King's Troop prances for Phil

It may seem fatuous to take potshots at moochocracy from a former colony but they’re trying to restore feudal relations here so it’s useful to study the institution in order to know how to act if we don’t put a stop to this trend & we end up serfs again.

When Betty Windsor toured the new offices of the BBC last week we witnessed not just the unseemly spectacle of journalists groveling (we’re used to that from the White House press corps) but their curtsying & doing the “Your Royal Highness” thing. Democratic-minded people around the world blushed for England’s 4th Estate.

Here the King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery are prancing in the park to set off a 41-gun salute for the 92nd birthday of Philip (who Betty affectionately calls her “anus horribilis”) in the hospital now for his usual flatulence problem which they delicately refer to as gastrointestinal disorder.

The King’s Troop is mainly a ceremonial troop that does choreographed prancing & fires gun salutes with empty cartridges. They claim it has an operational role in defense of the UK but who’s kidding who? If England is threatened will they dance right up to the enemy in minuet formation & yell boo!?

Phil has an impressive catalog of military & royal titles--all bestowed by his relatives including Betty. European “royalty” all derive from a common ancestor (a deranged troll living in the Black Forest) & are related to each other in a labyrinth of incestuous pairings. He’s a duke, an earl, a baron, a prince, several different kinds of admiral, field marshal,  & commodore--all honoring a guy who stoked the boilers & controlled the searchlights on a few ships outside war zones. He’s received umpteen decorations by 48 states but that only suggests sycophancy is still a thriving business in the Commonwealth. He’s even honored as a god by an isolated tribe in the South Pacific--formerly an Anglo-French colony--but that reflects the legacy of colonialism & attempts by Buckingham to encourage this nonsense.

Phil best described himself when he complained, "I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children." But Phil actually doesn’t have a last name which is why the troll’s offspring are all given numbers to identify them. Our man not only suffers from that gastrointestinal thing but also is known for flatulent racist outbursts of royal (in the sense of utter & not pedigree) idiocy.

(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)