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How Britain became an American colony We must resist our brutal imperial overlords


November 25, 2022   7 mins

It is difficult to imagine Ralph Waldo Emerson enjoying the World Cup. As the champion of the Transcendentalist movement, the sage of Concord was the embodiment of 19th-century high-mindedness, far more comfortable discussing the beauties of nature and the oneness of all things than Harry Kane’s glass ankle or Harry Maguire’s enormous head.

“All life is an experiment,” Emerson proclaimed. “The more experiments you make the better.” Is there a lesson there for Gareth Southgate? Or should the England boss stick with the tried and trusted, and resort to his usual back five against the bigger teams? Perhaps the only answer is to trust his own judgement. For “nothing,” Emerson also said, “can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

I’m pretty confident that nobody else has ever kicked off a preview of an England World Cup game with Ralph Waldo Emerson, but that’s just because we don’t often play the United States. There may have been a match in 2010, but it was so drab that I’ve long since forgotten it; and obviously World Cups before 1966 don’t count.

But as the hours tick down until tonight’s clash with the USA, Emerson’s legacy still looms large. For more than anybody else in his country’s history, it was the comically named Waldo who insisted that his countrymen emerge from the shadow of the Old World and create their own distinct identity, not simply as traitors and tax dodgers, but as unrepentantly non-British Americans.

The occasion was a speech to Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society on 31 August 1837, entitled “The American Scholar”. And as Waldo told his listeners, it was time to throw off the shackles of the past. In future, Americans must take their cue from the natural wonders of their vast continent, not the dry, desiccated clichés they found in European libraries. The true American, Waldo said, should rely on himself: to stand tall, he must stand alone. “We will walk on our own feet,” he said grandly: “we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds.” Some inspiring words there, perhaps, for the catchily named USMNT.

Throwing off the Old World has been an American preoccupation from the very beginning. The first pilgrims sailed west to escape what they saw as the sinful corruption of James I’s England, and you need only glance at the world’s worst newspaper to see that their descendants’ obsession with English wickedness is as fervent as ever. Even though more than two centuries have passed since the American colonists put financial self-interest above their duty to king and country, you can still detect traces of the old resentments.

You can see them in the frequent laments that Hollywood studios are employing too many British actors — even black British actors. You can see them in, say, the New York Times’s coverage of London’s restaurant scene (“Beyond Porridge and Boiled Mutton”). You can see it, too, in the same paper’s complaints that too many “Britishisms” are entering American English: “Crikey, Britishisms are everywhere. Call it Anglocreep. Call it annoying.” They’re calling us annoying? Seriously?

Even on the football pitch — sorry, “soccer field” — many Americans will tell you that this fixture matters more than any other. “For any American player, this matchup is unique,” the former US World Cup striker Eric Wynalda wrote a few days ago. “While playing Brazil and Argentina is how you measure yourself as a country, playing England always feels personal.” When he played England in 1993, there was, he recalled, “an element of jealousy. The England players were rich, they had a big league and great fan support. They were cocky as hell. We wanted to be them, but in our own way. I think that still exists.” As it happens, Wynalda and co. won that day. Still, it was only a friendly.

Alas, in recent years, as even the most John Bullish have to admit, there haven’t been many cultural arenas in which we can feel smugly superior to our American cousins. Ever since the United States overtook Britain economically at the end of the 19th century — an inevitability given their geographical advantages, so that doesn’t really count as a win either — the boot has been firmly on the other foot. As early as 1914 the young T. S. Eliot, speaking in a debate at Merton College, Oxford, reminded his listeners “how much they owed to Amurrican culcher in the drayma (including the movies) in music, in the cocktail, and in the dance”. (These are Eliot’s own spellings. Again, they call us annoying?)

But it was in the decade after the First World War that the threat of Americanisation really loomed large. Britain was a country in shell shock: grey, weary, disillusioned and divided. The United States, on the other hand, was the land of ragtime and jazz, fizzing with excitement. “I am counting the days till I can get away and have decided from now on to live in America,” wrote P. G. Wodehouse in 1923. There was, he said, something “dead and depressing about London… all I want to do is to get back and hear the American language again.”

Wodehouse was bound for Hollywood, which was no accident. With a far bigger domestic market, an American film in the early Twenties typically made ten times more money than its British equivalent, which inevitably meant larger budgets. Even in 1925, some 95% of all film tickets sold in Britain were for American pictures.

And when, two years later, Al Jolson’s film The Jazz Singer ushered in the age of the talkies, Fleet Street’s finest wailed in despair. The terrible truth, lamented the Daily Express, was that “the bulk of our picture-goers are Americanised to an extent that makes them regard a British film as a foreign film… They go to see American stars; they have been brought up on American publicity. They talk America, think America, and dream America. We have several million people, mostly women, who, to all intent and purpose, are temporary American citizens.”

In the decades that followed, the traffic flowed only one way. When the United States entered the Second World War in December 1941 — two years late, as true patriots will never tire of pointing out — it rapidly became the senior Allied partner. Sent to North Africa to liaise with General Eisenhower, the young Harold Macmillan predicted that his compatriots’ future lay in being “Greeks in this American empire”, and hoped they might be able to mastermind things from the shadows, “as the Greeks ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius”. The Greeks in question were slaves, so this wasn’t a very enticing analogy. In any case, the Americans had no intention of allowing their former masters to “run” them. Britain would learn that lesson at Suez.

By the time Macmillan became prime minister in January 1957, Americanisation seemed unstoppable, epitomised by everything from Bill Haley and Elvis Presley to hamburgers and teenagers. When you read one contemporary list of outlandish Americanisms — “barbecued chickens rotating on their spits in the shop windows… parking meters… bowling alleys, glass-skyscrapers, flying saucers” — the surprising thing is that so many of them were American. Perhaps that tells its own story. “I must say,” muses Jimmy Porter in John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger, “it’s pretty dreary living in the American Age — unless you’re an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans.”

Then came a genuine turning point. Before 7 February 1964, the date the Beatles landed in New York, only two other British acts, Acker Bilk and the Tornados, had held the Billboard number one spot, both with instrumentals. But with their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, the picture changed.

In the next two years, British acts hogged the top spot for no fewer than 52 weeks, from Manfred Mann, Petula Clark and the Dave Clark Five to Herman’s Hermits, the Troggs and the Rolling Stones. The obvious irony is that they often played American music. But that didn’t make them any less British. “What made us first want to go to America and conquer it was being English,” the Who’s Pete Townshend said later. “We didn’t care a monkey’s about the American dream.”

For the next 40 years or so, the cultural relationship felt like a genuine joint enterprise. Sheer size meant the United States was always the bigger partner, but there were enough British Oscar winners, enough British number ones, to suggest that it wasn’t entirely one-way. At the height of the so-called Second British Invasion, between 1983 and 1986, British acts actually did even better than 20 years earlier, twice accounting for exactly half of all the places in the Top 40.

Even politically, British politicians could pretend, at least, that they stood as tall as their American contemporaries. Just read the hilarious transcript of Margaret Thatcher’s exchange with Ronald Reagan after British troops had landed on the Falkland Islands. Reagan suggests offering a ceasefire; she is having none of it. As the exchange goes on, Reagan’s contributions dwindle to “Margaret, I –” and ‘Yes, well —”, while hers get ever longer and more hectoring. True, he got his own back in Grenada a year later. But in Britain we’ve all forgotten about that, so again it doesn’t count.

Since then, however, there’s been a seismic technological shift, greater even than the rise of the cinema. And although we don’t really talk about Americanisation anymore, that’s surely because, since the rise of social media, we’ve become so Americanised that we no longer even notice it. Yet once you do start to notice it, you never stop. And yes, there’s a risk of sounding like the reincarnation of Lord Salisbury, but who cares?

So here we go. When did self-hating Britons start saying “mac ‘n’ cheese” instead of “macaroni cheese”? Why do 25-year-old publishers think “cliché” is an adjective? Why are there no medical systems on earth other than our beloved, sacred NHS and the cruel American private healthcare firms? Why does the BBC send 6,000 people to report on a senatorial election in Georgia but only two men and a dog to cover the federal elections in Germany?

Who decided that schoolchildren in Leamington Spa should care about Rosa Parks? Why did thousands of people take to the streets in Britain about the killing of a single black man in Minneapolis, when barely a handful bother to protest the sack of Mariupol or the incarceration of the Uyghurs? And why on earth, when a couple of half-crazed American academics announce that we must cancel the term Anglo-Saxon to describe Alfred the Great and Athelstan because it’s a racist “dog whistle” for “white, Western superiority”, do so many British historians fall limply into line?

There’s only one answer to all this — and in an age that prizes victimhood above all else, what a richly satisfying answer it is. For it’s time we Britons recognised ourselves for what we are: a cruelly oppressed people, so brutalised by our imperial overlords that we don’t realise how badly we’ve been treated. Our idioms, our customs, even our cooking have been ruthlessly erased from history, our pies and puddings driven out by chicken wings and cheeseburgers, and we haven’t even noticed. And now they’re even coming for our ancestors, the Anglo-Saxons of sainted memory!

So what would Athelstan, the first king of all England, say? I think we all know the answer to that. He’d say: “Lads, it’s time to decolonise ourselves. Who cares what the Yanks think? But first things first: the World Cup. Let’s give them such a beating they never again claim that macaroni cheese is three words. Come on, England!

And he would, of course, be right.


Dominic Sandbrook is an author, historian and UnHerd columnist. His latest book is: Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982

dcsandbrook

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Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago

The truly wonderful thing about this article is that an American couldn’t have written it. Self deprecating, ironic, floating on light wit, it’s made my day.

Only a Brit could come up with this motivation for the sainted founding fathers.

“Even though more than two centuries have passed since the American colonists put financial self-interest above their duty to king and country.”

With apologies to the many Americans, who comment very intelligently on here, that was marvellous.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

“their duty to king and country.”
Obviously they no longer felt they owed anything to King and country, nor felt part of it any more. So they did not really put financial self-interest before both because they owed them nothing.

David Harris
David Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Gotcha!

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Thank you for proving Martins point perfectly

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

But what was their duty to king and country?

Ben J
Ben J
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It was a joke, Brett. Maybe you weren’t meant to get it.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben J

No, it escapes me.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Is it you having the joke

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

Maybe just a rambling thought. If the colonists had long given up any thought of duty to king and country then it was not something they put financial self-interest above. They had already done away with ideas of duty. You can’t put financial self-interest above something that doesn’t exist, It seems to me, despite the pleasure it gives M Bollis, to be a snide comment, suggesting the revolution was about money. That an American couldn’t have written it is equally snide. But if it satisfies something the Brit’s feel who am I to argue.

Last edited 1 year ago by Brett H
James Kirk
James Kirk
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

The Yanks seem more loyal than we are. Stop a teenager or youngster in our High Street and ask if they know the words to the National Anthem or the Lords Prayer. Good luck, in fact try 25-45s.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Most people know the anthem, although it has recently changed so it’s trickier than for most countries.
The Lords Prayer would be largely irrelevant to most, even my grandparents generation never went to church except weddings, christenings and funerals

DenialARiverIn Islington
DenialARiverIn Islington
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Hmmmm. Well. They weren’t terribly loyal to the Vietnam Vets now, were they?

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Most people know the anthem, although it has recently changed so it’s trickier than for most countries.
The Lords Prayer would be largely irrelevant to most, even my grandparents generation never went to church except weddings, christenings and funerals

DenialARiverIn Islington
DenialARiverIn Islington
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Hmmmm. Well. They weren’t terribly loyal to the Vietnam Vets now, were they?

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It’s irony Brett, the whole piece is as big a p*ss take of the Brits as it is of the Yanks.

The comment I highlighted is self evidently ludicrous, which is how it manages to be both a bit of a dig at American values, and a wonderful take down of a particular kind of Brit.

Brits tend to be more aware of their failings and certainly more willing to laugh at them, which is why it’s hard to imagine a US writer doing something similar.

I was just enjoying how very well it was done.

L Walker
L Walker
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

I thought it was pretty funny, as a Yank.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Yes, I seem to have walked right into that one. Mea Culpa.

Last edited 1 year ago by Brett H
L Walker
L Walker
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

I thought it was pretty funny, as a Yank.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Yes, I seem to have walked right into that one. Mea Culpa.

Last edited 1 year ago by Brett H
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It is a joke about the British

Clive Pinder
Clive Pinder
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Indeed you did walk right into the pasture of irony Brett. As a proud republican Englishman, born and raised in Africa now living in America (patriotism is something I learned from Americans), the one thing that defines American democracy more than anything is the malign influence of money in its politics. Americans are perhaps infamous the world over for putting money above all else. The Pilgrims fled the chains of a monarchy in the search of a ‘new world’ only to serve a new Monarch. Money. Status is based not on breeding but on wealth. That is the freedom of meritocracy. The American dream is material. The delicious irony is that Americans replaced subjugation to a monarch with slavery to money. 5 weeks vacation a year is something American workers can only dream about. Yet, most importantly, they are free from a Monarch. England will get there too one day, probably sooner than a repeat of 1966 based on the dire performance yesterday in which, ironically, the best player on the ‘field’ that day was an American who plays and earns his living in England.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clive Pinder
Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Have you never heard of tongue in cheek humor or something being slightly ironic? The article was peppered in it. Even as an American, I got more than a few good chuckles out of it.
And to the Brits, for some reason I picked up using “bloody” decades ago and I don’t know from where. I’ve had more than a few ask me if I’m from Britain for using it. As if my accent (well, lack of it on this side of the pond) didn’t make it obvious that I wasn’t.

James Kirk
James Kirk
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

The Yanks seem more loyal than we are. Stop a teenager or youngster in our High Street and ask if they know the words to the National Anthem or the Lords Prayer. Good luck, in fact try 25-45s.

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It’s irony Brett, the whole piece is as big a p*ss take of the Brits as it is of the Yanks.

The comment I highlighted is self evidently ludicrous, which is how it manages to be both a bit of a dig at American values, and a wonderful take down of a particular kind of Brit.

Brits tend to be more aware of their failings and certainly more willing to laugh at them, which is why it’s hard to imagine a US writer doing something similar.

I was just enjoying how very well it was done.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It is a joke about the British

Clive Pinder
Clive Pinder
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Indeed you did walk right into the pasture of irony Brett. As a proud republican Englishman, born and raised in Africa now living in America (patriotism is something I learned from Americans), the one thing that defines American democracy more than anything is the malign influence of money in its politics. Americans are perhaps infamous the world over for putting money above all else. The Pilgrims fled the chains of a monarchy in the search of a ‘new world’ only to serve a new Monarch. Money. Status is based not on breeding but on wealth. That is the freedom of meritocracy. The American dream is material. The delicious irony is that Americans replaced subjugation to a monarch with slavery to money. 5 weeks vacation a year is something American workers can only dream about. Yet, most importantly, they are free from a Monarch. England will get there too one day, probably sooner than a repeat of 1966 based on the dire performance yesterday in which, ironically, the best player on the ‘field’ that day was an American who plays and earns his living in England.

Last edited 1 year ago by Clive Pinder
Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Have you never heard of tongue in cheek humor or something being slightly ironic? The article was peppered in it. Even as an American, I got more than a few good chuckles out of it.
And to the Brits, for some reason I picked up using “bloody” decades ago and I don’t know from where. I’ve had more than a few ask me if I’m from Britain for using it. As if my accent (well, lack of it on this side of the pond) didn’t make it obvious that I wasn’t.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

Maybe just a rambling thought. If the colonists had long given up any thought of duty to king and country then it was not something they put financial self-interest above. They had already done away with ideas of duty. You can’t put financial self-interest above something that doesn’t exist, It seems to me, despite the pleasure it gives M Bollis, to be a snide comment, suggesting the revolution was about money. That an American couldn’t have written it is equally snide. But if it satisfies something the Brit’s feel who am I to argue.

Last edited 1 year ago by Brett H
Howard Gleave
Howard Gleave
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

We rest our case.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Is it you having the joke

Howard Gleave
Howard Gleave
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

We rest our case.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben J

Subtlety and sarcasm were never something the yanks understood let’s be honest.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben J

No, it escapes me.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Ben J

Subtlety and sarcasm were never something the yanks understood let’s be honest.

Ben J
Ben J
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It was a joke, Brett. Maybe you weren’t meant to get it.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

But what was their duty to king and country?

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It’s irony. Brett. That’s the point. Of course the colonists owed nothing to the British crown. We all know that, including the writer.

Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

Silly loyalists! Taxes are for chumps!

Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago
Reply to  Michael Askew

Silly loyalists! Taxes are for chumps!

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

When I was a teenager my mother said to me “Whenever you start a sentence with ‘obviously’ your point is anything but obvious.”
It’s been a source of wonder (and frustration) how often Mom was right about this sort of thing.

Kenny Harris
Kenny Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Britain run up debts defending the colonies in the Franco Indian wars, I’ve never been of a high opinion of America No soon as they got so-called independence they started to move inland another thing the British government was against they went on to slaughter millions of the indigenous population or shove them tightly into reservations after stealing their land and resources, then you add then they had gold and silver boomtowns with no end of violence all written about in cowboy history, then as we get into the new 20th century you get Intercity violence run by Mafia gangs involving prostitution and all types of racketeering leading to murders, then shall we move on to World War II were American forces raped over 14,000 women over 100 of them in Britain Britain that paid its last final payment in 1918 for the American WW2 debt that we ran up fighting the Nazis while they sat on the sidelines for two years whilst Britain and its Commonwealth were fighting alone Hitler declared war on America first otherwise they might of kept out of EuropeBut then again they were paranoid about Soviet Russia getting into France, America has always had a huge narcotics problem even today Also has amongst the highest murder rate in the western world sex drugs rock ‘n’ roll you can keep it along with the hamburgers.

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  Kenny Harris

Kenny. such confusion in this comment. Bad day.

Wim de Vriend
Wim de Vriend
1 year ago
Reply to  Hardee Hodges

Very bad day for punctuation, too.

Wim de Vriend
Wim de Vriend
1 year ago
Reply to  Hardee Hodges

Very bad day for punctuation, too.

Marissa M
Marissa M
1 year ago
Reply to  Kenny Harris

We do have a large narcotics problem, but, Kenny dear, what have YOU been smoking??

Kate Heusser
Kate Heusser
1 year ago
Reply to  Kenny Harris

WOW! What was THAT?

Hardee Hodges
Hardee Hodges
1 year ago
Reply to  Kenny Harris

Kenny. such confusion in this comment. Bad day.

Marissa M
Marissa M
1 year ago
Reply to  Kenny Harris

We do have a large narcotics problem, but, Kenny dear, what have YOU been smoking??

Kate Heusser
Kate Heusser
1 year ago
Reply to  Kenny Harris

WOW! What was THAT?

DenialARiverIn Islington
DenialARiverIn Islington
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

In my direct experience, the only real problem with my American friends (apart from their uncivilised attitude towards guns), is that they think that irony is like coppery or bronzy, only made of iron……

David Harris
David Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Gotcha!

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Thank you for proving Martins point perfectly

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

It’s irony. Brett. That’s the point. Of course the colonists owed nothing to the British crown. We all know that, including the writer.

laurence scaduto
laurence scaduto
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

When I was a teenager my mother said to me “Whenever you start a sentence with ‘obviously’ your point is anything but obvious.”
It’s been a source of wonder (and frustration) how often Mom was right about this sort of thing.

Kenny Harris
Kenny Harris
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Britain run up debts defending the colonies in the Franco Indian wars, I’ve never been of a high opinion of America No soon as they got so-called independence they started to move inland another thing the British government was against they went on to slaughter millions of the indigenous population or shove them tightly into reservations after stealing their land and resources, then you add then they had gold and silver boomtowns with no end of violence all written about in cowboy history, then as we get into the new 20th century you get Intercity violence run by Mafia gangs involving prostitution and all types of racketeering leading to murders, then shall we move on to World War II were American forces raped over 14,000 women over 100 of them in Britain Britain that paid its last final payment in 1918 for the American WW2 debt that we ran up fighting the Nazis while they sat on the sidelines for two years whilst Britain and its Commonwealth were fighting alone Hitler declared war on America first otherwise they might of kept out of EuropeBut then again they were paranoid about Soviet Russia getting into France, America has always had a huge narcotics problem even today Also has amongst the highest murder rate in the western world sex drugs rock ‘n’ roll you can keep it along with the hamburgers.

DenialARiverIn Islington
DenialARiverIn Islington
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

In my direct experience, the only real problem with my American friends (apart from their uncivilised attitude towards guns), is that they think that irony is like coppery or bronzy, only made of iron……

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

the American colonists WISELY put financial self-interest above their duty to king and country.

Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

God save the king.

William Loughran
William Loughran
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

It’s a pity they didn’t put private property, particularly as in self-ownership, above financial self-interest. This was one of the Scottish Enlightenment’s best arguments against slavery in circa 1690.

Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

God save the king.

William Loughran
William Loughran
1 year ago
Reply to  Terry M

It’s a pity they didn’t put private property, particularly as in self-ownership, above financial self-interest. This was one of the Scottish Enlightenment’s best arguments against slavery in circa 1690.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Hear, hear! And I’m an American. I’m also an Anglophile whose family left Portsmouth for the New World in the 1600s, so I have a deep reverence and respect for both countries (we took our kids on a ten-day boat trip on the Shropshire Union Canal one rainy April. Loved every minute of it. Sensational food all along the way). And yes, the worst newspaper on the planet is the New York Times. Thank you for pointing it out and for a great article on this day after our Thanksgiving!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Did you cross the splendid Pontcysyllte Aqueduct?

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

We did! I impressed the natives with my pronunciation!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Well done, I’ve never done that!

Kate Heusser
Kate Heusser
1 year ago

And I couldn’t begin to pronounce it!

Kate Heusser
Kate Heusser
1 year ago

And I couldn’t begin to pronounce it!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Well done, I’ve never done that!

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

We did! I impressed the natives with my pronunciation!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Did you cross the splendid Pontcysyllte Aqueduct?

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

From America the plus points have been: Investment banking, some great films and music… and on the minus side… hoodies, baseball caps, McDonalds, LGBT, global warming and racism fascists, status related purely to money, Gross overpayment and reward to employed rather than entrepreneurial people, drug culture, the internet, social media, the use of dishonest and negative PR, ..the derision of culture and the past.. where does it stop?

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 year ago

Hold on my dear chap, I think that you have mistakenly plonked ‘investment banking’ on the wrong side of the fence here! Maybe if we replace it with … oh dear me I can’t immediately think of anything; ah here it is – hash brownies – love ’em!

John Holland
John Holland
1 year ago

I’m not sure if you’re blaming America for global warming as a scientific fact, or if you think it’s a ‘scam’ that they invented.
Either way, I think you need a sit down and a think.

Tony Price
Tony Price
1 year ago

Hold on my dear chap, I think that you have mistakenly plonked ‘investment banking’ on the wrong side of the fence here! Maybe if we replace it with … oh dear me I can’t immediately think of anything; ah here it is – hash brownies – love ’em!

John Holland
John Holland
1 year ago

I’m not sure if you’re blaming America for global warming as a scientific fact, or if you think it’s a ‘scam’ that they invented.
Either way, I think you need a sit down and a think.

LCarey Rowland
LCarey Rowland
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Chin up and Cheerio! We could not have done any of it without you!
The UnHerd software would not allow me to make a general comment, even though I am an UnHerd subscriber. So I responded to your “truly wonderful” comment above, which was at the top of the heap.
I just have to share this memory. . . laying in bed in the US, 1962, or ’63 . . . I don’t remember. But what I remember was my transistor radio cackling through the darkness, when suddenly . . . suddenly, there it was. . . having transcended the airwaves, having leaped o’er the Atlantic . . . ” She was just seventeen. . . you know what I mean . . . and the way she looked was way beyond compare!. . .”
The wondrous union of English poetry with American rhythm and blues could only have happened exactly the way it did happen . . . strummed and sung by that Fab Four from Liverpool! . . . the British invasion . . . a once-in-a- lifetime phenom!
Thank you, Britannia! for John, Paul, George and Ringo!

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

marvellous book (plug) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyZfV7sWZMg
George III: The Life & Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch — Andrew Roberts

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

“their duty to king and country.”
Obviously they no longer felt they owed anything to King and country, nor felt part of it any more. So they did not really put financial self-interest before both because they owed them nothing.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

the American colonists WISELY put financial self-interest above their duty to king and country.

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Hear, hear! And I’m an American. I’m also an Anglophile whose family left Portsmouth for the New World in the 1600s, so I have a deep reverence and respect for both countries (we took our kids on a ten-day boat trip on the Shropshire Union Canal one rainy April. Loved every minute of it. Sensational food all along the way). And yes, the worst newspaper on the planet is the New York Times. Thank you for pointing it out and for a great article on this day after our Thanksgiving!

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

From America the plus points have been: Investment banking, some great films and music… and on the minus side… hoodies, baseball caps, McDonalds, LGBT, global warming and racism fascists, status related purely to money, Gross overpayment and reward to employed rather than entrepreneurial people, drug culture, the internet, social media, the use of dishonest and negative PR, ..the derision of culture and the past.. where does it stop?

LCarey Rowland
LCarey Rowland
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

Chin up and Cheerio! We could not have done any of it without you!
The UnHerd software would not allow me to make a general comment, even though I am an UnHerd subscriber. So I responded to your “truly wonderful” comment above, which was at the top of the heap.
I just have to share this memory. . . laying in bed in the US, 1962, or ’63 . . . I don’t remember. But what I remember was my transistor radio cackling through the darkness, when suddenly . . . suddenly, there it was. . . having transcended the airwaves, having leaped o’er the Atlantic . . . ” She was just seventeen. . . you know what I mean . . . and the way she looked was way beyond compare!. . .”
The wondrous union of English poetry with American rhythm and blues could only have happened exactly the way it did happen . . . strummed and sung by that Fab Four from Liverpool! . . . the British invasion . . . a once-in-a- lifetime phenom!
Thank you, Britannia! for John, Paul, George and Ringo!

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
1 year ago
Reply to  Martin Bollis

marvellous book (plug) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyZfV7sWZMg
George III: The Life & Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch — Andrew Roberts

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
1 year ago

The truly wonderful thing about this article is that an American couldn’t have written it. Self deprecating, ironic, floating on light wit, it’s made my day.

Only a Brit could come up with this motivation for the sainted founding fathers.

“Even though more than two centuries have passed since the American colonists put financial self-interest above their duty to king and country.”

With apologies to the many Americans, who comment very intelligently on here, that was marvellous.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
1 year ago

Then do it. Quit complaining about how we do things here and appreciate what you are. It used to be Brits were as insufferably proud for being British as us Yanks were for being American. As for the woke cultural garbage, just remember the Americans pushing that onto you also hate America. Well they hate you too, but you get my point. My advice for spreading your culture, take back the rock world by storm, show off your manners, give Bond his balls back, and bring back witty comedies like Blackadder and Yes Minister. Finally if anyone complains about how your culture is not relevant in this “modern world” tell them to “screw sod off”!

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

We already own the rock world we don’t need to take it back. I could battle the bands all day but Ozzy Osborne is my hero. Original Prince of Darkness and massive character. Made in Birmingham, only a few miles away. And still going, amazing.
We can’t give bond his bitches back, it’s been taken and ruined by the American Universal Pictures lot.
As soon as we try and take our rock back our American overlords have a hissy fit and start saying they will put us at the back of queue for a trade deal, interfere in Ireland, remember that?
We could do with some help really, can’t you sort it out over there? How do you have Biden as a president? You have all of America to choose from and you pick that one? At least Boris had charisma and could find his way on and off a stage, if you could get your elites in order and stop being so mental that would be very helpful.

Marissa M
Marissa M
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Ozzy?? You won the rock world with the “Original Prince of Darkness”? Oh, dear. You need to pull up those bootstraps and pull them into the 21st century. Ozzie is only good for occasional drugged out ridicule or the self-publicity of his star-f*cker of a wife.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Marissa M

Oooooooo, I don’t even need to try and defend Ozzy, anyone that knows anything about him knows he’s a legend and an icon, world wide. Working class hero. Jack and ozzys Road trip they did a few years ago, brilliant. To still be alive and functioning after having such a good time, hats off. Don’t forget we spawned the sex pistols too, men like Ozzy and johnny rotten – America wishes it understood – the spirit of British rebelliousness, you lot were scared shitless of Eminem for gods sake, very tame by our standards. Our lot normally had to be toned down for you! You’ll never spawn anything decent until you get over yourselves. Green day were good, but then they embraced the fact you’re a nation of idiots, remember American idiot? Big hit here. Believe it went, Subliminal mind f*** America, one nation under the New Media, everything isn’t meant to be ok. One nation controlled by the media, information age of hysteria is calling out to idiot America. Remember the lyrics?
Oasis, stereophonics, kaiser chiefs, artic monkeys, Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Kasabian, muse, placebo will that do you for now? You want to get into Glastonbury? Love Jamie t myself, post punk revival type.

John Holland
John Holland
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Jesus wept, what a long, tired list of mediocrity.

John Holland
John Holland
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Jesus wept, what a long, tired list of mediocrity.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Marissa M

Oooooooo, I don’t even need to try and defend Ozzy, anyone that knows anything about him knows he’s a legend and an icon, world wide. Working class hero. Jack and ozzys Road trip they did a few years ago, brilliant. To still be alive and functioning after having such a good time, hats off. Don’t forget we spawned the sex pistols too, men like Ozzy and johnny rotten – America wishes it understood – the spirit of British rebelliousness, you lot were scared shitless of Eminem for gods sake, very tame by our standards. Our lot normally had to be toned down for you! You’ll never spawn anything decent until you get over yourselves. Green day were good, but then they embraced the fact you’re a nation of idiots, remember American idiot? Big hit here. Believe it went, Subliminal mind f*** America, one nation under the New Media, everything isn’t meant to be ok. One nation controlled by the media, information age of hysteria is calling out to idiot America. Remember the lyrics?
Oasis, stereophonics, kaiser chiefs, artic monkeys, Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Kasabian, muse, placebo will that do you for now? You want to get into Glastonbury? Love Jamie t myself, post punk revival type.

Marissa M
Marissa M
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Ozzy?? You won the rock world with the “Original Prince of Darkness”? Oh, dear. You need to pull up those bootstraps and pull them into the 21st century. Ozzie is only good for occasional drugged out ridicule or the self-publicity of his star-f*cker of a wife.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Matt Hindman

We already own the rock world we don’t need to take it back. I could battle the bands all day but Ozzy Osborne is my hero. Original Prince of Darkness and massive character. Made in Birmingham, only a few miles away. And still going, amazing.
We can’t give bond his bitches back, it’s been taken and ruined by the American Universal Pictures lot.
As soon as we try and take our rock back our American overlords have a hissy fit and start saying they will put us at the back of queue for a trade deal, interfere in Ireland, remember that?
We could do with some help really, can’t you sort it out over there? How do you have Biden as a president? You have all of America to choose from and you pick that one? At least Boris had charisma and could find his way on and off a stage, if you could get your elites in order and stop being so mental that would be very helpful.

Matt Hindman
Matt Hindman
1 year ago

Then do it. Quit complaining about how we do things here and appreciate what you are. It used to be Brits were as insufferably proud for being British as us Yanks were for being American. As for the woke cultural garbage, just remember the Americans pushing that onto you also hate America. Well they hate you too, but you get my point. My advice for spreading your culture, take back the rock world by storm, show off your manners, give Bond his balls back, and bring back witty comedies like Blackadder and Yes Minister. Finally if anyone complains about how your culture is not relevant in this “modern world” tell them to “screw sod off”!

William Murphy
William Murphy
1 year ago

I can think of far bigger things to moan about as regards the utterly bogus “special relationship” (Peter Hitchens has long had plenty of suitably acidic comments on that illusion). One obvious recent disaster is the £3.5 billion pissed down the toilet over 20 years in Afghanistan as we followed deluded USA-dictated policies. The cash went on hordes of consultants, propping up totally corrupt politicians and trying to sustain useless indigenous security forces…plus trying to introduce Western attitudes to a reluctant population. £3.5 billion =100 new secondary schools or 15 large hospitals down the drain.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  William Murphy

… and, of course, British lives lost.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  William Murphy

… and, of course, British lives lost.

William Murphy
William Murphy
1 year ago

I can think of far bigger things to moan about as regards the utterly bogus “special relationship” (Peter Hitchens has long had plenty of suitably acidic comments on that illusion). One obvious recent disaster is the £3.5 billion pissed down the toilet over 20 years in Afghanistan as we followed deluded USA-dictated policies. The cash went on hordes of consultants, propping up totally corrupt politicians and trying to sustain useless indigenous security forces…plus trying to introduce Western attitudes to a reluctant population. £3.5 billion =100 new secondary schools or 15 large hospitals down the drain.

Sevo Slade
Sevo Slade
1 year ago

The true urgency is for the British people to escape the cultural death spiral of the nonsensical and divisive American-sourced wokeness they seem to love aping at every occasion, often outdoing their transatlantic cousins in their slavish and non-thinking adhesion to that imported politically correct dogma.

David Yetter
David Yetter
1 year ago
Reply to  Sevo Slade

As an American, I really am sorry that we let our academy be taken over by the “woke”, the idiot children of the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, Foucault and the anti- and post-colonialist Leninist imperialist types. You Brits got Kim Philby and his lot at the main line of attack from the Soviets, we got Cultural Marxism, which turns out to be like one of those autonomous weapons systems of sci-fi that carry on fighting even after their makers and the cause where were made to fight for are gone. I’m afraid the whole Anglosphere needs to clean up that mess — I saw the beginnings of the same intellectual rot loose in Australian society when I spent a winter there during the summer of 1989, and don’t get me started on Canadian “multiculturalism” on display when I lived there in ’87/’88 and worse now — and I’m quite certain neither of them wasimported from the US, as at that time such ideas were confined to the academy in the US.
As to Americanisms in British usage, I think the boundary between the two dialects has just become porous. I hear about “bespoke norms” (a strange concept, if it’s a norm, how can it be bespoke?) in planning documents at my university, and American kids have picked up British slang from the Harry Potter books, to say nothing of the phenomenon from the COVID lockdown of American toddlers with perfect British accents, using British English, thanks to Peppa Pig. (Though I must say I am sad that “Chemists” had largely been displaced by “Pharmacy” on signage the last time I was in the UK.)

Last edited 1 year ago by David Yetter
Ludwig van Earwig
Ludwig van Earwig
1 year ago
Reply to  David Yetter

The first time I noticed the word “bespoke” was on a sign outside a bicycle shop in London. So I naturally assumed it had something to do with bicycle wheel spokes.

Ludwig van Earwig
Ludwig van Earwig
1 year ago
Reply to  David Yetter

The first time I noticed the word “bespoke” was on a sign outside a bicycle shop in London. So I naturally assumed it had something to do with bicycle wheel spokes.

David Yetter
David Yetter
1 year ago
Reply to  Sevo Slade

As an American, I really am sorry that we let our academy be taken over by the “woke”, the idiot children of the Frankfurt School, Gramsci, Foucault and the anti- and post-colonialist Leninist imperialist types. You Brits got Kim Philby and his lot at the main line of attack from the Soviets, we got Cultural Marxism, which turns out to be like one of those autonomous weapons systems of sci-fi that carry on fighting even after their makers and the cause where were made to fight for are gone. I’m afraid the whole Anglosphere needs to clean up that mess — I saw the beginnings of the same intellectual rot loose in Australian society when I spent a winter there during the summer of 1989, and don’t get me started on Canadian “multiculturalism” on display when I lived there in ’87/’88 and worse now — and I’m quite certain neither of them wasimported from the US, as at that time such ideas were confined to the academy in the US.
As to Americanisms in British usage, I think the boundary between the two dialects has just become porous. I hear about “bespoke norms” (a strange concept, if it’s a norm, how can it be bespoke?) in planning documents at my university, and American kids have picked up British slang from the Harry Potter books, to say nothing of the phenomenon from the COVID lockdown of American toddlers with perfect British accents, using British English, thanks to Peppa Pig. (Though I must say I am sad that “Chemists” had largely been displaced by “Pharmacy” on signage the last time I was in the UK.)

Last edited 1 year ago by David Yetter
Sevo Slade
Sevo Slade
1 year ago

The true urgency is for the British people to escape the cultural death spiral of the nonsensical and divisive American-sourced wokeness they seem to love aping at every occasion, often outdoing their transatlantic cousins in their slavish and non-thinking adhesion to that imported politically correct dogma.

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
1 year ago

Hmm. Hmm, hmmm, hmmmmmmm . . . An interesting concept. Time for England to declare independence from America? There’s a thought!

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
1 year ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict Sandbrook won’t be doing any more TV work for the BBC. Asking “Why did thousands of people take to the streets in Britain about the killing of a single black man in Minneapolis” has certainly spotted his BBC TV career. Perhaps it’d already been written off as his work has proved popular and sometimes thought provoking, words that send a chill down the spine of any Beeboid.

Last edited 1 year ago by Nell Clover
Andrew Martin
Andrew Martin
1 year ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Or Make America Great Britain again. Those T Shirts must be worth some money now,

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
1 year ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict Sandbrook won’t be doing any more TV work for the BBC. Asking “Why did thousands of people take to the streets in Britain about the killing of a single black man in Minneapolis” has certainly spotted his BBC TV career. Perhaps it’d already been written off as his work has proved popular and sometimes thought provoking, words that send a chill down the spine of any Beeboid.

Last edited 1 year ago by Nell Clover
Andrew Martin
Andrew Martin
1 year ago
Reply to  Samuel Ross

Or Make America Great Britain again. Those T Shirts must be worth some money now,

Samuel Ross
Samuel Ross
1 year ago

Hmm. Hmm, hmmm, hmmmmmmm . . . An interesting concept. Time for England to declare independence from America? There’s a thought!

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago

Well said that man. I have lost interest in football (When schoolboys can no longer afford to pay for a ticket to watch a match out of their pocket money, then we have lost our souls)
But. I will stir myself one last time. Let Harry Kane put the yanks to the sword, and send them home to lament their fate on Twitter . Cry God for Harry, England and St George.

polidori redux
polidori redux
1 year ago

Well said that man. I have lost interest in football (When schoolboys can no longer afford to pay for a ticket to watch a match out of their pocket money, then we have lost our souls)
But. I will stir myself one last time. Let Harry Kane put the yanks to the sword, and send them home to lament their fate on Twitter . Cry God for Harry, England and St George.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

It’s interesting how American culture, which is permanently changeable and constantly being reborn, is embraced by so many outside America without even blinking: Levi jeans, student protest, hippies, stardom, BLM, self esteem, trans gender, feminism, self improvement, hate speech, hamburgers, fame, blondes, pneumatic breasts, abstract art, fake news, rock n roll, westerns, woke, comics, super-heroes, diversity, safe spaces, white privilege, Maccas …

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

The American Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

But they love it.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

No it is force fed to them and we have an elite who out of pure self interest are invested in it.
It is much the am with the likes of Google and Amazon. Set up to rape the world backed by American force

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago

For some reason I can only reply but not post a new comment, so I am kind of piggy-backing on your comment, please forgive the presumption.
There are two things that very often I have found:
1 the very people who spend most of their time saying how appalling America is are the ones who whole-heartedly adopt Americanisms in their speech and American cultural attitudes.
2 generally young people are the more enamoured of American cultural norms, and I’m going to say something that many may feel is insulting to our American friends, but I think that a lot of American culture is very infantilising, so that maybe why it appeals to the youthful more than the oldies.

Last edited 1 year ago by Linda Hutchinson
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago

You have no idea how relentless and omnipresent the world’s most sophiscated proganda machine is in the lives of young people. People over 40 really just don’t get it.
How much you think it affects them, double it, then double it again.
The 14-year olds lining up to defend Berlin in 1945 were less indoctrinated. That is the source of the anamourment.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago

You have no idea how relentless and omnipresent the world’s most sophiscated proganda machine is in the lives of young people. People over 40 really just don’t get it.
How much you think it affects them, double it, then double it again.
The 14-year olds lining up to defend Berlin in 1945 were less indoctrinated. That is the source of the anamourment.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

I feel like Mr Creosote I’ve been fed that much American propaganda, I honestly don’t know if I’m coming or going, I was about 13 when they went into Iraq, the onslaught hasn’t stopped since.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aczPDGC3f8U

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

It was no force that drove Russian youths under communism to seek out Levi jeans from visitors.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

No it was the image of the US sols by US propaganda. They were no after British tweed

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

No it was the image of the US sols by US propaganda. They were no after British tweed

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago

For some reason I can only reply but not post a new comment, so I am kind of piggy-backing on your comment, please forgive the presumption.
There are two things that very often I have found:
1 the very people who spend most of their time saying how appalling America is are the ones who whole-heartedly adopt Americanisms in their speech and American cultural attitudes.
2 generally young people are the more enamoured of American cultural norms, and I’m going to say something that many may feel is insulting to our American friends, but I think that a lot of American culture is very infantilising, so that maybe why it appeals to the youthful more than the oldies.

Last edited 1 year ago by Linda Hutchinson
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

I feel like Mr Creosote I’ve been fed that much American propaganda, I honestly don’t know if I’m coming or going, I was about 13 when they went into Iraq, the onslaught hasn’t stopped since.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aczPDGC3f8U

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

It was no force that drove Russian youths under communism to seek out Levi jeans from visitors.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

No it is force fed to them and we have an elite who out of pure self interest are invested in it.
It is much the am with the likes of Google and Amazon. Set up to rape the world backed by American force

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

But they love it.

Sheila Dowling
Sheila Dowling
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Trick or treat, Black Friday. ..

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Sheila Dowling

Yes more BLM nonsense

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago

Black Friday is the big sale shopping day after the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. It ostensibly kicks off the Christmas shopping season with all kinds of deals, but only if you get there first. People were getting seriously injured in stampedes trying to get to the big deal first. Fortunately it’s started to die down a bit, but it’s now followed by Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. They haven’t come up with a name for that Sunday yet, but I’m sure they will. It’s all marketing.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago

Black Friday is the big sale shopping day after the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. It ostensibly kicks off the Christmas shopping season with all kinds of deals, but only if you get there first. People were getting seriously injured in stampedes trying to get to the big deal first. Fortunately it’s started to die down a bit, but it’s now followed by Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday and Giving Tuesday. They haven’t come up with a name for that Sunday yet, but I’m sure they will. It’s all marketing.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Sheila Dowling

Yes more BLM nonsense

Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

I think you will find that the Pankhursts and others like them were British. Germaine Greer was an Australian lecturing at a British university. Americans did not invent feminism and British feminists are leading on the destruction of the ‘gender’ curse now.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Germaine grear was always loudly sworn about in our house by my dad, apparently she condoned castration or something, dad broke it down as she thinks it’s OK to go round chopping off a blokes gonads, followed by more swearing, if she’s a household name here it’s for all the wrong reasons as far as I know…..we entertained her because as a nation we used to be pretty good at having a thick skin to all that, noting that in a democracy any nutter can speak and is allowed to, and to maintain that we have to politely entertain them from time to time and trust in the sanity of the rest of the country not to take it too seriously. We need to embrace that to survive the ‘woke war’ for want of a better description.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Germaine grear was always loudly sworn about in our house by my dad, apparently she condoned castration or something, dad broke it down as she thinks it’s OK to go round chopping off a blokes gonads, followed by more swearing, if she’s a household name here it’s for all the wrong reasons as far as I know…..we entertained her because as a nation we used to be pretty good at having a thick skin to all that, noting that in a democracy any nutter can speak and is allowed to, and to maintain that we have to politely entertain them from time to time and trust in the sanity of the rest of the country not to take it too seriously. We need to embrace that to survive the ‘woke war’ for want of a better description.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

The American Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

Sheila Dowling
Sheila Dowling
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

Trick or treat, Black Friday. ..

Caroline Watson
Caroline Watson
1 year ago
Reply to  Brett H

I think you will find that the Pankhursts and others like them were British. Germaine Greer was an Australian lecturing at a British university. Americans did not invent feminism and British feminists are leading on the destruction of the ‘gender’ curse now.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago

It’s interesting how American culture, which is permanently changeable and constantly being reborn, is embraced by so many outside America without even blinking: Levi jeans, student protest, hippies, stardom, BLM, self esteem, trans gender, feminism, self improvement, hate speech, hamburgers, fame, blondes, pneumatic breasts, abstract art, fake news, rock n roll, westerns, woke, comics, super-heroes, diversity, safe spaces, white privilege, Maccas …

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
1 year ago

Globalisation pretty much equates to Americanisation. Once Neo-liberal economics took hold, the cultures of ALL nations were under threat in the name of diversity. Corporations, institutions and governments in the West have been particularly open to this assault on their nationhood. The result is the self colonisation of The West. China and Russia are the main resistance, but even they have been under huge pressure to submit and have done so culturally to some extent. America has adopted some Chinese government ideas. Similar tactics used against the Indigenous people of Canada, Australia etc are being repeated against the Western Cultures. Families destroyed. Children Institutionalised. Commonality attacked. As with the Indigenous people, there is a fightback. All stake are all the liberal rights fought for in the West. The world’s elites want the rest of us back in our box as has been the case for most of history.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Karl Juhnke

You forgot to credit Iran

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
1 year ago

Yeh. Hard fitting everything in during my 13 minute lunch time.

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
1 year ago

Yeh. Hard fitting everything in during my 13 minute lunch time.

Ibn Sina
Ibn Sina
1 year ago
Reply to  Karl Juhnke

I think that China’s the main beneficiary of globalisation. All that tech they’ve managed to steal and all the manufacturing capability in the west lost to them.

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
1 year ago
Reply to  Ibn Sina

I have not noticed the kids here (Australia) speaking Chinese as yet, except the Chinese. America thought the Chinese were going to cave in to everything American rather than just pop culture, but the CCP (CFP would be a better description) did things thier way whilst America continued to place everything China wanted in their lap due to the cheap labour (Neo-liberal economics) available. The Democrats and Labor (Labour) Party here in Australia seem ready to team up with China to some extent to continue the outdated Neo-liberal dream at the expense of their nations. Short term gain for long term pain appears to be the motto. So we might be speaking Chinese after selling the joint.

Last edited 1 year ago by Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
1 year ago
Reply to  Ibn Sina

I have not noticed the kids here (Australia) speaking Chinese as yet, except the Chinese. America thought the Chinese were going to cave in to everything American rather than just pop culture, but the CCP (CFP would be a better description) did things thier way whilst America continued to place everything China wanted in their lap due to the cheap labour (Neo-liberal economics) available. The Democrats and Labor (Labour) Party here in Australia seem ready to team up with China to some extent to continue the outdated Neo-liberal dream at the expense of their nations. Short term gain for long term pain appears to be the motto. So we might be speaking Chinese after selling the joint.

Last edited 1 year ago by Karl Juhnke
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Karl Juhnke

You forgot to credit Iran

Ibn Sina
Ibn Sina
1 year ago
Reply to  Karl Juhnke

I think that China’s the main beneficiary of globalisation. All that tech they’ve managed to steal and all the manufacturing capability in the west lost to them.

Karl Juhnke
Karl Juhnke
1 year ago

Globalisation pretty much equates to Americanisation. Once Neo-liberal economics took hold, the cultures of ALL nations were under threat in the name of diversity. Corporations, institutions and governments in the West have been particularly open to this assault on their nationhood. The result is the self colonisation of The West. China and Russia are the main resistance, but even they have been under huge pressure to submit and have done so culturally to some extent. America has adopted some Chinese government ideas. Similar tactics used against the Indigenous people of Canada, Australia etc are being repeated against the Western Cultures. Families destroyed. Children Institutionalised. Commonality attacked. As with the Indigenous people, there is a fightback. All stake are all the liberal rights fought for in the West. The world’s elites want the rest of us back in our box as has been the case for most of history.

Brendan Ross
Brendan Ross
1 year ago

The World Cup is one of the few areas left where the United States is subjected to globally-televised humiliation (in terms of a stark disparity between its modest athletic prowess in this particular sport, on the one hand, and its generally obnoxious global hyperpower status on the other) on a regular basis, so it should be savored, really … even by Americans. Sadly, despite the increased profile of “soccer” in the US, most of my countrymen couldn’t care less about the World cup, the “USMNT” or “soccer” — not really, anyway. So the sense of humiliation that they should feel — really a kind of useful humbling — is pretty much absent and it just washes over a largely oblivious population. In fact, in the US, interest in this sport is generally divided along the same “culture war” dividing line as everything else in the US, with most of the interest coming from one side in that divide — so even as a source of national unity (which this event seems to foster in other countries), the World Cup fails to deliver in the US, where it just provides another vector along which the dysfunctional social polarization is reified.

Capitalist Roader
Capitalist Roader
1 year ago
Reply to  Brendan Ross

Soccer looks like Irish dancing to me. You can’t use your hands.

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago

In fairness, unless you’re very drunk, you shouldn’t need your hands to be able to dance. See tap dancing also.  

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

But it wasn’t against the “rules” to include hand and arm movements in tap dance. Riverdance and Lord of the Rings has made it a bit more acceptable in Irish dance. I still love seeing Flatley coming out that first time at Eurovision doing it all.
Ballet very much needs hands and arms for the various poses.

Last edited 1 year ago by Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

But it wasn’t against the “rules” to include hand and arm movements in tap dance. Riverdance and Lord of the Rings has made it a bit more acceptable in Irish dance. I still love seeing Flatley coming out that first time at Eurovision doing it all.
Ballet very much needs hands and arms for the various poses.

Last edited 1 year ago by Diane Merriam
Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago

In fairness, unless you’re very drunk, you shouldn’t need your hands to be able to dance. See tap dancing also.  

Capitalist Roader
Capitalist Roader
1 year ago
Reply to  Brendan Ross

Soccer looks like Irish dancing to me. You can’t use your hands.

Brendan Ross
Brendan Ross
1 year ago

The World Cup is one of the few areas left where the United States is subjected to globally-televised humiliation (in terms of a stark disparity between its modest athletic prowess in this particular sport, on the one hand, and its generally obnoxious global hyperpower status on the other) on a regular basis, so it should be savored, really … even by Americans. Sadly, despite the increased profile of “soccer” in the US, most of my countrymen couldn’t care less about the World cup, the “USMNT” or “soccer” — not really, anyway. So the sense of humiliation that they should feel — really a kind of useful humbling — is pretty much absent and it just washes over a largely oblivious population. In fact, in the US, interest in this sport is generally divided along the same “culture war” dividing line as everything else in the US, with most of the interest coming from one side in that divide — so even as a source of national unity (which this event seems to foster in other countries), the World Cup fails to deliver in the US, where it just provides another vector along which the dysfunctional social polarization is reified.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Too late, after the disgrace of Iraq where Bush & Blair behaved like HITLER, (and should have been ‘hanged’ accordingly),we are forever tarnished.
Consummatum est!

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Mr Stanhope, we mustn’t give hope, even if it seems impossible, what happened to that spirit that spawned the likes of Sir David Stirling and Sir Ranulf Fiennes. That’s the spirit we need! It can be done 🙂

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Or as the Duke of Wellington put it at Waterloo:
“Up Guards and at ‘em! “

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

Or as the Duke of Wellington put it at Waterloo:
“Up Guards and at ‘em! “

Bob Smalser
Bob Smalser
1 year ago

I happened to be there all through the 1990’s. Odd how conveniently everyone forgets Saddam had two genocides going on at once. Both Kurds and Marsh Arabs.

Bob Pugh
Bob Pugh
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

He didn’t treat the Kuwaities too kindly either.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

Good job we treated the Irish so kindly otherwise following your logic, the US could have nuked us!

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

Good job we treated the Irish so kindly otherwise following your logic, the US could have nuked us!

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

He certainly did and it was pretty well known, but that did NOT justify a completely unprovoked attack on an innocent country ,and the subsequent slaughter of perhaps 500,000.

Hitler had more justification for his attack on both Poland and Czechoslovakia, than Bush & Blair did for theirs on Iraq.
They should both face a Capital charge, no ifs no buts!

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago

“Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
Palmerston’s aphorism is good advice for anyone, regardless of what country they’re from.
You’re right about Iraq of course; but Iraq is being used by appeasers as a whataboutery excuse for current appeasement of the execrable Putin.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

I completely agree, it’s pathetic how the ‘Rape of Iraq’ is now been used by the bed-wetting spastics to exculpate Putin and his pygmies!

Palmerston’s aphorism should be better known. I tend to use when describing the so-called ‘special relationship’ to some misguided souls who sincerely believe we actually have one with the USA!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank McCusker

I completely agree, it’s pathetic how the ‘Rape of Iraq’ is now been used by the bed-wetting spastics to exculpate Putin and his pygmies!

Palmerston’s aphorism should be better known. I tend to use when describing the so-called ‘special relationship’ to some misguided souls who sincerely believe we actually have one with the USA!

Frank McCusker
Frank McCusker
1 year ago

“Therefore I say that it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”
Palmerston’s aphorism is good advice for anyone, regardless of what country they’re from.
You’re right about Iraq of course; but Iraq is being used by appeasers as a whataboutery excuse for current appeasement of the execrable Putin.

Alex Swift
Alex Swift
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

I was there too during that period. The Yanks really let down the Iraquis who had risen up in support of the coalition. No wonder the dont trust us.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

He didn’t have those WMDs though did he? And it was supposedly Saudis that were in the planes that hit the towers. So the reasons the US sold to us for that invasion were lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Unjustified on the reasons they gave us. Blair forced it through parliament even after one of the largest peace demonstrations this country has ever mustered. Shi**ing all over our democratic institutions, encouraged by Americans. Footballs starting I must stop…….

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

It was a strategic imperative that Saddam ‘Insane’ be destroyed because the Israelis had convinced themselves that he was an existential threat who thought he was a new ‘Saladin’.

Apparently if ‘we’ hadn’t destroyed him, they were going to NUKE him!

Such is the power of ‘Kosher Nostra’.

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

I did not know that, that’s mental!

On the football front, very satisfying hearing the chants of usa drowned out by our national anthem I have to say, England fans are doing a good job, we better get our arses in gear now though….
Well we didn’t loose. That’s about all I can say, I’m going to mix gin into my beer.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

surely its arses in queer now?

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Whatever their arses were in last night, they needed a slap.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Whatever their arses were in last night, they needed a slap.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

surely its arses in queer now?

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

I did not know that, that’s mental!

On the football front, very satisfying hearing the chants of usa drowned out by our national anthem I have to say, England fans are doing a good job, we better get our arses in gear now though….
Well we didn’t loose. That’s about all I can say, I’m going to mix gin into my beer.

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  B Emery

It was a strategic imperative that Saddam ‘Insane’ be destroyed because the Israelis had convinced themselves that he was an existential threat who thought he was a new ‘Saladin’.

Apparently if ‘we’ hadn’t destroyed him, they were going to NUKE him!

Such is the power of ‘Kosher Nostra’.

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
Bob Pugh
Bob Pugh
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

He didn’t treat the Kuwaities too kindly either.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

He certainly did and it was pretty well known, but that did NOT justify a completely unprovoked attack on an innocent country ,and the subsequent slaughter of perhaps 500,000.

Hitler had more justification for his attack on both Poland and Czechoslovakia, than Bush & Blair did for theirs on Iraq.
They should both face a Capital charge, no ifs no buts!

Last edited 1 year ago by CHARLES STANHOPE
Alex Swift
Alex Swift
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

I was there too during that period. The Yanks really let down the Iraquis who had risen up in support of the coalition. No wonder the dont trust us.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Smalser

He didn’t have those WMDs though did he? And it was supposedly Saudis that were in the planes that hit the towers. So the reasons the US sold to us for that invasion were lies. Lies. Lies. Lies. Unjustified on the reasons they gave us. Blair forced it through parliament even after one of the largest peace demonstrations this country has ever mustered. Shi**ing all over our democratic institutions, encouraged by Americans. Footballs starting I must stop…….

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

Mr Stanhope, we mustn’t give hope, even if it seems impossible, what happened to that spirit that spawned the likes of Sir David Stirling and Sir Ranulf Fiennes. That’s the spirit we need! It can be done 🙂

Bob Smalser
Bob Smalser
1 year ago

I happened to be there all through the 1990’s. Odd how conveniently everyone forgets Saddam had two genocides going on at once. Both Kurds and Marsh Arabs.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago

Too late, after the disgrace of Iraq where Bush & Blair behaved like HITLER, (and should have been ‘hanged’ accordingly),we are forever tarnished.
Consummatum est!

Jorge Espinha
Jorge Espinha
1 year ago

Most British I have encountered are the self hating type. I advise Americans and British alike to listen to James Caan ‘s monologue at the end of Dogville (Lars Von Tiers). Your constant self flagelating is a sign of hubris, by doing it you treat the “other ” with condescension. Which is superiority with good manners. I’m a big admirer of America and Britain. We owe you so much.
Most of the problems described by the author were created by armies of teachers, social workers and public intelectuals that for decades spread anti western hate. I disagree with the author when he calls the American academics half crazed. They are fully crazy.

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Jorge Espinha

Well said Sir, and Rule Britannia!

CHARLES STANHOPE
CHARLES STANHOPE
1 year ago
Reply to  Jorge Espinha

Well said Sir, and Rule Britannia!

Jorge Espinha
Jorge Espinha
1 year ago

Most British I have encountered are the self hating type. I advise Americans and British alike to listen to James Caan ‘s monologue at the end of Dogville (Lars Von Tiers). Your constant self flagelating is a sign of hubris, by doing it you treat the “other ” with condescension. Which is superiority with good manners. I’m a big admirer of America and Britain. We owe you so much.
Most of the problems described by the author were created by armies of teachers, social workers and public intelectuals that for decades spread anti western hate. I disagree with the author when he calls the American academics half crazed. They are fully crazy.

Richard Spicer
Richard Spicer
1 year ago

The list of regrettable Americanisms we are absorbing is depressingly long. Why do we not resist this?’ Mac n cheese’ is pretty awful but my least favoutite currently is using ‘surgeries’ when you mean ‘operations’. Our GPs work in surgeries whereas American ones work from an ‘office’ so it completely distorts the meaning.

Last edited 1 year ago by Richard Spicer
Enjay Tennant
Enjay Tennant
1 year ago
Reply to  Richard Spicer

And I was rather gobsmacked recently when the today prog used the American pronunciation for ‘route’ a couple of times.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Enjay Tennant

We tend to use the “r oot” pronunciation when it’s part of a highway name (well, we used to before it was all interstates) and ” “r out” when talking about trip planning.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Enjay Tennant

We tend to use the “r oot” pronunciation when it’s part of a highway name (well, we used to before it was all interstates) and ” “r out” when talking about trip planning.

Enjay Tennant
Enjay Tennant
1 year ago
Reply to  Richard Spicer

And I was rather gobsmacked recently when the today prog used the American pronunciation for ‘route’ a couple of times.

Richard Spicer
Richard Spicer
1 year ago

The list of regrettable Americanisms we are absorbing is depressingly long. Why do we not resist this?’ Mac n cheese’ is pretty awful but my least favoutite currently is using ‘surgeries’ when you mean ‘operations’. Our GPs work in surgeries whereas American ones work from an ‘office’ so it completely distorts the meaning.

Last edited 1 year ago by Richard Spicer
Richard 0
Richard 0
1 year ago

Keep it coming, DS. Wonderfully insightful and entertaining writing, as always.

Richard 0
Richard 0
1 year ago

Keep it coming, DS. Wonderfully insightful and entertaining writing, as always.

Fred Paul
Fred Paul
1 year ago

Oh, for Pete’s sake, get over it.
Early American history is Canadian history. When an American is asked how many colonies existed before the American War of Independence ( it wasn’t a revolution by any means), they quote thirteen. Even forgetting Maine (used as a buffer state by the British), and Vermont (fighting a land dispute with the New York colony). There was Newfoundland, who gave up most of its sons in the Great War, remember? And Quebec (Ontario), who remained loyal to Great Britain and the UK in the Battle of Quebec 1774 against the Americans, and again in the War of 1812, when the British were tied up in another war, the scant British regulars, Canadian militia and fencibles, Quebecois, First Nations (Indians), American immigrants (honest) fought off 11 invasions attempts to capture Canada. Hudson’s Bay Charter and Ruperts Land, Nova Scotia (New Brunswick), Prince Edward Island, Burmuda, East and West Florida. No, not 13… more like 21.
In World War I… that country that survived the War of 1812 and other threats (American Civil War) came to Britain’s aid. I’ll make this short, Australia and Canada developed battle tactics and logistics far superior to any other country. Any country. Canada’s use of air support, armour, artillery and specialized and fully manned engineering battalion, and training so that each man knew the objective and could replace officers was later used by the Germans in WWII called Blitzkrieg, Google Canada’s 100 days offensive Wik. What the Canadians did in those last 100 days, and with 100,000, put the Americans 1,000,000 to shame. That corps of four heavy divisions took on and defeated 47 German divisions in those last 100 days, ending the war in 1918 instead of the expected 1919. To the very end, when the Canadians took Mons, where the British fought and lost its first battle. Australia had to pull off halfway through because of the poorly trained and inexperienced Americans who bit off more than they could chew, resulting in heavy losses for the Australians. But who knows?
There was a hint about the Suez…. that was Prime Minister Pearson’s doing. As a UN representative for Canada, he proposed an armed intervention force to separate the combatants in the Suez Canal fiasco. The UN appointed Canada to take that lead. Canada was looked upon by Britain as siding with the Americans, who were perfectly happy with the events that favoured them. He got the Nobel for that. But who knows?
No country in the world knows the Americans better than the Canadians. We have survived, come hell and high water, everything America could throw at us. Canada declared war on Japan one day earlier than the Yanks and lost two regiments in the Battle of Hong Kong. Who knows? Who knows that the existence of the UK today lies with Canada and Halifax, where convoys left for the mother country, defying German wolf packs while the Americans kept pilling up their Isolationist acts? Every British bomber crew had at least one Canadian. And as shock troops, they took the point with the British on her flanks on D-Day. The second hardest beach was Juno. And true to their reputation, they made the most gains that day of all the allies. But who gets the credit in Holywood movies?
Right up to President Trump, who did his best to pull Canada to her knees. We lost an airliner manufacturing sector to him, but we survived. We cancelled an order for F18 fighter jet replacements, and Australia gave us their F18s. On a humorous note, we have illegal immigrants crossing the US border into Canada and seriously considering building a wall and having the Americans pay for it.
We had to survive years of American culture bombardment above and beyond the petty things mentioned in this well-written essay. My compliments to you, Mr. Sandbrook. In the words of my country’s official language, of which we have two, Vous êtes une bande de pleurnichards à propos de la guerre culturelle américaine. Surmonter le grief.

PS: corrected spelling. You know… US spelling, Canadian spelling? Whatever.

Last edited 1 year ago by Fred Paul
Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Fred Paul

Canada, the retarded giant on the doorstep.

Terry M
Terry M
1 year ago
Reply to  Fred Paul

Canada, the retarded giant on the doorstep.

Fred Paul
Fred Paul
1 year ago

Oh, for Pete’s sake, get over it.
Early American history is Canadian history. When an American is asked how many colonies existed before the American War of Independence ( it wasn’t a revolution by any means), they quote thirteen. Even forgetting Maine (used as a buffer state by the British), and Vermont (fighting a land dispute with the New York colony). There was Newfoundland, who gave up most of its sons in the Great War, remember? And Quebec (Ontario), who remained loyal to Great Britain and the UK in the Battle of Quebec 1774 against the Americans, and again in the War of 1812, when the British were tied up in another war, the scant British regulars, Canadian militia and fencibles, Quebecois, First Nations (Indians), American immigrants (honest) fought off 11 invasions attempts to capture Canada. Hudson’s Bay Charter and Ruperts Land, Nova Scotia (New Brunswick), Prince Edward Island, Burmuda, East and West Florida. No, not 13… more like 21.
In World War I… that country that survived the War of 1812 and other threats (American Civil War) came to Britain’s aid. I’ll make this short, Australia and Canada developed battle tactics and logistics far superior to any other country. Any country. Canada’s use of air support, armour, artillery and specialized and fully manned engineering battalion, and training so that each man knew the objective and could replace officers was later used by the Germans in WWII called Blitzkrieg, Google Canada’s 100 days offensive Wik. What the Canadians did in those last 100 days, and with 100,000, put the Americans 1,000,000 to shame. That corps of four heavy divisions took on and defeated 47 German divisions in those last 100 days, ending the war in 1918 instead of the expected 1919. To the very end, when the Canadians took Mons, where the British fought and lost its first battle. Australia had to pull off halfway through because of the poorly trained and inexperienced Americans who bit off more than they could chew, resulting in heavy losses for the Australians. But who knows?
There was a hint about the Suez…. that was Prime Minister Pearson’s doing. As a UN representative for Canada, he proposed an armed intervention force to separate the combatants in the Suez Canal fiasco. The UN appointed Canada to take that lead. Canada was looked upon by Britain as siding with the Americans, who were perfectly happy with the events that favoured them. He got the Nobel for that. But who knows?
No country in the world knows the Americans better than the Canadians. We have survived, come hell and high water, everything America could throw at us. Canada declared war on Japan one day earlier than the Yanks and lost two regiments in the Battle of Hong Kong. Who knows? Who knows that the existence of the UK today lies with Canada and Halifax, where convoys left for the mother country, defying German wolf packs while the Americans kept pilling up their Isolationist acts? Every British bomber crew had at least one Canadian. And as shock troops, they took the point with the British on her flanks on D-Day. The second hardest beach was Juno. And true to their reputation, they made the most gains that day of all the allies. But who gets the credit in Holywood movies?
Right up to President Trump, who did his best to pull Canada to her knees. We lost an airliner manufacturing sector to him, but we survived. We cancelled an order for F18 fighter jet replacements, and Australia gave us their F18s. On a humorous note, we have illegal immigrants crossing the US border into Canada and seriously considering building a wall and having the Americans pay for it.
We had to survive years of American culture bombardment above and beyond the petty things mentioned in this well-written essay. My compliments to you, Mr. Sandbrook. In the words of my country’s official language, of which we have two, Vous êtes une bande de pleurnichards à propos de la guerre culturelle américaine. Surmonter le grief.

PS: corrected spelling. You know… US spelling, Canadian spelling? Whatever.

Last edited 1 year ago by Fred Paul
Aidan Barrett
Aidan Barrett
1 year ago

Don’t forget Monty Python!

Japan underwent a similar cycle with a radical Americanization after WWII followed by the development of its own highly distinctive culture between the 1960s and the 1990s.

John 0
John 0
1 year ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

America was doing Richad Pryor at the time of Monty Python as I recall, not good.
Yes, BBC is going down a bad road like much of mainstream media.

John 0
John 0
1 year ago
Reply to  Aidan Barrett

America was doing Richad Pryor at the time of Monty Python as I recall, not good.
Yes, BBC is going down a bad road like much of mainstream media.

Aidan Barrett
Aidan Barrett
1 year ago

Don’t forget Monty Python!

Japan underwent a similar cycle with a radical Americanization after WWII followed by the development of its own highly distinctive culture between the 1960s and the 1990s.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
1 year ago

There are two more words other than “cliché” that have become adjectives: “cringe” has also become an adjective only (replacing “cringeworthy”), and “fun” has completely lost its second use as a mass noun, so that it is now ONLY an adjective. Therefore fun is not something you have, it can only function as a descriptor for something. Thus: “so cringe” and “so fun”.

Bob Pugh
Bob Pugh
1 year ago
Reply to  Maurice Austin

…. and don’t get me started on nucular, sodar (solder) and aluminum.

Wim de Vriend
Wim de Vriend
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

Also avoid going to the Libary. Specially in Febyary.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Wim de Vriend

Only in the South. The deep South. The rest of us use library and February, although most of us still have the silent “r”.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Wim de Vriend

Only in the South. The deep South. The rest of us use library and February, although most of us still have the silent “r”.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

It’s the “solder” one that I find peculiar; before I saw it written I assumed the Americans spelt it “sodar”. They spell and pronounce aluminium differently, that’s ok by me, I must confess that I have not heard “nucular”, though.

Oliver Nicholson
Oliver Nicholson
1 year ago

I agree about the others, but I thought that solder with the silent ‘l’ was a survival of earlier English, along the lines of golf and wolf with the silent ‘l’.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
1 year ago

Yes, watching clips on HOW to “sodar” (It’s a bit of a long story) alerted me to that one. Shocked me. I realise it may be archaic like “golf” or “wolf” (or even the original Norwegian “shee” to pronounce “ski”), but the UK (and everyone else like us Australians) have naturalised it to fit modern English speech patterns and standard pronunciation of consonants.
I’m comfortable with change, but only change I’m comfortable with 🙂

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago

Golf and wolf with a silent “l”? I’ve never heard either of those, although the affectionate term for several Irish Wolfhounds is “wuffies” with no “l”.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
1 year ago

Yes, watching clips on HOW to “sodar” (It’s a bit of a long story) alerted me to that one. Shocked me. I realise it may be archaic like “golf” or “wolf” (or even the original Norwegian “shee” to pronounce “ski”), but the UK (and everyone else like us Australians) have naturalised it to fit modern English speech patterns and standard pronunciation of consonants.
I’m comfortable with change, but only change I’m comfortable with 🙂

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago

Golf and wolf with a silent “l”? I’ve never heard either of those, although the affectionate term for several Irish Wolfhounds is “wuffies” with no “l”.

Alex Swift
Alex Swift
1 year ago

Dont get me going about ‘erbs. Its HERBS………..!!!

anthony henderson
anthony henderson
1 year ago
Reply to  Alex Swift

And maths, not math.

anthony henderson
anthony henderson
1 year ago
Reply to  Alex Swift

And maths, not math.

Wim de Vriend
Wim de Vriend
1 year ago

“Nucular” was started by president Eisenhower, and large parts of the population followed his bad example.

Oliver Nicholson
Oliver Nicholson
1 year ago

I agree about the others, but I thought that solder with the silent ‘l’ was a survival of earlier English, along the lines of golf and wolf with the silent ‘l’.

Alex Swift
Alex Swift
1 year ago

Dont get me going about ‘erbs. Its HERBS………..!!!

Wim de Vriend
Wim de Vriend
1 year ago

“Nucular” was started by president Eisenhower, and large parts of the population followed his bad example.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

I’ve heard nucular (sticking a “u” in that isn’t there). I’ve used sawder (no “l”). But as to aluminum, there’s only one “i” in it. It sounds weird to hear it with an extra syllable and an “i” added where it isn’t.

Wim de Vriend
Wim de Vriend
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

Also avoid going to the Libary. Specially in Febyary.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

It’s the “solder” one that I find peculiar; before I saw it written I assumed the Americans spelt it “sodar”. They spell and pronounce aluminium differently, that’s ok by me, I must confess that I have not heard “nucular”, though.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Bob Pugh

I’ve heard nucular (sticking a “u” in that isn’t there). I’ve used sawder (no “l”). But as to aluminum, there’s only one “i” in it. It sounds weird to hear it with an extra syllable and an “i” added where it isn’t.

Bob Pugh
Bob Pugh
1 year ago
Reply to  Maurice Austin

…. and don’t get me started on nucular, sodar (solder) and aluminum.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
1 year ago

There are two more words other than “cliché” that have become adjectives: “cringe” has also become an adjective only (replacing “cringeworthy”), and “fun” has completely lost its second use as a mass noun, so that it is now ONLY an adjective. Therefore fun is not something you have, it can only function as a descriptor for something. Thus: “so cringe” and “so fun”.

James Kirk
James Kirk
1 year ago

I’ve met Americans who both love and ‘get’ Monty Python, British Rock bands and classic British cars, which are changing hands for ridiculous sums, and there’s always James Bond and the SAS.
I meet Brits who like none of those things and think mobile phones are gadgets. I prefer Burger King to MacDonalds but wish BK did milk shakes. Chicken wings à la Buffalo are to die for as are American muscle cars.
Football’s only reason to exist is to try to beat Germany, Italy and Brazil. The Yanks don’t ‘get’ soccer and nor do millions of Brits, especially the sheer stupidity of Qatar.

Fred Paul
Fred Paul
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Hmmmm a Montrealer.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

An American who loves all of those things … but … my son played soccer. And I don’t care how many other movies came out, to me there was only one real James Bond … the one played by Sean Connery.
We already had football (American football) going before soccer started showing up so we couldn’t exactly change the name of the older sport for the sake of a new one.

Fred Paul
Fred Paul
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

Hmmmm a Montrealer.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  James Kirk

An American who loves all of those things … but … my son played soccer. And I don’t care how many other movies came out, to me there was only one real James Bond … the one played by Sean Connery.
We already had football (American football) going before soccer started showing up so we couldn’t exactly change the name of the older sport for the sake of a new one.

James Kirk
James Kirk
1 year ago

I’ve met Americans who both love and ‘get’ Monty Python, British Rock bands and classic British cars, which are changing hands for ridiculous sums, and there’s always James Bond and the SAS.
I meet Brits who like none of those things and think mobile phones are gadgets. I prefer Burger King to MacDonalds but wish BK did milk shakes. Chicken wings à la Buffalo are to die for as are American muscle cars.
Football’s only reason to exist is to try to beat Germany, Italy and Brazil. The Yanks don’t ‘get’ soccer and nor do millions of Brits, especially the sheer stupidity of Qatar.

Alex Swift
Alex Swift
1 year ago

I spent some time working with the US Forces in the Gulf. During that time I learned just how powerful UK culture was and ‘Python’ blazed the trail.
While chatting to our US colleagues one of the Brits remarked that he was being posted to ‘The Ministry’ on his return to the UK. ‘The Ministry?’ queried our USAF oppo…..yes, came the reply..The Ministry of Silly Walks…The Yanks were stunned because they all seemed to know their Monty Python and were delighted to know that it was a real place..It made me realise that we were all separated by a common sense of humour.

Alex Swift
Alex Swift
1 year ago

I spent some time working with the US Forces in the Gulf. During that time I learned just how powerful UK culture was and ‘Python’ blazed the trail.
While chatting to our US colleagues one of the Brits remarked that he was being posted to ‘The Ministry’ on his return to the UK. ‘The Ministry?’ queried our USAF oppo…..yes, came the reply..The Ministry of Silly Walks…The Yanks were stunned because they all seemed to know their Monty Python and were delighted to know that it was a real place..It made me realise that we were all separated by a common sense of humour.

John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago

It’s quite amusing, but I can’t help think that it’s mostly complaining about nothing. The fact is that Americans are on average almost twice as wealthy as Britons mainly as a result of reducing the cost of everything to as low as possible, and consequently there are large advantages for Britons in accessing the many things America has to offer. Nobody’s forced, so what’s the problem?

As an example, we gladly eat burgers, hot dogs, BBQ food and the many other forms of American cuisine, we love American TV, and we are avid consumers of American technology goods and services. We do not watch baseball or the wholly ludicrous game that American insist on calling football, we don’t buy American cars, and we find it odd and hilarious that Americans seem to revere the Royal Family itself while in any other conversation proudly asserting republican principles.

Just because the UK is an extremely junior partner in the global Anglosphere means nothing: we’re a small country which emphatically doesn’t actually want to be any bigger than we are, we are proud of the many quirks which Americans regard as eccentric at best, and we are smaller than other nations which have no cultural reach into the UK at all and we don’t care. The success of American culture in the UK is possible only because it’s so similar to our own in most important respects, and because we are free to demand it and do so.

So again I ask you, what’s the problem?

Last edited 1 year ago by John Riordan
R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  John Riordan

The destruction of one culture at the hands of another culture is inherently a bad thing from the perspective of an imperialist. I thought in 2022 we were all meant to see every culture as equal?

John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

Who’s the imperialist?

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
1 year ago
Reply to  John Riordan

I suspect R W might mean a generalised, composite late British Empire Imperialist such as Sir Alan Burns. There was a tendency to want to help run the colonies efficiently and fairly, reduce poverty, increase good government, end slavery etc, but leave the rest of the native culture and structures alone.

Maurice Austin
Maurice Austin
1 year ago
Reply to  John Riordan

I suspect R W might mean a generalised, composite late British Empire Imperialist such as Sir Alan Burns. There was a tendency to want to help run the colonies efficiently and fairly, reduce poverty, increase good government, end slavery etc, but leave the rest of the native culture and structures alone.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

So the Nazi culture was equal to British culture? I don’t think so.

John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

Who’s the imperialist?

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

So the Nazi culture was equal to British culture? I don’t think so.

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  John Riordan

My problem is America exporting its political movements and narratives, just stop oil for example is one I live to give look up the CEF, main funding for many of these movements, coming from LA. That is being forced on us, they threw £500,000 at just stop oil uk and managed to muster a whole 26 activists one day, but managed to bring central London to a standstill, two people managed to bring the m25 to a stand still. I wouldn’t even be so angry but then on the website they like to brag about the press hits they have generated dispite their lack of on the ground support and Getty oil heiress no less is a prominent donor. This isn’t on, blm was also funded by American millionaires see Cadence owens the greatest lie ever sold. This is undermining genuine mass protest movements. It is aggressive funding as far as I can see aimed at nothing more than deliberately causing disruption and distraction, causing extreme polarisation.
My other problem is America gearing up to China, if it all goes down over Taiwan it will cause carnage to global shipping. Very bad. American corporations have got rich operating cheap from China, now they have the audacity to turn around and tell the rest of us, also reliant on China, to stop dealing with them.
Another problem I have is their interference in the brexit debate, saying we would be at the back of a queue for a trade deal, Iraq was based on lies, Afghanistan was disgraceful, our boys, our SAS, had to go out into that shit storm and try to get people back, they are the home of all the weird woke debate that’s exploded out of nowhere, their media and celebrities are increasingly insane, have you seen Britney these days? I’ve discovered one thing about myself posting on here, I’ve had enough America thank you. Think they should dial it down a bit, in my humble opinion.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  John Riordan

The destruction of one culture at the hands of another culture is inherently a bad thing from the perspective of an imperialist. I thought in 2022 we were all meant to see every culture as equal?

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  John Riordan

My problem is America exporting its political movements and narratives, just stop oil for example is one I live to give look up the CEF, main funding for many of these movements, coming from LA. That is being forced on us, they threw £500,000 at just stop oil uk and managed to muster a whole 26 activists one day, but managed to bring central London to a standstill, two people managed to bring the m25 to a stand still. I wouldn’t even be so angry but then on the website they like to brag about the press hits they have generated dispite their lack of on the ground support and Getty oil heiress no less is a prominent donor. This isn’t on, blm was also funded by American millionaires see Cadence owens the greatest lie ever sold. This is undermining genuine mass protest movements. It is aggressive funding as far as I can see aimed at nothing more than deliberately causing disruption and distraction, causing extreme polarisation.
My other problem is America gearing up to China, if it all goes down over Taiwan it will cause carnage to global shipping. Very bad. American corporations have got rich operating cheap from China, now they have the audacity to turn around and tell the rest of us, also reliant on China, to stop dealing with them.
Another problem I have is their interference in the brexit debate, saying we would be at the back of a queue for a trade deal, Iraq was based on lies, Afghanistan was disgraceful, our boys, our SAS, had to go out into that shit storm and try to get people back, they are the home of all the weird woke debate that’s exploded out of nowhere, their media and celebrities are increasingly insane, have you seen Britney these days? I’ve discovered one thing about myself posting on here, I’ve had enough America thank you. Think they should dial it down a bit, in my humble opinion.

John Riordan
John Riordan
1 year ago

It’s quite amusing, but I can’t help think that it’s mostly complaining about nothing. The fact is that Americans are on average almost twice as wealthy as Britons mainly as a result of reducing the cost of everything to as low as possible, and consequently there are large advantages for Britons in accessing the many things America has to offer. Nobody’s forced, so what’s the problem?

As an example, we gladly eat burgers, hot dogs, BBQ food and the many other forms of American cuisine, we love American TV, and we are avid consumers of American technology goods and services. We do not watch baseball or the wholly ludicrous game that American insist on calling football, we don’t buy American cars, and we find it odd and hilarious that Americans seem to revere the Royal Family itself while in any other conversation proudly asserting republican principles.

Just because the UK is an extremely junior partner in the global Anglosphere means nothing: we’re a small country which emphatically doesn’t actually want to be any bigger than we are, we are proud of the many quirks which Americans regard as eccentric at best, and we are smaller than other nations which have no cultural reach into the UK at all and we don’t care. The success of American culture in the UK is possible only because it’s so similar to our own in most important respects, and because we are free to demand it and do so.

So again I ask you, what’s the problem?

Last edited 1 year ago by John Riordan
Tony Sandy
Tony Sandy
1 year ago

It’s not really about the Americanisation of the UK but the infantilism occurring in America and creeping over here. A cowboy in a Louis Theroux documentary lamented the growing immaturity of the young in his own country (easy come, easy go). Brad Pitt’s movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, shows where this recidivism is going.

Europe and especially Britain is slow, careful and considerate, compared to the USA and its fast food, quickie divorces and rush to get nowhere in particular plus a language broken down into single words or abbreviations (fast minds as conspiracy theorists and jumping to mindless conclusions). This pursuit of youth is seen in botox, face lifts etc. Even in America you had an election choice between Biden and Trump or old age and impetuous youth. It is no wonder that the young are confused about their identity when they are dumping all sense of history.

Tony Sandy
Tony Sandy
1 year ago

It’s not really about the Americanisation of the UK but the infantilism occurring in America and creeping over here. A cowboy in a Louis Theroux documentary lamented the growing immaturity of the young in his own country (easy come, easy go). Brad Pitt’s movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, shows where this recidivism is going.

Europe and especially Britain is slow, careful and considerate, compared to the USA and its fast food, quickie divorces and rush to get nowhere in particular plus a language broken down into single words or abbreviations (fast minds as conspiracy theorists and jumping to mindless conclusions). This pursuit of youth is seen in botox, face lifts etc. Even in America you had an election choice between Biden and Trump or old age and impetuous youth. It is no wonder that the young are confused about their identity when they are dumping all sense of history.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago

Even on a jokey article about a match at the World Cup you can’t resist peddling your nonsense?

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

It’s quite cheering really – I think of this fellow as the eccentric one at Hyde Park Corner decades ago with a placard about proteins and hygienic living. Only this time with a US accent.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Is it nonsense? I’ve yet to see anyone actually try and debunk it. In any event, Carthago delenda est.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

Yes, it is nonsense. Do some more reading.

Brett H
Brett H
1 year ago
Reply to  R Wright

Yes, it is nonsense. Do some more reading.

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

It’s quite cheering really – I think of this fellow as the eccentric one at Hyde Park Corner decades ago with a placard about proteins and hygienic living. Only this time with a US accent.

R Wright
R Wright
1 year ago
Reply to  Billy Bob

Is it nonsense? I’ve yet to see anyone actually try and debunk it. In any event, Carthago delenda est.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago

Even on a jokey article about a match at the World Cup you can’t resist peddling your nonsense?

Tony Reardon
Tony Reardon
1 year ago

I was in Florida a few years ago near Disney World and was much amused when I found that the local supermarket had a section labelled “Ethnic Food” featuring various English brands such as H.P Sauce and Cross & Blackwell vegetarian baked beans.
I had never thought of myself as “ethnic” for being born in England but perhaps I can now lay claim to one of those highly desirable “victim” categories.

Tony Reardon
Tony Reardon
1 year ago

I was in Florida a few years ago near Disney World and was much amused when I found that the local supermarket had a section labelled “Ethnic Food” featuring various English brands such as H.P Sauce and Cross & Blackwell vegetarian baked beans.
I had never thought of myself as “ethnic” for being born in England but perhaps I can now lay claim to one of those highly desirable “victim” categories.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

The reason for the disparity between BBC coverage of American politics and of other nations’ politics is because the BBC refuses to employ people who speak foreign languages fluently and know those countries’ cultures preferring instead to employ white Oxbridge types. This is despite the huge number of bilingual people of dual heritage living in the UK.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 year ago

The reason for the disparity between BBC coverage of American politics and of other nations’ politics is because the BBC refuses to employ people who speak foreign languages fluently and know those countries’ cultures preferring instead to employ white Oxbridge types. This is despite the huge number of bilingual people of dual heritage living in the UK.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
1 year ago

Dominic – I’m afraid you are too late to worry about America. The world is now colonized by the algorithm overlords within TikTok.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

Uhmmm. TikTok is Chinese.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Cantab Man

Uhmmm. TikTok is Chinese.

Cantab Man
Cantab Man
1 year ago

Dominic – I’m afraid you are too late to worry about America. The world is now colonized by the algorithm overlords within TikTok.

Marissa M
Marissa M
1 year ago

Lovely article. It is interesting that most of the US could really care less about the World Cup. And compared to our other sports, we don’t throw a lot of money at it.
Almost makes me feel guilty that we tied England today without really trying.
Almost 😉
Go ahead and shake yourself of the US. I think you’d be wise to. We have plenty of other problems. Besides, America is headed towards a Hispanic majority. Very soon European ancestry will be a distant memory. And the UK? The land of Shakespeare will soon be quoting the Koran more than the Bard.

Last edited 1 year ago by Marissa M
Marissa M
Marissa M
1 year ago

Lovely article. It is interesting that most of the US could really care less about the World Cup. And compared to our other sports, we don’t throw a lot of money at it.
Almost makes me feel guilty that we tied England today without really trying.
Almost 😉
Go ahead and shake yourself of the US. I think you’d be wise to. We have plenty of other problems. Besides, America is headed towards a Hispanic majority. Very soon European ancestry will be a distant memory. And the UK? The land of Shakespeare will soon be quoting the Koran more than the Bard.

Last edited 1 year ago by Marissa M
Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 year ago

The most truly evil characters in Hollywood films are British, Russian, or German in that order.

Andrew Boughton
Andrew Boughton
1 year ago

The most truly evil characters in Hollywood films are British, Russian, or German in that order.

Fanny Blancmange
Fanny Blancmange
1 year ago

The postwar cargo cult that makes so many divvy Brits (unwittingly?) wannabe Yanks is beyond sad. Mind you, their own country isnt too interested in averting this. As to the fascination with the place among the elite BBC sorts…I suspect coastal metropolitan multicult Dem-voting America represents peak liberal Modernity for them to aspire to and root for against the evil forces of conservatism. The common language is akin to the chain on a road gang. But as Benjamin Franklin said “Everyone has two countries – their own, and Lizzo’s enormous behind”.

Fanny Blancmange
Fanny Blancmange
1 year ago

The postwar cargo cult that makes so many divvy Brits (unwittingly?) wannabe Yanks is beyond sad. Mind you, their own country isnt too interested in averting this. As to the fascination with the place among the elite BBC sorts…I suspect coastal metropolitan multicult Dem-voting America represents peak liberal Modernity for them to aspire to and root for against the evil forces of conservatism. The common language is akin to the chain on a road gang. But as Benjamin Franklin said “Everyone has two countries – their own, and Lizzo’s enormous behind”.

Rex Pagan
Rex Pagan
1 year ago

I listen to the BBC exclusively in the car, and I love it for its refreshing un-American point of view, not to mention the absence of obnoxious and repetitive advertising. But I have noticed that the Beeb’s reporters use the same buzzwords and catch-phrases that we Yanks use. And more’s the pity. Are you doomed to become indistinguishable from us?
So much has changed over the four centuries since the sainted Pilgrims raised a middle finger to the excesses of Jacobin England. But then, change was ever afoot. As vulgar as our speech seems now, methinks Athelstan would have scowled at the language of Chaucer. Per Wikipedia — another verdammte American innovation that now bestrides the internet like a colossus — Ralph Waldo Emerson “was named after his mother’s brother Ralph and his father’s great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo.” Who knew that Waldo could even be a family name? And how many knew, even then, its descent from the much more impressive Anglo-Scandinavian Hvaltheofr [See: Walthew in the Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames by Reaney and Wilson]. Not old Hvaltheofr’s fault that an always-lost, large-spectacled, skinny, beanie-sporting cartoon character makes sure that the once-impressive name is a symbol of nerdy clownishness. A Spanish variant, Uvalde, now carries a far-less-comical connotation.
Bur I digress. Who is to say that things would have turned out much differently had the American colonies never broken away from Westminster and the royals? The sheer size of the north American continent — never mind its resources, natural waterways and harbors, safe distance from both Europe and Asia, etc. — practically guaranteed the divorce.
As to what we Yanks have become in the last four centuries or so, and as to our culture in particular, no explanation of it would be complete without a nod to the fact that, like America itself, there is so much of it: hundreds of millions of Americans, most of them equipped with a handheld portal to a worldwide audience. Like other American public utilities, American mass communications were democratized from the start, were given a huge boost by the development of radio and TV, and continue to be be democratized by the internet. And American corporation and the US military do bestride the globe. All of that together practically guaranteed that American culture would spew out beyond these shores and cover the rest of the world — including Britain — with its vulgar, omnipresent excess. The law of averages assures that the cultural output of America will be average at best. And it also assures that most of its consumers will like it better that way. That may explain why it seems to be that many Brits don’t notice their own Americanization. The world is not like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon: by definition, all of the children can’t be above average.
It was fortune, as much as anything else, that gave the world its present lingua franca, the language that was born in Britain. And the future is in our hands: the world need not become just one big tacky strip mall dominated by American chain stores, blaring American pop music and strewn with greasy plastic trash while implicitly extolling the virtues of Americanness. The US has money and military might. But you, our British cousins, have The World’s Radio Station.

Last edited 1 year ago by Rex Pagan
Kayla Marx
Kayla Marx
1 year ago
Reply to  Rex Pagan

Seriously, we need to ban online fraternization. We used to be divided by our common language, but now English is turning into a common mush. Every time I go to write, for instance “the BBC is …” a little voice my head whispers “the BBC are …” And I swear, American English is starting to lose the subjunctive, the last thing I want. Ban online fraternization, for the sake of our common language?

Kayla Marx
Kayla Marx
1 year ago
Reply to  Rex Pagan

Seriously, we need to ban online fraternization. We used to be divided by our common language, but now English is turning into a common mush. Every time I go to write, for instance “the BBC is …” a little voice my head whispers “the BBC are …” And I swear, American English is starting to lose the subjunctive, the last thing I want. Ban online fraternization, for the sake of our common language?

Rex Pagan
Rex Pagan
1 year ago

I listen to the BBC exclusively in the car, and I love it for its refreshing un-American point of view, not to mention the absence of obnoxious and repetitive advertising. But I have noticed that the Beeb’s reporters use the same buzzwords and catch-phrases that we Yanks use. And more’s the pity. Are you doomed to become indistinguishable from us?
So much has changed over the four centuries since the sainted Pilgrims raised a middle finger to the excesses of Jacobin England. But then, change was ever afoot. As vulgar as our speech seems now, methinks Athelstan would have scowled at the language of Chaucer. Per Wikipedia — another verdammte American innovation that now bestrides the internet like a colossus — Ralph Waldo Emerson “was named after his mother’s brother Ralph and his father’s great-grandmother Rebecca Waldo.” Who knew that Waldo could even be a family name? And how many knew, even then, its descent from the much more impressive Anglo-Scandinavian Hvaltheofr [See: Walthew in the Oxford Dictionary of English Surnames by Reaney and Wilson]. Not old Hvaltheofr’s fault that an always-lost, large-spectacled, skinny, beanie-sporting cartoon character makes sure that the once-impressive name is a symbol of nerdy clownishness. A Spanish variant, Uvalde, now carries a far-less-comical connotation.
Bur I digress. Who is to say that things would have turned out much differently had the American colonies never broken away from Westminster and the royals? The sheer size of the north American continent — never mind its resources, natural waterways and harbors, safe distance from both Europe and Asia, etc. — practically guaranteed the divorce.
As to what we Yanks have become in the last four centuries or so, and as to our culture in particular, no explanation of it would be complete without a nod to the fact that, like America itself, there is so much of it: hundreds of millions of Americans, most of them equipped with a handheld portal to a worldwide audience. Like other American public utilities, American mass communications were democratized from the start, were given a huge boost by the development of radio and TV, and continue to be be democratized by the internet. And American corporation and the US military do bestride the globe. All of that together practically guaranteed that American culture would spew out beyond these shores and cover the rest of the world — including Britain — with its vulgar, omnipresent excess. The law of averages assures that the cultural output of America will be average at best. And it also assures that most of its consumers will like it better that way. That may explain why it seems to be that many Brits don’t notice their own Americanization. The world is not like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon: by definition, all of the children can’t be above average.
It was fortune, as much as anything else, that gave the world its present lingua franca, the language that was born in Britain. And the future is in our hands: the world need not become just one big tacky strip mall dominated by American chain stores, blaring American pop music and strewn with greasy plastic trash while implicitly extolling the virtues of Americanness. The US has money and military might. But you, our British cousins, have The World’s Radio Station.

Last edited 1 year ago by Rex Pagan
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

On Thomas Fazi, why is America provoking China and the article how America can save Taiwan threads, please, go look, I won’t repeat myself again but literally spent way too much of my life making the case for this on here last few weeks. I think we really need to start seeing this is where the money is coming from guys that’s pushing the stuff we don’t like! America are have become a dangerous influence. Even use the phrase American overlords and point out to our American friends they were late for ww2…..
We better give them a kicking in the football, the country would have to commit suicide if we lost to America, it would be the only bearable option. I expect russia would happily do the honours at the moment!

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago

On Thomas Fazi, why is America provoking China and the article how America can save Taiwan threads, please, go look, I won’t repeat myself again but literally spent way too much of my life making the case for this on here last few weeks. I think we really need to start seeing this is where the money is coming from guys that’s pushing the stuff we don’t like! America are have become a dangerous influence. Even use the phrase American overlords and point out to our American friends they were late for ww2…..
We better give them a kicking in the football, the country would have to commit suicide if we lost to America, it would be the only bearable option. I expect russia would happily do the honours at the moment!

Last edited 1 year ago by B Emery
M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Last edited 1 year ago by M. M.
Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Hispanic culture dominates.
No matter what the subject you seem to always come around to the same point.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

The United States has been acting in a way that is hostile to the interests of Western countries since 1917 and not out of any sense of moral duty but out of pure self interest

Last edited 1 year ago by Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
1 year ago

Long before 2017. The rot started with reneging on the promise made to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastwards, and look where that’s got us.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Rocky Martiano

You have highlighted my error. I meant 1917 and have no corrected it.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Rocky Martiano

It takes unanimous consent for a new nation to join NATO, so Britain voted for all those new countries joining NATO as well. That’s one that can’t be put on the US as if we were the only country running it.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Rocky Martiano

You have highlighted my error. I meant 1917 and have no corrected it.

Diane Merriam
Diane Merriam
1 year ago
Reply to  Rocky Martiano

It takes unanimous consent for a new nation to join NATO, so Britain voted for all those new countries joining NATO as well. That’s one that can’t be put on the US as if we were the only country running it.

Rocky Martiano
Rocky Martiano
1 year ago

Long before 2017. The rot started with reneging on the promise made to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastwards, and look where that’s got us.

AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Acknowledging indigenous influence and self-destructive factions, I don’t think it’s accurate to label Mexicans or Mexican-Americans–by far the majority of California Hispanics–as somehow ‘non-Western’. The prevailing Catholicism and European first-language fluency throughout Latin America and among Latino immigrants and their descendants (in Spanish, Portuguese, or English) places them decidedly in both the geographic and cultural West. Unless “Western” is a euphemism for whiter-than-thou.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Hispanic culture dominates.
No matter what the subject you seem to always come around to the same point.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

The United States has been acting in a way that is hostile to the interests of Western countries since 1917 and not out of any sense of moral duty but out of pure self interest

Last edited 1 year ago by Ethniciodo Rodenydo
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Acknowledging indigenous influence and self-destructive factions, I don’t think it’s accurate to label Mexicans or Mexican-Americans–by far the majority of California Hispanics–as somehow ‘non-Western’. The prevailing Catholicism and European first-language fluency throughout Latin America and among Latino immigrants and their descendants (in Spanish, Portuguese, or English) places them decidedly in both the geographic and cultural West. Unless “Western” is a euphemism for whiter-than-thou.

M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Last edited 1 year ago by M. M.
Bob Pugh
Bob Pugh
1 year ago

As a Brit I’d sooner be American than European.

Bob Pugh
Bob Pugh
1 year ago

As a Brit I’d sooner be American than European.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

Thing is, you Brits have been oppressed by imperial overlords since whenever. Whatabout the Danes viking around Saxon England in The Last Kingdom? Whatabout the Frenchie William invading in 1066? Whatbout the racist-sexist-homophobe Queen Isabella invading England with her boy-friend to dispatch her gay husband Edward II? Whatabout Eleanor of Aquitaine becoming the wife of Henry II? Whatabout the Dutch William of Orange invading Devon in 1688? Whatabout the German Hanoverians that took over in the 18th century?
The Yanks are just the latest in a long Trail of Tears.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 year ago

Thing is, you Brits have been oppressed by imperial overlords since whenever. Whatabout the Danes viking around Saxon England in The Last Kingdom? Whatabout the Frenchie William invading in 1066? Whatbout the racist-sexist-homophobe Queen Isabella invading England with her boy-friend to dispatch her gay husband Edward II? Whatabout Eleanor of Aquitaine becoming the wife of Henry II? Whatabout the Dutch William of Orange invading Devon in 1688? Whatabout the German Hanoverians that took over in the 18th century?
The Yanks are just the latest in a long Trail of Tears.

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
1 year ago

I might have thought that, at least as of a few years ago, the entire Anglosphere might worry about being Sinofied. But is the entire Anglosphere not now being absorbed by out own self-anointed caste of woke patricians?

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
1 year ago

I might have thought that, at least as of a few years ago, the entire Anglosphere might worry about being Sinofied. But is the entire Anglosphere not now being absorbed by out own self-anointed caste of woke patricians?

Richard Ross
Richard Ross
1 year ago

As a Canadian, standing firmly athwart the great divide that unites the Anglosphere (well, we did, until some drama teacher with “good hair” took the reins of the country; but I digress) I love this essay, which I assume was written with the tongue at least creeping into the cheek (Ewww).
From our northern vantage point, there’s plenty to irritate on either side of the Big Pond – and plenty to admire and treasure.
But while I’m here: my Brit-brothers and sisters, you can at least thank the Yanks for preserving the H’s, R’s and T’s that the mother country has dropped from our glorious language. (For some fun, ask an English person to say “That’s a lot of hot water bottles”).

Richard Ross
Richard Ross
1 year ago

As a Canadian, standing firmly athwart the great divide that unites the Anglosphere (well, we did, until some drama teacher with “good hair” took the reins of the country; but I digress) I love this essay, which I assume was written with the tongue at least creeping into the cheek (Ewww).
From our northern vantage point, there’s plenty to irritate on either side of the Big Pond – and plenty to admire and treasure.
But while I’m here: my Brit-brothers and sisters, you can at least thank the Yanks for preserving the H’s, R’s and T’s that the mother country has dropped from our glorious language. (For some fun, ask an English person to say “That’s a lot of hot water bottles”).

Apsley
Apsley
1 year ago

Who decided that schoolchildren in Leamington Spa should care about Rosa Parks? Why did thousands of people take to the streets in Britain about the killing of a single black man in Minneapolis, when barely a handful bother to protest the sack of Mariupol or the incarceration of the Uyghurs? And why on earth, when a couple of half-crazed American academics announce that we must cancel the term Anglo-Saxon to describe Alfred the Great and Athelstan because it’s a racist “dog whistle” for “white, Western superiority”, do so many British historians fall limply into line?”
So … why haven’t we any leaders with the moral courage and political determination to call out this madness, address it and turn us around from such profound copy-cat politics in the UK?

Apsley
Apsley
1 year ago

Who decided that schoolchildren in Leamington Spa should care about Rosa Parks? Why did thousands of people take to the streets in Britain about the killing of a single black man in Minneapolis, when barely a handful bother to protest the sack of Mariupol or the incarceration of the Uyghurs? And why on earth, when a couple of half-crazed American academics announce that we must cancel the term Anglo-Saxon to describe Alfred the Great and Athelstan because it’s a racist “dog whistle” for “white, Western superiority”, do so many British historians fall limply into line?”
So … why haven’t we any leaders with the moral courage and political determination to call out this madness, address it and turn us around from such profound copy-cat politics in the UK?

M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Last edited 1 year ago by M. M.
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

I live in California and totally disagree with your claim that most here reject Western culture. Perhaps you can define Western culture, which you imply is only held dear enough–or at least not “rejected’–by white American with conservative or traditionalist leanings.
Not sure if you’re the blogger-of-record, M.M., but this assertion at your info link strikes me as xenophobic (at a minimum) and hyperbolic: “He [Biden] wants to put European-Americans at the mercy of people who reject Western culture and who, consequently, destroyed the societies in their own native lands before fleeing to the United States.”
Wow. That’s more like a straight-up rhetorical meltdown than research, analysis, or balanced argument.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

I live in California and totally disagree with your claim that most here reject Western culture. Perhaps you can define Western culture, which you imply is only held dear enough–or at least not “rejected’–by white American with conservative or traditionalist leanings.
Not sure if you’re the blogger-of-record, M.M., but this assertion at your info link strikes me as xenophobic (at a minimum) and hyperbolic: “He [Biden] wants to put European-Americans at the mercy of people who reject Western culture and who, consequently, destroyed the societies in their own native lands before fleeing to the United States.”
Wow. That’s more like a straight-up rhetorical meltdown than research, analysis, or balanced argument.

Last edited 1 year ago by AJ Mac
M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Last edited 1 year ago by M. M.
Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago

So Britain is not really being Americanized, eh?

Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago

I hear people on this thread saying this piece is entirely unserious?

(Thanks in advance for remedying my cloth ears, gentles.)

Patti Dunne
Patti Dunne
1 year ago

Such a charmingly British article. Sometimes Americans don’t understand British wit. I’m American and it took me a while to understand it and now I appreciate it. Big fan of British tv.

Patti Dunne
Patti Dunne
1 year ago

Such a charmingly British article. Sometimes Americans don’t understand British wit. I’m American and it took me a while to understand it and now I appreciate it. Big fan of British tv.

M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Last edited 1 year ago by M. M.
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

All you do is re-locate your pre-fabricated post anytime there’s a response. A tired and ineffective move.

M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Dominic Sandbrook wrote, “So what would Athelstan, the first king of all England, say? I think we all know the answer to that. He’d say: ‘Lads, it’s time to decolonise ourselves [from the United States].'”

By 2040, the United States will cease being a Western nation, due to open borders. By 2040, most Americans will reject Western culture, and Hispanic culture will dominate. In California, 40% of the residents are currently Hispanic. Most residents of the state already reject Western culture, and Hispanic culture dominates.

The British fate will become the American fate if politicians like Rishi Sunak continue to become prime minster. He intends to open the British border to Indian citizens. They will change the United Kingdom (UK) into a non-Western nation.

The Tories must remove Sunak from the prime ministership, and the next prime minister must distance the UK from the United States. A non-Western United States will act in a way that is hostile to the interests of Western countries.

Get more info about this issue.

John Holland
John Holland
1 year ago

As usual on this site, an interesting essay followed by a dreary screed of right-wing group-think.
Yes, Britain has unquestioningly imported “woke”, but it has equally unquestioningly imported its ‘frenemy’, Trumpist nationalism. The two go hand in hand; for every repetition of US-derived ‘Progressive’ language around gender and race, there is invariably an equal and opposite repetition of the ranting language of ‘anti-woke’. The language of Brexit abounds with all the talk-show-style posturing about ‘elites’ and ‘cultural marxism’ and evil liberal plots, with a very American type of flag-humping nationalism.

John Holland
John Holland
1 year ago

Nearly everybody in the world will speak US English, with a US accent, within twenty years.

M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Last edited 1 year ago by M. M.
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Anyone who wants reliable “info” about this issue should go elsewhere–I’ve checked. That’s your cue to cut and paste this nonsense once more, M.M.
Happy Holidays.

Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Hispanics are largely Roman Catholic. How can they be an anti-Western vector?

Last edited 1 year ago by Mark Thomas Lickona
AJ Mac
AJ Mac
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Anyone who wants reliable “info” about this issue should go elsewhere–I’ve checked. That’s your cue to cut and paste this nonsense once more, M.M.
Happy Holidays.

Mark Thomas Lickona
Mark Thomas Lickona
1 year ago
Reply to  M. M.

Hispanics are largely Roman Catholic. How can they be an anti-Western vector?

Last edited 1 year ago by Mark Thomas Lickona
M. M.
M. M.
1 year ago

Last edited 1 year ago by M. M.
Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
1 year ago

Jeez, I loved reading that, Dom. I especially liked the fact that a Yank wouldn’t have been able to understand it.

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
1 year ago

Jeez, I loved reading that, Dom. I especially liked the fact that a Yank wouldn’t have been able to understand it.

Kevin M
Kevin M
1 year ago

American culture is World culture. American culture and government are the logical culmination of British culture, as British culture is the culmimation of European (Western) culture. The republican virtues which formed America were British virtues. Most Americans dont realize that Led Zeppelin or the Stones or Ozzy are British bands, or even really that Britain is a separate country. The elected governments are not the real governments. The world economic elite imperialist oligarchy, working primarily through British or Israeli cabals, took over the US State Department during WW1, and the US Executive branch after WW2. They’ve been working against Americas progress and the concepts of equality and national sovereignty from the beginning. The “woke” spirit, fake viruses and stolen elections now infecting the world are NOT from an American source, but is entirely a plot of the Cabal, which is primarily run through the City of London/MI6/CIA/Mossad, and operating through organs of BIS, WEF, WHO, offshore and central banks. Theyve spent the last 70 years methodically extorting and xooptingAmtericans are just as shocked and dismayed by this strange invasion as anyone, as it disenfrachises all of us

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin M

Retreat from the weird corners of the Internet you’ve been living in. Organisations like Mossad, do what the f*** they like, the world is a very big place, with people throwing money and weapons around everywhere, you are looking at things far to simplistically. I love a conspiracy as much as the next person, but you are stating a theory as fact, with no evidence what so ever. There is nothing logical about what America has managed to culminate in. I am shrivelling up at the thought of America being the culmination of British culture. Britain is the culmination of British culture, you can’t have that too! Haven’t you got enough?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin M

I suspect you are not far from the target. Keep bombing

John H Abeles
John H Abeles
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin M

What historic idiocy states that Israeli cabals had influence in WW1? Israel came into being in 1948!
No, this obvious antiSemite invoking Israel and Mossad participating in world domination with not a shred of evidence poses as an informed and indignant conservative, while blandishing bigotry, whereas this writer as a libertarian conservative rejects the falsities and prejudice displayed

B Emery
B Emery
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin M

Retreat from the weird corners of the Internet you’ve been living in. Organisations like Mossad, do what the f*** they like, the world is a very big place, with people throwing money and weapons around everywhere, you are looking at things far to simplistically. I love a conspiracy as much as the next person, but you are stating a theory as fact, with no evidence what so ever. There is nothing logical about what America has managed to culminate in. I am shrivelling up at the thought of America being the culmination of British culture. Britain is the culmination of British culture, you can’t have that too! Haven’t you got enough?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin M

I suspect you are not far from the target. Keep bombing

John H Abeles
John H Abeles
1 year ago
Reply to  Kevin M

What historic idiocy states that Israeli cabals had influence in WW1? Israel came into being in 1948!
No, this obvious antiSemite invoking Israel and Mossad participating in world domination with not a shred of evidence poses as an informed and indignant conservative, while blandishing bigotry, whereas this writer as a libertarian conservative rejects the falsities and prejudice displayed

Kevin M
Kevin M
1 year ago

American culture is World culture. American culture and government are the logical culmination of British culture, as British culture is the culmimation of European (Western) culture. The republican virtues which formed America were British virtues. Most Americans dont realize that Led Zeppelin or the Stones or Ozzy are British bands, or even really that Britain is a separate country. The elected governments are not the real governments. The world economic elite imperialist oligarchy, working primarily through British or Israeli cabals, took over the US State Department during WW1, and the US Executive branch after WW2. They’ve been working against Americas progress and the concepts of equality and national sovereignty from the beginning. The “woke” spirit, fake viruses and stolen elections now infecting the world are NOT from an American source, but is entirely a plot of the Cabal, which is primarily run through the City of London/MI6/CIA/Mossad, and operating through organs of BIS, WEF, WHO, offshore and central banks. Theyve spent the last 70 years methodically extorting and xooptingAmtericans are just as shocked and dismayed by this strange invasion as anyone, as it disenfrachises all of us