in the country. The rest of the religion don't like us because we're infidels. But they don't harbour a particular hatred of us. Well, not until Tony Blair went and signed his arsehole over to President Bush, because then we went and put ourselves under YOUR flag. We're not the British Empire anymore, Starke. We're Little America.
Last I checked you do still have a few colonies in stock, pretty close to home in fact. On top of that the Empire still casts a long and bloody shadow over many parts of the globe. Your legacy is, quite literally spread across every continent. The world doesn't like America, agreed, but I find it incredibly hard to believe that no one in the world can remember to hold a grudge against more than one group at a time. The Middle East still holds the British responsible for the League of Nations Mandate, the Suez Crisis, the ousting of Mosaddeq (even though, yes, that was CIA), and many other events I'm not inclined to recall of the top of my head.
And you're right, for some extremists, your stubborn refusal to except Sharia law is a sticking point, but, to be fair, with people who are that far out already, that was all you needed to do, assuming you needed to ally yourself with the US in order to piss them off enough to come at you is a bit like assuming jumping into traffic only became problematic because of your tie.
Thyunda said:
So, what brought all this on? Did you just read a history book on the British Empire and assume you'd stumbled across some treasure trove of horrific atrocities?
EVERY FUCKING BRIT KNOWS THIS ALREADY. Contrary to popular belief, we do not pretend nothing bad happened during our conquest. But there is one thing we have over you.
Why, you did of course. Isn't it obvious?
You keep assuming the world has forgiven you and moved on to hate us, but then it turns around and bites you, and all you can think is to point your bloodied finger at us and say it's our fault you kicked the dog that bit you. It's not. You kicked it, you got bit. That we took a swipe at it with a newspaper between point A and point B has no relation.
Thyunda said:
At least we accepted what we did. As a country, as an empire, we knew that what we were doing was immoral, but we fought on to expand our influence. We at least opened ourselves up to the fact that we were going to be seen as the bad guys. We can't change what we did, but at least we have that going for us.
Then accept it. Deal with it, and stop pretending it never happened.
Thyunda said:
But America? Oh no, not America. You're 'liberating' these countries from their 'oppressive' cultures. You're staging your shows backstage, while telling the patrons that you don't do theatre. At least when our country oppressed people, we didn't tell them it was for their own good.
Stop trying to use the actions of the Empire, that NOBODY NOW IS ALIVE TO REMEMBER, to justify the current atrocities of your own corrupt regime.
And you were doing so well. God save Bloody ole' England.
English patriotism is a hillarious thing because, let's look at that paragraph again with a few minor corrections:
Thyunda said:
But England? Oh no, not England. You're 'civilizing' these countries from their 'primitive' cultures. You're staging your shows backstage, while telling the patrons that you don't do theatre.
At least when our country oppressed people, we didn't tell them it was for their own good.
See, that's the thing, people
are alive who remember. Granted, they're getting on in years, but the British Empire as a thing didn't really end until the 1960s. That was when you, the French, and others started ceding control of your colonies remaining. That was 50 years ago, and with the number of people living into their 80s, you honestly believe there's no one on the planet who was alive in 1960?
Come to think of it, Malta hasn't celebrated their sixtieth anniversary of independence from The Empire yet, have they?
Hell, there are people alive today, who were around when there
was no Pakistan, just India.
In point of fact though, nearly every colony in (what's now) The Third World began with the belief that the Europeans were bringing civilization. It happened in Algiers and Vietnam with the French, in South Africa with the Dutch, in America with the Dutch, French, Spanish, and English (over time), in China and India, well, you know. (And, yes, I do know you divested those colonies earlier) The point is, all of these were with the express intent of "civilizing" these lands, and bringing these "uncivilized" people into the modern world.
In the aftermath of the First World War, America adopted our isolationist stance again, our bad. And France and England carved up the Middle East. For you or me, that may be ancient history, but the native populations remember that. Ironically, the League of Nations mandate was about "liberating" and "protecting" these "oppressed" people. The terminology has changed, true, but what we did, what you did, what everyone did, it's all the same. And, I think I know what really pisses you off. It's not that I'm trying to claim the moral high ground, it's that I'm telling you, bloody old England is just as much the bad guy as we are, just as corrupt, just as nasty.
But, to be fair, we've yet to invade a country because we wanted to addict their population to drugs.
The fact of the mater is, The British Empire still
is a thing. They still lay claim to conquered territories Scotland
and Ireland, all we've got is a chunk of Japan. I'm not sure that counts as a colony, after all the rest of Japan is there...
Wait a moment... the Fauklands were in the early 80s, weren't they? So that means the British Empire persisted up to at least 1982, if we're not counting Hong Kong, so that means the empire existed thirty years ago. You're telling me there's no one alive today over the age of thirty? I mean, if we're talking about The Escapist, maybe, but no one alive today who remembers the British Empire? I think you might be mistaken there.