DETROIT -- Monarchs, presidents and the powerful tend to live lives of splendid isolation, surrounding themselves with people who will do as they're told and never tell the mighty the truths they don't want to hear. Those who do run great risks. In past regimes -- and even some present ones -- execution rewards those who dare speak caution. Simply being ignored or fired is the more likely punishment.
The Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family has produced generations of men and women who never want to be criticized or scolded. In case you do not recognize it, that's the British royal family's real surname. They changed it to Windsor during World War I to mask their German roots.
We have our own quasi-royal dynasty on this side of the Atlantic.
The Windsor and Bush families are much alike. No matter how badly they behave and how horrible their choices and decisions are, they rarely take responsibility for them. Infallibility goes with the regal territory.
England's Bonnie Prince Harry caused a great stir by deciding it would be funny to deck himself out in a Nazi uniform, including swastika armband, for a party. His elder brother, Prince William, the man who will be king, was with him when he made his choice of evening attire.
A furor erupted when British tabloids published front-page pictures of "Nazi Harry."
The Windsors are genetically dimwitted -- inbreeding does that -- but even I was stunned to find out how manifestly dumb Prince Charlie's boys are.
They should have known better. One of their many handlers should have intervened and told them how bloody crazy and offensive it is to wear a Nazi uniform.
Perhaps one brave valet might have said, "Sir, do you really think that's proper? Don't you think you should wear something else?"
I imagine Harry would have snarled, "Fek off, I'll do as I damn well please. How dare you tell me I'm wrong?"
President George W. Bush reacts the same way when he hears truths that don't fit his plans.
"Watch out for bin Laden! He's planning to attack the United States using airplanes."
"Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with the 9/11 attacks."
"Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction and he poses no threat to the United States."
"You need more troops to occupy Iraq and the violence will continue if you don't commit more."
"The war will cost at least $100 billion."
The people who told Bush those truths were all ignored or fired. Instead, we heard from the Oval Office a royal yell: "Get Cheney, Rummy, Wolfie, Tenet, Colin and Condi over here right away. They'll tell me I'm right."
They did.
Like the Windsors, the Bush family prefers to be protected by enablers. Both families come from a long line of smug, gin-soaked elitists who were taught that position, power, influence and money are far more important for success than talent, virtue and hard work.
Prince Harry's prepared statement of apology was horribly off the mark and insufficient. Royal scribes penned the princely statement, in which he said he "was very sorry if (he) caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone."
Come on. If? This idiot isn't even gracious enough to recognize he did cause offense. No one should be embarrassed other than Harry himself and the rest of his dysfunctional family.
The Nazis bombed the daylights out of Mother England, killing thousands of civilians. They tried to develop a nuclear weapon to attach to the V-2 rockets they rained on London.
British military casualties were in the hundreds of thousands, as they valiantly fought to contain and thwart Nazi aggression. The Nazis industrialized genocide. Their goal was to murder all the Jews and other "inferior" people in Europe.
There has to be something fundamentally wrong in Harry's education and upbringing that would lead him to dress in the uniform of mass murderers. Rather than making the prince deliver a suitable public apology on television, Harry's dad reportedly is angry. According to the British Evening Standard, Prince Charles regards the matter as a "silly but harmless" prank. Harry is set to begin military training at Sandhurst in the spring, and the paper reports he is "deeply upset" over the negative reaction to his Third Reich fashion tastes. The reaction upsets him, but he makes no effort to demonstrate any contrition.
Since Harry is clueless about present reality, he surely is ignorant about his own family's past flirtations with fascism. His great-uncle, King Edward VIII, who abdicated, was known to be very fond of Adolf Hitler. During the war, Edward, then known as the Duke of Windsor, was shipped off to become Governor of the Bahamas, where it was more difficult for him to play footsie with Hitler. British and American intelligence records show he was keenly interested in forming an alliance with his friends and cousins in the Fatherland.
Harry's grandfather, Prince Philip, has more Nazi relatives and connections than Rommel ever had. Philip's sisters were married to top-ranking Nazis, one of them an aide to Himmler.
The Bush family also hobnobbed with the Nazis. George W.'s great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker, used the Union Banking Corp. he controlled to funnel money to rising young fascist Adolf Hitler, helping him finance the fledgling Nazi party.
Walker arranged for his son-in-law, Prescott Bush -- father of the first President Bush and grandfather of our current president -- to get a job with the investment banking firm of W.A. Harriman and Company and to join the board of directors of Union Banking.
The bank not only helped Hitler rise to power, but also helped him wage war. Well after the invasion of Poland, the bank was financing Nazi industrialists. When the U.S. government seized Nazi Germany's banking operations in New York City in 1942, the assets were liquidated. Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker raked in $750,000 each. Nice work if you can get it. When it comes to money, they don't mind the source.
On the other side of the pond, when Philip married Crown Princess Elizabeth, his second cousin, he was given the title Duke of Edinburgh. He was a Greek national of German and Danish ancestry.
In his teens, Philip attended Gordonstoun Academy in Scotland, which was known for its program of militaristic asceticism. The school was run by a Kurt Hahn, an early Nazi supporter. Hahn was half-Jewish and fled Hitler's Germany, but he still clung to Aryan superiority myths. Philip loved the school and forced his own sons to endure the sadistic programs at the Scottish academy.
The Duke of Edinburgh is the head of the World Wide Fund for Nature, formerly the World Wildlife Fund, and Windsor Castle serves as headquarters of an organization known as the Club of the Isles. Both groups are committed to reducing the human population to under 1 billion people over two or three generations.
The Club of the Isles is dedicated to "culling the human herd," without explaining how that will be done. Philip has his own ideas on that subject. He's been quoted expressing the wish to be reincarnated as a "deadly virus" in order to kill as many people as possible. Gee, I wonder how he came up with that plan for world salvation?
When the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was at its worst, Philip shrugged it off, saying he didn't care if the Irish killed each other, so long as they didn't harm the environment. How noble.
His sister-in-law Princess Margaret once said, "The Irish are pigs. They're all pigs."
Why is it, then, that the Brits have always fought to keep a grip on every inch of the island and their "pig-pen" colony?
It's all about power, control and claims of superiority.
These people are sick and we should not be surprised when their offspring behave like -- forgive me for saying it -- pigs.
Prince Charles recently put his considerable foot into that unpleasant mouth set between his considerable ears. I'm not kidding. It's the gene pool, folks. Charles, who has never done a lick of work in his entire life, except for putting on his polo boots -- silly me, surely a servant handles that task -- has taken to social commentary, chiding people who aspire to improve themselves. In a court case over alleged discrimination in his office, a woman with a college degree claimed she was fired for daring to ask whether bright, educated people could hope to be promoted in the vast royal bureaucracy.
A note from Charles was introduced in the case. In the note, he laments that modern education is leading common folk to develop unwarranted aspirations.
"What is wrong with everyone nowadays?" the prince wondered. "Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? This is to do with the learning culture in schools as a consequence of a child-centered system which admits no failure."
Then the Prince of Wales unloaded on an education system that "tells people they can become pop stars, high court judges or brilliant TV presenters without ever putting in the necessary work or having the natural ability."
Remember your place, Charles concluded, and can those high hopes. The prince knows this faulty thinking "is a result of social utopianism, which believes humanity can be genetically engineered to contradict the lessons of history."
Forgive me, Charles, and all in your realm who, like me, forgot their place for a moment. I was just a pig, ignoring the lessons of history. I went to college, read a book or two, and concluded that genetic engineering made you the sorry mess you are. Your poor kids are not to blame for their failings.
You, your daddy and countless other cretins in the House of Windsor damaged those young men.
When they put on Nazi uniforms and do other stupid things, we know it's all in their genes. They are the products of the sad lessons of history and that can't be changed.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Jan. 18 2005 |