Month: November 2023

“Dear Dr. Kim:

“I’m a somewhat public figure, the head of state of a small island kingdom, and I have the rather distasteful task of visiting one of my country’s former colonies in the near future.

“Needless to say, I’m being scolded for the sins of my father (and grandfather, and great-grandfather, etc. etc.) and told that I have to apologise for the ‘unpleasant aspects’ of the colonisation of said ex-colony.

“What do you suggest I say?”

 — CR, London / Windsor / Balmoral et al.

Dear CR (if that is really your name, and not some silly outmoded title):

I think you have every obligation to apologize to these poor, hard-done-by indigenous assholes.

You should apologize for:

• creating an agricultural industry that helped them grow from a hodgepodge assortment of hunter-gatherers into an agricultural nation which would, had they not fucked up said industry through mismanagement (after your government left), have resulted in their country being self-sufficient for all their food needs instead of being the starving basket-case they are currently;
• a system of democratic government which they had never had before, but still rely on today — even though they’ve done their best to fuck that up with sundry military coups and so on in recent history;
• a legal system which doesn’t rely on the whim of a chief or the ravings of crazed witch-doctors, but on a series of laws which are more or less copies of your home country’s laws and which grant them all sorts of rights which their ordinary people never enjoyed over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place;
• things like hospitals (staffed by actual doctors and not the aforementioned crazed witch-doctors), schools which teach people how to read and write (skills also glaringly absent from the ordinary people over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place), and the engineering skills (e.g. roads and plumbing) which they rely upon today in a vain attempt to keep their tottering infrastructure running despite the grasping and egregious corruption and avarice which were, lest we forget, markedly absent from your previous colonial government — at least, compared to the industrial-scale thievery of current times;
• technology:  things like electricity, radio, telephones and television which, despite the efforts of the BBC to prove otherwise, never existed over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place;
• sports like cricket, football, tennis, golf and other harmless activities which took the place of indigenous sports like inter-tribal slaughter and fleeing from ravenous wild animals, all of which were a feature of life during the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place
• a language which enabled the multiple tribes to have a common lingua franca  instead of the intense mutual hatred and mistrust caused by not having such;
• a culture based upon hitherto-alien concepts like “fair play”, “doing the right thing” and lest we forget, “charity” — none of which, once again, were in existence over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place.

This is but a partial list of things you absolutely should apologize for:  I’m sure your former colonial officials can give you many more.

And then, having made said public groveling apologies, you should get out of town and visit some of the beautiful game parks and reserves, none of which existed over the few thousand years prior to your colonization of the wretched place.

I hope this helps.

—