The Queen is dead. Long live the King. The monarchy must endure because reasons.
The Queen is fondly eulogized by continents of people because she was symbolically connected to so many of them. Not for anything in particular she did; she is remembered for her grace, dignity, etc. all the things that can’t actually be pointed to. She’s a celebrity, famous for being famous. Like if Paris Hilton had a colonial empire, but for whatever reason, was mourned like Robin Williams.
You might gather by my tone that I am a republican, in the European sense of the word, with no apparent shame in demeaning the recently deceased. But this is no ordinary death, it is the death of a dictator. An autocrat by any other name would smell as sweet. I would be just as sardonic over the death of Vladimir Putin, I assure you. However, for the sake of argument, let’s say she was just a sweet old lady, and all those stories about racism are irrelevant. A benevolent Queen, a loving shepherd tending to her flock.
There are a surprising number of people who want to believe in the benevolent dictator. The millions of Trump supporters hoping to overthrow democracy to install their glorious leader see him as benevolent to their interests, at least, apathetic to the interests of everyone else. But even on the left, there exists among some the wish for a politician who could get into power and just ram through environmental protections irrespective of lobbyist interference or whiny pipeline apologists. The world is dying, and the efficiency of a single-minded focus to overrule the profit-driven oil and gas industries and enforce measures to ensure our existential survival is quite seductive. And honestly pretty logical too, since accommodating the bad faith actors and those with suicidal profit motives may mean we don’t make it as a species given our limited timeframe. A benevolent dictator also means we don’t have to worry about these problems because we’ve got absolute power taking care of things for us – it’s the allure of a kind and caring god, answering our prayers, and abdicating us of any responsibility.
The problem with autocracy is that there’s just one ruler with absolute power. And despite millennia of precedent, we won’t assume that absolute power is going to corrupt our benevolent dictator because benevolence is right there in the name. Our hypothetical framework does not extend to advisors, sycophants, and other surrounding officials, however. Even a dictator with good intentions is still open to corrupting influences, especially if our ruler is siloed away in some government office or palace or whatever era you want to place our hypothetical. People are going to seek to gain from that absolute power, and it’s beyond even the naivety of those who believe in benevolent dictators to suggest that they will all bear equal levels of benevolence to our ruler. With an institution of absolute power, coups are inevitable, and benevolence does not provide immunity from harm.
Let’s indulge that naivety and suggest that our wise ruler is incorruptible, impervious to influence, and their aristocrats or children don’t think to overthrow them. Our autocrat, however close to a god their champions want them to be, is not omniscient. Benevolence is a mere disposition, and while there requires a degree of wisdom to impose philanthropic decrees, being one person limits our dictator in what they can possibly be philanthropic about. Our environmental autocrat from earlier may have spent their life studying environmental engineering to determine what practical solutions are necessary to reverse climate change, but ultimately that means that they’re pretty ignorant in a lot of other areas. What do they know of labour relations, racial equity, First Nations sovereignty, prison and police reform (or abolition), and all those other things our leftist dreamers might want from a benevolent dictator? No matter how benevolent or wise, it’s impossible for one person to know enough about everything to be benevolent toward every facet of society.
Along similar lines, our ruler is going to come from a certain location that is going to influence the way they see the world. Our dictator will necessarily come from a culture, and from this, will necessarily have an in-group. This doesn’t imply that our dictator will be malevolent toward the out-group, we’ve established our parameters forcing them otherwise, but it does imply they will have biases and blind spots. That’s why people love Trump: he shares and reinforces their biases, so they’re not worried about a tyranny with him at the helm, blind spots be damned. But even our benevolent dictator won’t be able to act on things alien to them, leaving the out-group at a disadvantage in reaping the benefits of their lord’s benevolence.
It might be argued that our benevolent dictator would delegate in arenas where they lack the expertise or background to be effective rulers. However, that leads us back to our original problem: we can’t extend benevolence indefinitely, nor can we assume that our autocrat would have the wisdom to appoint appropriate delegates to the right position. Sycophants gonna sycophant, after all. If we allow other factors to determine how these people become appointed, then our dictator is no longer such, and the hypothetical fails.
Let’s indulge in comatose levels of naivety and suggest that everything up until this point is irrelevant, and our dictator is righteous enough to avoid influence, knowledgeable enough to implement policy across all fields, and is connected to their people enough to avoid bias and blind spots. An omnipotent leader who is all-good, all-knowing, and ever-present across their realm. I’ve essentially described God, not-so-subtly alluding to the fictitious nature of our hypothetical dictator. However, even if all of these things were miraculously true, our divine dictator has one fatal flaw: mortality. Even Jesus Christ died on the cross, leaving His rule to the fallible.
Constructing an institution of absolute power means that even if such a fantasy as a benevolent dictator came to life like Geppetto’s marionette, they too would then die, leaving in place a vacuum which would need to be filled. Monarchs typically leave their power to their progeny, just as the British kingdom will inevitably pass to Elizabeth’s children once Charles kicks the bucket. Can you imagine if the next in line was Jeffrey Epstein’s buddy Andrew rather than William? Queen Elizabeth could have been the best fucking monarch the world had ever seen, but it means nothing if her successor pisses it all away.
I like to think of the great Shah Akbar, the third Mughal ruler of India. He unified the subcontinent, was loved by non-Muslims and Muslims alike for his fair accommodation to diversity, and invested in art and culture to create a peaceful, prosperous land. He was succeeded by his son, Jahangir, who was fine, but the cracks began to form as he had to stave off his own son who attempted a coup against him. He had similar interests in art and culture to his father, but he didn’t have the same authority. Next up was a non-coup son, who became Shah Jahan. He started being a bit more militaristic, expanding the empire – up to you whether you think it’s still benevolent to violently seize and annex new territory. He’s the guy who commissioned the Taj Mahal for his favourite dead wife, so he left behind some pretty architecture at least, but it does seem like we’re starting to lose track of the citizenry here.
The next son is Aurangzeb, who basically ignored his father’s wishes of who would succeed next, and took leadership by force, imprisoning his father in the process. He was very militaristic, and expanded the Mughal empire to its largest point. Aurangzeb was a strict Muslim, and demolished a bunch of Hindu temples during his reign, abandoning all pretenses of tolerance once proudly exhibited by his great-grandfather. His militarism drove the empire to bankruptcy, and he didn’t name a successor so his sons fought it out amongst themselves: a civil war that effectively cemented the downfall of the Mughal dynasty.
When looking at those with power, we must keep in mind the institutions that legitimize them. The Queen no longer governs in the traditional sense, ruling now only symbolically, but still: a symbol of what? What does her elegance and grace mean to the people of India or Palestine, to the Indigenous peoples of British colonies? Hell, what does it mean to the working classes of England who derive no benefit from, or indeed are actively harmed by, an institution of incestuous nepotism? We’ve romanticized Kings and Queens, knights and princesses, to the point where the fiction feels more real than the reality. The best kind of power is the one that is diffused as thinly as possible among those who are impacted by its influence. Pretending a dictator can be benevolent ignores the tyranny inherent in the institution.
The nicest thing one can say about Queen Elizabeth is that she existed as a benign tumor. The cancer remained dormant. How long do we have to wait before it begins to metastasize? Even if we want a god to save us from ourselves, such a thing is impossible. God is dead; the Queen is dead. Maybe we should start taking responsibility.
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