Ah, the politics of jealousy! Shoot, garrotte, behead the royals because they have a life I can’t aspire to!
Jealous, much?
Do they have a better cash flow than I do? For sure, though that wouldn’t be hard: I’m unemployed. They are reasonablty remunerated, but far from the top of the ladder.
Are they perfect? No. Last time I checked I wasn’t either.
At their best, at least for the last 75 years or so, the royals have inspired those of us who have less fortunate existences, and have suffered brutal intrusions and exposures as our thanks.
And what are the alternatives?
Politicians? Trump and his minions surely remind us that bastardry is not a royal prerogative. Boris maybe? May maybe?
Rock stars? Oh, God, yes. I lift mine eyes to the Rockstar Heavens and find Jagger, Cobain, Miley Cyrus, whoever.
Reality TV hosts. Oh - there's Trump again. Or Simon Cowell. Or Jeremy Clarkson.
Yeah-nah.
Sports stars? Some, for sure, but I’m not sure I’d want to set them as my highest icons of human achievement and inspiration (Lewis Hamilton, anyone? Bernard Tomic?) and they reach their use-by long before 40 (Seb Coe perhaps is an exception … or New Zealand's late lamented Colin Meads or Edmund Hillary).
Authors, playwrights, poets? Who hears aught of them anyway?
And yes there are people like Saffiyah Khan or Keshia Thomas, and definitely Malala Yousafzai. But it’s funny, I don’t hear the anti-royalist back-biters chanting these names, proposing them as alternatives to the very human and often quite noble accidents of history, the Wills and Kates and their wider family.
Maybe I missed those pixels.
Ironically it seems, anyway, that the same people arguing bitterly for women's reprodctive rights are arguing that Kate has none. I suggest her choices are exceptionally brave: hyperemesis gravidarum is not a doddle in the park. Nor is it rare. If Kate inspires just one or two women in their own journey through this hell she will have achieved much.
So, jealous haters, until you find a viable alternative to royalty perhaps you could use your verbal energy to find better ways to utilise your politics of jealousy: get out from behind the keyboard of vitriol and do inspire the world around you, inspire your neighbours to greatness, change your world, clothe a beggar, cuddle a dying cat, hug your child.
But spewing politics of jealousy has never yet made for a better world.
