It’s all the fault of the French.
We’ve been a conquered people for the best part of a millennium and have been servile ever since. We were harried, ground down and only survived by becoming totally subjected and subservient. We have learned to assimilate and adopt the aspirations of our aristocratic overlords in order to appease their more bloody excesses and survive.
Having adopted the mindset of our rulers, we choose to see events like Agincourt in nationalistic terms, as a glorious English victories against a rotten foreign foe, when in truth most wars of the early Middle Ages and beyond were a squabble for power between family members. And anyway, the rank and file of both armies were made up of ordinary soldiers from a whole variety of nations. Still, it suits our sense of history and self preservation to see things through patriotic tinted glasses
The aristocracy are happy to perpetuate nationalistic myths as is confirms our compliance. We give our compliance because it makes life easier.
A wonderful symbol of the extent to which we buy into nationalistic myths and hero worship, is the statue outside the Houses of Parliament shown on telly whenever we’re being told stories of our national greatness. That sculpture of Richard the Lionhearted with his finely sculpted muscles rippling improbably under chainmail represents English power, heroism, and the greatness of the State. Yet Richard was openly contemptuous of the English, he hated England, spent as little time here as possible, he said he would sell England if he could find a buyer. He spoke no English. He only visited England for long enough to get the money to go off and massacre a few more brown people once again.
Yet this aristocrat who held us in such open contempt, who only saw us as a revenue to be exploited is the same man we worship and build statues to and use as a symbol of what we should be and aspire to.
Much the same thing is happening now. We have such a huge, ingrained historical need to for a strong leader who is a class above us, to show us the way, to lead us to glory, that we swallow all the nationalistic myth making nonsense that glosses over so many layers of vested self interest, and adopt it as our own.
If we are to have a functioning democracy, we have to first free ourselves of our tendency to doff our cap to our ‘betters’.
If we do that, we might actually be in a position to take back control.
And I think we should, because in the words of the great poet and philosopher L’Oreal de Paris, ‘we’re worth it’