The privy of the universe

 

There were two mass shootings in California in the past few days by gunmen who happened to be of that “model minority” group, Asian. Since the victims in the first shooting in Monterey Park were also Asian, there was speculation that the shooter would be charged with a “hate crime.” The names of the victims as well as the shooter seems to indicate they were of the same Asian "ethnicity," so maybe like the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooter he felt he was being shunned? In the end, are not all mass shootings somehow motivated by “hate” against someone or something? 

In the second shooting at a mushroom farm in Half Moon Bay, the names of most of the victims were withheld since they were migrants, and there was difficulty in notifying next of kin; we can assume then that most of the victims were Hispanic (workers at the farm were identified as such), which I would say qualifies as a “hate crime," and the mugshot of the shooter, Chunli Zhao, certainly appears to be someone with hate in his heart.

Despite the fact that unlike the Monterey Park shooting where there were more wounded than killed, seven of the eight victims in Half Moon Bay shootings died, which suggests a high level of brutality by  Zhao, who unlike the Monterey Park killer was confident enough of his “justifications” not to kill his own self. We are told that Zhao is being “cooperative,” and “no danger to the public.” How nice. Maybe he felt “justified” in a country where Hispanics are demonized and dehumanized by many—which for those in Mexico and Central America ravaged by the corruption of American society, whether by the insatiable desire for drugs, or its gang cultures, is typical of the ignorance they face in this country.

I was in a Home Depot recently in the expectation that I might find some rubber ear plugs that I might find useful while riding the bus or the library. I figured that the power tools section would be the most “logical” place to find what I was looking for, and indeed I did find them (my college degree is good for something, I suppose). 

But as I was turning to head to the checkout counters, I saw at the end of the aisle a white security guard—the one I had passed on my way to the tools section—standing there facing the main aisle, but his eyes pointed at me sideways. As I walked past him I said “sneaky bastard,” and he responded “I have to be”; at least he was honest about being a bastard.

I then said “racist” because he obviously thought because I looked “ethnic” that was what made me automatically “suspicious.” Well, it's true, isn't it? Even doing what for other people would be "normal" is just cause for "suspicion" if that is what you want to see, right? The security guard acted as if this was a “tired” accusation, but to me it isn’t “tired” enough, because people just don’t want to talk about it.

Unlike most people I did my time in the military and tried to “improve” myself by obtaining a university degree. And yet all most people see is a car prowler, shoplifter or generally pointless. In a convenience store I am always asked if the cup of coffee “is all,” as if the clerk missed something while he was spying on me. Yes, you fucking moron; after Covid was used as an excuse to double the price of everything in the store, I learned the difference between what I “want” and what I “need”—and all I “need” is a cup of coffee.  

If I could read people’s minds, what would I discover?  In many, probably something they will lie about. Some people's actions, of course, speak a thousand words. Today I was headed to work after picking up some packages in Capitol Hill; on my way I encountered a Hispanic woman riding one of those street rental electric scooters, exchanging words with a white man with two large dogs. Apparently he was ostracizing her about riding on the sidewalk, when there was only a narrow road with no bike path. 

I noted that he was blocking the whole sidewalk deliberately, because as I approached behind him I told him he was being a rude doing so. His response indicated he was just a racist, bullying jerk; he didn't ask for my opinion he said, but he had given the woman his opinion, so I had a right to give him mine. He started mouthing off, I called him a Nazi Freak, and he came up beside me and tried to elbow me off the sidewalk. 

I think he got scared when my eyes lit up and I advanced toward him as he backed away. He didn't know who I was; I might be one of those "gangsters" Donald Trump calls most of the people crossing the border. I yelled out "Nazi Freak" after this coward who was a foot taller than I was while cars were honking at him as he walked across the street in front of through traffic.

On the same day of the Home Depot incident I saw a crew of Hispanic roofers working in the rain; you think “real Americans” wouldn’t just take the day off? Maybe not being “lazy” and doing things the right way is a “skill” many “real Americans” don’t have anymore (I don’t count diva Latinas who think they have something to “sell” to obtain fake social status). There is a section of Springbrook Creek in King County that the white people who used to be contracted to clear the banks for flood mitigation never went further than a low bridge 20 yards from the road, and what was beyond the bridge looked impossible to cut through because of decades of disregard. 

But in December the county contracted a Hispanic crew that not only went past the bridge, but wiped-out the bushes for miles as far as the eye could see and beyond. And you are telling me that isn’t a “skill” that is sorely lacking in this country? You don't need "skills" to work in the library lazily shelving books, but the white and Asian people who work there sure want you to think only "smart" people can  do that.

It can be a frustrating thing to be constantly aware of the fact that when most people deign to give you a thought at all, it is as a different species of “human” that somehow negatively impacts "culture" and society. I find this so “hilarious”; we live in a world where one group of people is completely self-absorbed and believes they can tread on other people's rights, and another where criminal and anti-social behavior generally is “defended” as merely being “rebellious.” While people who "look" like me are spied on (or despised), people who don’t want to be accused of “racism” against another group just wave it off as “OK” when someone walks out setting off the exit alarms as long as they are not threatening anybody' life.

It is a fucked-up world we live in. Many people just want to live the “sweet life,” one of indolence and pleasure; some people do this in office jobs where the principle occupation is feeling "special" about themselves, or not working at all, sponging off other people or the “system,” or engaging in extracurricular “business.”  

In the Fellini film La Dolce Vita, Marcello’s only hope for redemption from being corrupted by the wastrels of "high society" is Steiner’s cultured influence and encouragement for the book Marcello wants to write; but when Steiner kills himself and his two children, Marcello is done too, because the murder-suicide was Steiner’s way of telling him that he had determined that this world was no longer a fit place to live for cultured people and one he didn’t want his children to exist in. 

Sometimes I feel that this is where this world is headed, with people who don't know what "living" is to make this a better world--or at least keep it livable. As Voltaire once observed, when the beings God created decided they wanted to eat something sweet like cake instead of boring ambrosia (which was expectorated from the pores), that's when they had to start shitting, and not knowing where to relieve themselves, they were directed to a planet called Earth that was the privy of the universe.

 

"Smart" Amber Heard's leaky boat keeps taking on water, despite her dumb efforts to keep if from sinking completely while the "rats" scurry about helplessly

 

Some people just think they are “smarter” than the rest of us, and some are so intent on “winning” rather than just coming out and admitting they were wrong that they will keep telling lies long after nearly everyone has stopped listening to them. In the end, the only person they have to convince of their own infallibility in the face of reality is themselves.

So naturally we learn that even though Amber Heard, in the face of the triple-whammy of mounting legal debts it is not certain who will pay, uncertainty of success in an appeals process that will likely only confirm her guilt, and put a few more nails into the coffin of her B-list career (I mean, the only reason most people can even name one of her films—Aquaman—is because it is talked about so much) was persuaded to settle with Johnny Depp, she is still unable to go quietly into the sunset of her infamy.

We are learning that the lawsuits and countersuits between the Heard’s insurance companies and between themselves and Heard on who is or isn’t responsible for paying her legal bills is getting messier and messier with every new legal brief. But what I find most interesting is the revelation that Heard—being such a “smart” person—tried to stick it to Depp by allowing Travelers to ignore its own legal payout limits and run-up Heard’s legal debts in the belief that she would win by default with an anti-SLAPP ruling and Depp would be required to pay Heard’s legal bills. 

So certain was Heard of winning on this argument before the trial even began that it certainly came as a “shock” when she received an adverse ruling and she remained the responsible party. We can only say that this again was evidence of “actual malice” on her part, and we can only be too happy to see her evil thrown back in her face.

Heard’s self-belief in her own "genius" has less to do with what most people would call common sense or moral righteousness than it does with "attitude." Sure, people can mouth-off, but that doesn't mean that what they are saying is anything worth listening to. There is a lot we don’t know about Heard that nobody is particularly interested in knowing about, and certainly there are things that she is "smart" enough to try to keep hidden; it is interesting to speculate if her dropping out of high school, leaving the state of Texas, the suspension of her driving privileges for four years and the accidental death of that boy named Logan is all just one big fat “coincidence." 

But Heard has skated on her looks her whole life and she seems to believe that she is just some goddess-like presence that the pagans  treat like any other object of idolatry for whatever “cause” they deem fit to apply to her; but unlike Depp's generosity which clearly comes from the heart, from Heard it smells like self-serving PR stunts or begging for attention from whatever source. Remember that lie she told that Danish talk show about the "donations," and people were dumb enough to believe her based solely on her "word."

Heard of course is quickly moving toward what she obviously hates even more than being “wrong”: being irrelevant, which is what everyone who allowed themselves to be dragged into her cesspool of lies is finding themselves facing. The DUI Guy noted something that Eve Barlow had posted that seems to indicate what happens to Heard’s diehards when they essentially exhaust all their  credibility capital supporting her:

 

This came after Heard essentially kicked Barlow to the curb after leaving Israel for Spain, since we can surmise that Heard was getting bored with the place and didn't share Barlow's Zionist fanaticism, and felt misinformed by Barlow about its delights. But Barlow is just another of a long list of “friends” who is scurrying like rats on Heard's leaky boat when there is no benefit to go down with her; despite their efforts, they either want nothing more to do with her themselves (Raquel Pennington, iO Tillett Wright), or are simply deemed as making things worse for her—particularly those like Michele Dauber, whose troubles at Stanford seem to be growing even as her nauseating and occasionally violent social media outbursts seem to be diminishing, likely because they are causing trouble for her outside Stanford's supportive environment for this.   

Those like Barlow who bemoan the fact that they walk the streets friendless, ignored and occasionally heckled like any “well-adjusted woman” has to "endure" are also joined by the likes of dozens of mainstream “journalists” who think that just because they have an opinion doesn’t mean they don’t have assholes.  There is NBC News social media and technology “expert” Kat Tenbarge, who seems to spend most of her time talking about gender politics. Tenbarge is believed to have circulated a policy-breaking and possibly racist complaint against NBC hiring Camille Vasquez as a legal analyst, which Tenbarge rightly should consider an attempt by the network to “balance out” the impression that her embarrassing shilling for Heard is its “official” stand on the Depp case.

But in the face of the truth that the vast majority of people who have examined the facts of the Depp case accept, people like Heard, Barlow and Tenbarge are the kind of people who only represent a “danger” mainly to themselves. Their power is limited to individuals already compromised by their biases. Even within the context of the fanatical advocacy, their effect on society is limited by such concepts as credibility and due process rights; it is people like Dauber and ambulance-chasing Gloria Allred who represent an actual threat when they are given the power to influence injustice, but as we are seeing, there are limits to how much injustice people are willing to tolerate.

In the Depp case, we are reminded that this is a nation of laws; just because some people don’t like them doesn’t mean that we should throw them all away. As Thomas More responded to Roper’s assertion in A Man For All Seasons that he would cut down every law to get to the “devil”:

Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

"Mysterious" deaths may be too "routine" for ordinary Russians to care, but that begs the question of just what kind of people are they? Certainly a different breed than people in the West

 

Some countries do learn from past mistakes. Take for example Germany, blamed for two world wars and left in mostly ruins after the second one. Today most of its people (save for a few neo-Nazi types) have become quite satisfied with democracy where everyone can have a say without fear of arrest or being killed. They are part of a collective military defense that is treaty bound to protect their way of life. Today, Germans are about as pacifist a people as they come in this world. Of course it is probably useful to keep in “practice” to see if you still got what it takes when it actually comes time to join in that mutual defense.

Now let’s take another country, Russia for example. While we can speculate about the Chinese presence in this country, some of whom have been arrested for being part of “sleeper cells" stealing technological secrets while posing as “businessmen” or “students,” Russians have always seemed to be “apart.” Russian immigrants in this country seem to be self-conscious and conspiratorial, setting themselves apart, quite unlike South Asians who run businesses out in the open and are quite happy to take your money.

I once found a Russian language Yellow Pages in a Laundromat and thumbed through it; I couldn’t believe that here in King County there were so many hidden Russian businesses catering to the needs of the hidden Russian community. The Russian “mafia” also has a thriving business few talk about; I once worked at a sports apparel company when one morning we discovered a completely stripped car behind the building. One of my colleagues—a Polish immigrant—looked at it and said one word: “Russians.”

Russians do seem to be a paranoid bunch; yeah sure, I know that once upon a time Napoleon invaded Russia and Moscow was burned (probably by Russians), and later on by the Germans in two world wars, and many Russians were slaughtered in the latter. But so were the citizens of a lot of other countries—like Poland, for example, by both the Nazis and the Russians, and the Russians conducted their own mayhem when they plowed through Germany.

Today, Russians are acting out their paranoia on other countries, like, say, Ukraine which just wants the Russians to stop making threats against their sovereignty. If Russians are their “brothers,” then why don’t they act like one? Perhaps because they are only “half-brothers” and Russians feel they can beat on them just because they are smaller and need to take out their angst on someone.

But can this explain why Russians are peculiarly indifferent to the crimes committed by its government in their “name”?  Have they no clue that the behavior of its government reflects on themselves as well? Today you hear people on the street mostly say one of two things: embarrassment about the way the war is going—and worse, belief that the government knows what the hell it’s doing. You don’t hear anything about all the soldiers who have died for an unjustified “cause,” or the Ukrainian civilians massacred. Of course who knows what people are saying behind closed doors, since thousands of people who have spoken out against the war have been arrested in the thousands.

Or found dead under “mysterious” circumstances. So let’s talk about that, since the “secret” killing of people perceived as enemies of the state in Russia has been an open secret in the country for a century. Beginning in 1921, the Soviets established laboratories especially to concoct poisons to kill those persons considered a threat to the government. Of course, what that government would be was still in question and the only tool at hand was to keep the Bolshevik  “movement” alive before other forces “killed” it, and that meant by whatever means “necessary.”

We should remember that the intention of the Marxist movement was government by the “people”—the “proletariat”—and not by the few “elites” it eventually would become. But the closest that Marxism came to a theory of government was the Paris Commune, which lasted a few months in 1871; while it supported many progressive principles that today we take for granted, many of its members were keen on keeping power through violence, and the commune went down in a literal blaze of “glory” as it went down to defeat against government forces, leaving Paris in ruins.

That of course is not what the Soviet Union ended-up being, but rather a totalitarian state where few people had any rights. Of course there were those who favored government “by the people”—like, say, Leon Trotsky—and those people needed to be eliminated, because people like Stalin saw enemies everywhere and “the people” were not to be trusted; after all, they were too stupid and childlike to “govern” themselves.

Trotsky was murdered in faraway Mexico, so it was safe to employ an assassin to bludgeon him to death. During the “Great Purge,” those declared enemies of the state were simply rounded-up, and executed, with or without sham trials. But there were other people who could not be so easily done away without people being somewhat disturbed by it—say, for example, world-renowned novelists and poets. That is where places like Laboratory One came in, where secret experiments, often on human subjects in the Gulags, were conducted to create poisons that were “undetectable” or mimicked “natural” causes of death.

Among the victims of death under “mysterious” circumstances was the then famous genetics scientist Nikolai Koltsov, whose main crime was that he was an international embarrassment to the regime with his nonsense about eugenics and scientific racism, which to the “credit” of the Soviet regime it didn’t aspire to given the polyglot nature of the state. Meanwhile it was suspected that Nobel Prize for Literature nominee Maxim Gorky died from slow-acting poisoning because of his unconventional beliefs regarding the Stalinist regime. Religious leaders were not immune either; in 1947 an archbishop of the Russian Greek Catholic Church, Theodore Romzha, died from suspected poisoning. The church served mostly Ukrainian parishioners, and today it is still under a partial ban because of its “unorthodoxy.”

But the KGB is no longer in that business, the FSB is. We have seen numerous poisonings of Russian dissidents since Vladimir Putin took power, which should be no surprise since he is a former KGB and FSB agent and is aware of the uses of poison. Journalists like Anna Politkovskaya and Yuri Shchekochikhin, former FSB agent and whistleblower in exile Alexander Litvinenko, and liberal politician Vladimir Kara-Murza all died “mysteriously” of apparent poisoning. Others who have been poisoned but did not die are imprisoned anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny and former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

But since it seems that poisoning isn’t always “reliable,” Putin and his FSB cronies have apparently decided that murder the old-fashioned way is the way to go, since Russians are seemingly immune to the effects of other people’s lives as long as it isn’t their own. The latest deliberate bombing of a residential apartment in southeastern Ukraine, killing three-dozen civilians, naturally elicited no protests in Russia, and is proof enough of that. I mean, Russian security forces killed hundreds of innocent Russian civilians just to get at a handful of Chechens, and the FSB was suspected of conducting “false flag” bombings of apartment buildings that killed hundreds, and still the Russian citizenry  trusted that their leaders were doing “right.” Why should they care about the crimes against humanity committed by their war criminal leaders in the Ukraine? They have no “morality” left to spare anyways.

So today we see oligarchs, businessmen, politicians journalists and generals falling out of windows, committing suicide or first killing their wives and children, and then killing themselves, which The Atlantic calls “Sudden Death Syndrome” in Russia. In the past year there has been 23 such death, and probably more counting lesser-known individuals. Sausage oligarch and politician Pavel Antov fell out of a window in India, Sergey Protosenya allegedly axed to death his wife and daughter while on vacation in Spain before allegedly hanging himself; neither of those two governments thought the quotation marks around the word “coincidental” was big enough to question what exactly happened in those cases.  A general in charge of tank production. Alexei Maslov, died mysteriously hours before a meeting with Putin was cancelled. “Coincidental” too?

The murder-suicide gig seems to be a popular way to lead to the demise of those deemed expendable; a more recent example is oil company executive Vladislav Avayev, whose inexplicable death could only be explained by his knowledge about “where the money went.” His wife and one of his daughters were found shot to death along with him. Now why would oligarchs who have money want to just kill themselves and their families? I suspect that initially, these family members were witnesses who needed to be silenced, but once the Russian public seemed not to be concerned about questionable details and the trail of improbable “coincidences,” murder-suicide was deemed a “reasonable” way to explain to what I’m sure is a Russian public that may not wish to question anything too openly these days, since it calls into question their own lack of moral backbone.

After all, why should Russians concern themselves with the odd political murder in Russia when government security forces had routinely killed innocent people in the name of the “security” of the state before—and they bought that line hook, line  and sinker, if for no other reason they think they don’t have a choice? But everyone has a “choice,” if they only want to fight for what is moral. Ukraine had its “orange revolution” from 2004-2005, when pro-Russian puppet president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted after winning a sham election against pro-West Viktor Yushchenko, who subsequently also suffered poisoning under “mysterious” circumstances.  He survived, and so did Ukrainian democracy, which is what this war there is supposed to be about. We don’t want what Russia is “about.”

Going against the grain on the Harry-Meghan story

 

The late Queen Elizabeth II banned the use of the titles Duke and Duchess of Windsor after the death of Wallis Simpson in 1986, supposedly because it was irretrievably “sullied,” which was more a reflection of the juvenile 50-year grudge that Elizabeth and the queen mother still bore against Simpson. Although Elizabeth herself was untouched—thanks largely to the immunity the press granted her—her reign was scandal-plagued, with the actual behavior of her sister Margaret and sons Andrew and the current king in the past rather more “scandalous” than that of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle:

 

 

The fact that the Sussexes have had the audacity to say that “we tried to play the game and you just shit on us, so see you later” and then providing the reasons that are at least clear to themselves finds even the American press joining the British press in vitriolic outrage. They are acting like spoiled, privileged children it is said, and Meghan is the evil gold-digging temptress who doesn’t know her “place.” You really think she signed-up for all this drama?

But can you (as an American, not as a snooty, self-important Brit complaining about what kind of shoes Meghan wears)  name anything that Meghan—and Harry, for that matter—has actually done "wrong" since their marriage other than not having the good manners to just shut-up about the level of “acceptance” and support they perceive as  lacking even from  palace functionaries who are supposed to "serve" their needs? 

Of the latter I am reminded of the British series Yes, Minister, where Sir Humphrey—technically the subordinate required to do the bidding of whoever the current minister of his department wants—is being patronizing while constantly thwarting the minister’s policy desires from a self-superior attitude ingrained solely from his double-talking longevity in his position (the probable reason why he was even deemed worthy of “knighthood”).

Neither Harry nor Meghan have been accused of such things as cozying-up to genocidal dictators, openly committing adultery or hobnobbing with accused pedophiles...

 

...like some other members of the royal family past and present. There are some (like myself) who have made comparisons to Meghan’s situation to that of Simpson, the subject of much vitriol from the British press, the royal family and the British government, but these comparisons have their limits as well—and not necessarily to Meghan’s discredit.

I admit that Harry and Meghan refusing to play the game anymore has opened them up to that vitriol, but they are currently not the public parasites the rest of the royal family is, since they have been cut-off from most "royal" funding and are trying to be “self-sufficient,” which must be driving the rest of the clan nuts. You think that "The Firm" doesn't want to see them fail? Of course they do. Here in America we should be supporting their efforts not to be a "public charge." Just because some people don’t like the way they are doing it is tough luck.

Back to comparisons, there are those who still insist that Simpson was in “love” in Edward, and she no doubt made efforts to “fit in,” but these efforts were rejected out of hand; Winston Churchill for one supported Simpson, and bemoaned the opposition of the British press and government against her, and even proposed a “morganatic” marriage that would “allow” Edward to keep his throne without the whole British government resigning in “protest.”

This compromise was rejected by the prime minister at the time, Stanley Baldwin, who it seems was the subject of “speculation” of whether he was a “friend” of Edward—or in fact wanted to see him removed from the throne, and the Simpson controversy was perfect to achieving this end. To what extent “commoners” shared this “outrage” is also subject to some speculation, but the government certainly persuaded the British press to aid it in this endeavor.

But there are others—in fact, most others—who believe that Simpson, who grew-up in at best very modest means, was a committed social climber who slept her way to what she hoped was the “top.” She married a shipping magnate, but then set her eyes on the next “prize”—a prince in line for the British throne who she encountered at a party, and was friends with a woman whose sister was Edward’s current mistress, and Simpson quickly ingratiated herself with Edward to replace her.

Edward, however, became smitten, and it was already well-known by his closest advisors for a decade before he became king that he really wasn’t suited for that office temperamentally, morally or ethically, which was found to be quite disturbing. In his 1951 memoir, he stated he was in “unconscious rebellion” against the “lonely” position of king. 

But if he himself was in a take-it-or-leave-it mindset, Simpson had her “heart” set not in Edward as a person, but as “king.” When he decided to marry her and abdicate, she begged him to “reconsider” giving up his throne: maybe she “preferred” just being the “mistress” of a king, or she wanted him to keep fighting; but one thing that was certain is that it wasn't her plan to marry him if he wasn’t king.

In the end, Simpson apparently thought that she had no choice since Edward had sacrificed "everything" for her love—if in fact she ever did love him, which some doubt with reason. We know that in Edward’s mind that this was a “win-win” for him, because he didn’t want to be king anyways, which he found “dull” and intrusive.   

On the other hand we can speculate that Harry’s position as a royal made him an “eligible” bachelor, but he did have a choice in the matter, and it helped that Meghan was at least “willing” when his own interest was known. We may even speculate that he saw in Meghan a willing ally in upsetting the “status quo” in the royal family, which he found to be treating him like a “spare” even as he served in active duty putting his own life in danger in Afghanistan.

We are told that Edward and Simpson themselves didn’t have much in common and rarely conversed with each other when they were alone in private; this is certainly not the case with Harry and Meghan, who seem to have at least one thing in common—their gripes about how they have been treated. Unlike Harry who has now come under attack, Edward was always viewed as the love-smitten “victim” of Simpson. Harry on the other hand is seen as Meghan’s accomplice in "rebellion," and vice-versa. 

I mean let’s be honest about this: Meghan’s “black Americanism” is certainly stereotyped in a negative way in Britain, and in the end those assumptions fueled by some outrageously petty criticisms of things she did “wrong” while she was still trying to play the "game" right, became a predictable self-fulfilling prophecy.

On the other hand as noted, Edward wanted “out,” and royal family was so dead-set against Simpson and granting her any kind of accommodation or allowing her to represent them in public that the Windsors had little choice but to go into exile in France. Was "Megxit" avoidable? Why must we insist that Harry and Meghan have had skins of iron? They couldn't escape the tabloid headlines or the constant barrage of complaints by etiquette warriors with their vomit-inducing accents without closing their minds completely. Harry and Meghan are human just like the rest of us.

Of course, unlike Harry and Meghan, Edward and Simpson being forced to leave the country only caused more embarrassing behavior that could have been avoided if they were treated civilly by the royal clan. The House of Windsor actually had a German heritage; in fact there was considerable German “blood” running through British royal veins since 1700. So it is no “surprise” that Edward and Simpson welcomed the attention of the then current German leadership, which happened to be headed by none other than Adolf Hitler. 

 

Edward was a known anti-Semite, and Simpson went along given her predilection toward being seen in the company of those in elevated social positions. During the war after the Windsors fled France to neutral Spain, Churchill thought it necessary to send them off to a position in the Bahamas to prevent them from becoming a further embarrassment—and even being perceived as “traitorous” when it became known that German agents were offering Edward a figurehead position in a potential German-ruled Britain.

If Harry and Meghan are “traitors” to anything, it is to the notion that they have "rebelled" against existing to “serve” as placeholders to silly royal functions; Harry has made known his desire to serve the charitable foundations which his involvement served a useful PR purpose, yet he has been denied even this right out of petty spite by “The Firm.” For her part, Meghan has been under attack by the “white” side of her family, mostly a bunch of loafers and layabouts who probably are going “green” with envy by her success as an actress and beyond.

So, yes, I am going against the grain here in the face of what seems to be close to universal condemnation of the Sussexes—Meghan in particular—and the hypocritical defense of the other royals. So be it. I know what I see.