We’ve just done our July 4th thing. Sentimentalists (I don’t use the word “patriots”) get all misty and irritated on this day. They satisfy their need to mist by playing military band music, and in their rhetoric, confuse us sometimes about what’s actually being celebrated—not so much mention is made of the American Revolution or the Declaration of Independence any more, but there’s often much talk about our veterans, etc. July 4th over time has gotten mixed up with all kinds of other things; it’s all tied up now with whatever is “patriotic.” After all, England (which hardly even exists now anyway; it’s been subsumed into something called the UK, which is, in turn, subsumed into something called the EU) is our long-standing closest ally. So it’s kind of difficult to assume a contrary posture toward the country from which we once declared our independence and on which we once waged war. So—we settle for something rather like general patriotism and wax sentimental. The irritation comes from this very muddledness about what we’re celebrating. People get irritated at the lack of reverence paid to patriotism. They want to interrupt the cook-outs and fireworks to restore a more reverent regard toward July 4th—which used to be called Independence Day. You never hear that term any more, however, which is a good indication of the holiday’s lost original meaning.

 

History is consistent, it seems, in only one characteristic: irony. The English apparently have almost no memory of this Huge Event. They were deeply involved in their own revolution, the Industrial one, and of course, in trying to deal with a mentally ill king. The rabble of rebels in the colonies didn’t warrant a great deal of their attention at the time. As it turned out, this minor disturbance became, in terms of global history, enormously decisive. Ironic. 

 

English history is full of reiterations of that strange narrow focus. They seem to get obsessed by little things, little things they regard as big, the things that offend them by contradicting the image they have of themselves. The film Bridge on the River Kwai back in the fifties rather says it all. But a good example is the way they lost the war in the colonies. The rebels were unorganized farmers who had muskets and a first-hand knowledge of the forests and swamps. Having dealt with Indian uprisings most of their lives, guerilla fighting was instinctive. The English fought in formation, in bright red uniforms (how dumb is that?), and in regimentation. They lost—but hey, they looked really fine, didn’t they. They kept those deck chairs on the Titanic lined up with impressive precision.

 

Or another example, this one involving no external influence of any kind: Whipped into a fury of Englishness, they did their damnedest to root out foreign “Romishness” and wound up being blindsided by their own obsessiveness. In the attempt to “purify” the country from all traces of the perceived foreign evil of Catholicism, the very monarchy which had instigated all this righteous nationalism got itself beheaded—literally. 

 

But England learned nothing from this or any other consequence of their self-imaging. Now, that habit seems about to make the country itself quietly vaporize. Their self-image in these modern times involves pluralism, multiculturalism, and all that jazz, which unsurprisingly threatens to dissolve things “English” altogether. But that doesn’t matter—the deck chairs are lined up and their self-image is intact. 

 

History is ironic, but English history is a case study in irony. Fond of seeing themselves as a “common sense” people, they are of all peoples perhaps the most romantic. Historically, they project their romanticism on the French and fail to see it in the mirror where it actually abides. They’re always falling in love with the “exotic”—like Arabia or India, for example, with any people or culture non-Christian. And then—again blindsided—their own English religion and culture disappears. Even their country disappears. Ironically (again), this doesn’t happen because of some ever-feared foreign power, but because of a mirror.

 

With apologies to the poetic convention of phonetic spelling, “Ah, to see ourselves as others see us!” But wait—the poet was a Scot.