Strange Women Lying in Ponds Distributing Swords

Congratulations, Harry and Meghan! All hail, little Prince Soon-To-Be-Named!
Now everybody please get over it.
I know the British royal family is just one among a galaxy of unworthy subjects modern Americans waste their time and attention on, but it particularly gets my patriotic, historical, social and aesthetic goats.
For starters, a reminder about a fundamental principle of American freedom: Royalty is bad.
Without a garrison of Redcoats looming over your farm, it gets easy to forget that. (Thank you, Mr. President, for reminding us of the historic depredations in D.C. by somebody in the War of 1812 — British, Canadians, whoever.)
Since the Revolution, Americans have relapsed into thinking an English accent equates to sophistication, thanks to a seemingly innate reflex like the one that gives rich, white guys automatic authority without reference to professional or moral merit.
Americans’ nonsensical interest in the modern royalty distills this flaw in our national psyche.
I promise, I’m not still sore about the stamp act, or the troops quartered among us, or even the merciless savages. After all, we not only won independence from Britain, we got stronger and richer, and then we showed up and bailed them out of a couple serious scrapes. And of the itemized complaints in the Declaration of Independence that were not either exaggerated, bogus or imperialistic and racist, we’ve done worse things to ourselves than King George ever did — heck, we’ve gotten suspending the legislature down to a routine.
But George Washington didn’t let people call him “your majesty,” and the framers made inherited titles unconstitutional (ok, props to the rich white guys).
Yet the fact remains, we still revere people based on the success their ancestors had at appropriating land and oppressing peasants, which most of us were.
Is this reflex some sort of nostalgia for the good old days of getting trod ’neath the fancy heels of our moral inferiors?
Meanwhile, every school teacher, gas station attendant and Marine veteran you meet in a normal day does more good and deserves more respect than a royal. Every dry cleaner, barista, beautician and farmer is more interesting and productive.
Sure, fame generates its own publicity and media feedback loop. But why the royals? Is it the castles, the clothes, the ears …?
Why this fascination with people less interesting and even less admirable than the Kardashians, who at least built their own empire of illusion. The current royals use an illusion built up by 947 years of other people’s hard work.
So now we have a tabloid fascination that puts British royalty, supposedly a paradigm of high class, on exactly the same level as the most vulgar characters in the increasingly misnamed “reality” that inspires half the programming on TV.
Simple demographics guarantees that kings will, on average, be below average in their ability to run a country. As a system of government, hereditary monarchy is therefore worse than picking a person out of the population totally at random and investing them with ultimate power. The only potentially redeeming feature, stable succession, is too fraught with violent exceptions to merit mention.
The occasional examples of hereditary rulers who seem to combine a modicum of administrative capability and interest in public good, like Charlemagne or William of Orange, stand out precisely because the interval of stable leadership is so obviously exceptional.
Then when an energetic, capable person rises to power and establishes a new dynasty, their successors are necessarily less impressive, thanks to an effect
statisticians call “regression toward the mean.”
Thankfully, the United States won the Revolution, thereby ensuring we would never again have to worry about people in power putting close family members in positions of trust and responsibility.
Ancient Rome’s string of “good emperors” — the A.D. 96-180 run of five competent leaders appointed by their predecessors — ended as soon as one of them had an adult son to take over, and Russel Crowe’s birth was 1,784 years away.
Poor Vladimir Putin, doubly cursed as a misogynist and would-be dynasty founder without a son even among his illegitimate offspring. There was a promising son-i-n-law selected from the billionaire oligarchs, but that ended in divorce, while the other legit daughter married a Dutchman.
Let’s not kid ourselves. This is the only reason Putin did not mark the centenary of the fall of the Romanovs by crowning himself czar. a move the people of Russia would welcome enthusiastically, based on their gratitude for the way Putin has undermined the economy, civil liberties and basic public services.
Not one to criticize without offering solutions, I do have a few suggestions in case we decide reverence for a vapid, national figurehead is indispensable.
Alternative 1: Pick someone completely at random to be monarch for life. Give them constant publicity and inexhaustible wealth. When they die, hold another nationwide lottery. Sure, we could end up revering a pillar of the community or a hardened criminal, a charismatic wit or a talentless sociopath just like picking whoever happens to be next in line of a single royal family, but at least the random successor would have some claim to represent the general population.
Alternative 2: Count web searches and crown the top person, reign valid until Google rank drops.
Alternative 3: Rotate the crown between musical genres. We kind of do this already — Kings Benny Goodman, Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, Queen Aretha Franklin. Alas, this approach has the disadvantage that the royals actually deserve attention.
Alternative 4: Award a crown and universal reverence to someone who exemplifies virtues like humility, grace, wisdom, generosity … Beg pardon, what was I thinking?
Meanwhile, if I find myself wondering about Meghan and Harry, I will try to match that wasted time by thinking about the school teacher or gas station attendant or Marine veteran —— people who actually matter.
So have your own royal day, and long live Queen Khloe!

Drew Herman is a Sound Publishing copy editor and award-winning columnist. Ceterum censo "utilize" esse delendam.