Perhaps it depends on the particular way the constitutional monarchy is constructed - I’m open to the idea it might be more workable or worthwhile in some forms.
I can’t say I’m impressed by the British monarchy, however. They hide most of their behavior, they hide how they use their finances, and what behavior of theirs is public is hardly what I’d want for a moral backbone of a country - even the last queen oversaw, for example, the actions of British soldiers in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising in the 50’s/60’s. It’s hard to tell for certain how involved she was or how much she knew about the concentration camps, etc, but she was at the top, and she never to my knowledge apologized for it or condemned it.
This and other colonial atrocities also means immigrant British citizens and citizens descended from immigrant families may have differing feelings about the queen. She represents a very narrow idea of Britishness, and I worry that the way she is put on a pedastal may only add fuel to the fire of anti-immigrant sentiment among people who feel there is only one true way to be British.
The whole thing feels like giving the Kardashians poltical power and an automatic pass for almost anything they do, to me. Celebrities are fun to gossip about, and sometimes they’re fun to fanboy/girl over, but idk that they need official power. If you took everything but the title from the British monarchs, I think people would still talk about them and care about them and probably still hand them things on a silver platter.
It also feels a bit like a British version of the problem the U.S. also has with hyping up nationalistic spirit in such a way as to have people believe their nation and their countrymen are automatically good and glorious, without first having to earn it. It makes for a cultural disconnect between action and valor - like you don’t have to do good things to be good, you don’t have to give a shred of thought to criticism, you just are fundamentally good even if you do things you’d criticize others for.
In the U.S. this takes the form of rampant historical revisionism and lionizing the founding fathers. I don’t know if the figureheads being dead makes it better or worse, though. At least a living figurehead is more obviously just a human person and will occasionally fuck up in public enough to be obvious around the propaganda, whereas the founding fathers genereally have their loves sanitized and idealized in history classes. But on the other hand the living symbol still has power, even if it’s mostly “soft” power and $$$$ power.
Perhaps it depends on the particular way the constitutional monarchy is constructed - I’m open to the idea it might be more workable or worthwhile in some forms.
I can’t say I’m impressed by the British monarchy, however. They hide most of their behavior, they hide how they use their finances, and what behavior of theirs is public is hardly what I’d want for a moral backbone of a country - even the last queen oversaw, for example, the actions of British soldiers in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising in the 50’s/60’s. It’s hard to tell for certain how involved she was or how much she knew about the concentration camps, etc, but she was at the top, and she never to my knowledge apologized for it or condemned it.
This and other colonial atrocities also means immigrant British citizens and citizens descended from immigrant families may have differing feelings about the queen. She represents a very narrow idea of Britishness, and I worry that the way she is put on a pedastal may only add fuel to the fire of anti-immigrant sentiment among people who feel there is only one true way to be British.
The whole thing feels like giving the Kardashians poltical power and an automatic pass for almost anything they do, to me. Celebrities are fun to gossip about, and sometimes they’re fun to fanboy/girl over, but idk that they need official power. If you took everything but the title from the British monarchs, I think people would still talk about them and care about them and probably still hand them things on a silver platter.
It also feels a bit like a British version of the problem the U.S. also has with hyping up nationalistic spirit in such a way as to have people believe their nation and their countrymen are automatically good and glorious, without first having to earn it. It makes for a cultural disconnect between action and valor - like you don’t have to do good things to be good, you don’t have to give a shred of thought to criticism, you just are fundamentally good even if you do things you’d criticize others for.
In the U.S. this takes the form of rampant historical revisionism and lionizing the founding fathers. I don’t know if the figureheads being dead makes it better or worse, though. At least a living figurehead is more obviously just a human person and will occasionally fuck up in public enough to be obvious around the propaganda, whereas the founding fathers genereally have their loves sanitized and idealized in history classes. But on the other hand the living symbol still has power, even if it’s mostly “soft” power and $$$$ power.