Sword of Trust

I'm trying to think of the list of people I couldn't possibly find a way to have any empathy for, and it's probably a good sign that it's not that easy. Nazis, of course, they can all get anal fissures. School shooters. Animal abusers. Line-cutters. All Belgians, of course. Lakers fans. Not all Fox News watchers, but the real culty ones. I was going to say "most Boomers" but that's a bit obviously redundant with the immediately preceding.

For the most part I can find something. Everyone has a story of some kind, the details of which can only humanize. The more you learn, the more you can find a tone that resonates either with your history directly or the history of someone you know/love/don't actively wish harm to. The fact that it helps if they look like you or have a similar background is both a failing and a failsafe. It's evidence of a limitation, but also at least the bare minimum evidence in some cases that the empathy gland both exists and isn't entirely drained. Unless that looks-like-me tuner is cranked up to 11 and those are the only people you can feel sympathy for, then you're a Nazi, for which see above re: anal fissures.

I didn't watch the first British monarch coronation in near-as-makes-no-difference 70 years this past week, but it did engage the nagging of the question as I watched this really old dude sweat his way through a thousand years of tradition to take up a job you can only get because your mom died: can I, a middle class, middle aged American white dude, generate empathy/pity for someone like this King Charles III cat?

The first layer to penetrate is a bit literal: my dude is literally draped head to toe in gold and jewels. As far as drip goes, it's got the benefit of being blinged to all shit and bespoke as anything can possibly be. In this thought experiment, I have to feel some kind of human relation with someone wearing a cape made from the skin of some very fancy weasels. Anyone wearing any kind of fur, I mean, automatically "fuck that guy," right? I say in my moderately expensive Nike shoes wrought from stretched-out cow skin and assembled by Indonesian children. OK, so maybe this one is a wash, on moral grounds.

But then, think about it this way: the UK is cold as shit, all the literal time, but he's still almost certainly sweating his bollocks* off in way too many layers of what are basically his mom's clothes. Not only in public, but on TV! And as anyone who has ever sent a dick pic to the wrong person can tell you, once it gets on to the internet, it lives there forever. Just think, one day his grandkids are going to see this. So embarrassing!

And then the other side is: look, this is a guy who never had to have an actual job or an authentic human experience in his whole life. The ultra-extreme versions of wealth and celebrity that have accompanied and outlined his whole life from the time he was conceived, not even born, make it difficult to spend too much energy worrying about the feelings of some old stodgy pom in a metal hat. If this is as hard as it gets for him, on his literal coronation, well, feck right off, mate. Run a morning shift at a Starbucks in Monrovia and we'll compare notes.

That of course leads to: look at this lonely, sad, confused old man. A whole life where there are literally zero people who can relate to his experience as a human being. He could have been friends with, like, the future king of Spain I guess, but nobody gives a shit about the Spanish royal family. Plus Felipe VI didn't have to plan and execute (no pun intended) the funeral of his ex-wife who was literally hounded to death by the fame-jackals unleashed by the notoriety of his absolutely insanely global profile. El Rey has been married to the same woman for, like, decades now. You can't even have a good running tabloid conspiracy about her death being maybe a murder if she's still alive! Nobody understands ole Charlie Battenberg. He had to go an make a couple of kids who were the only ones who might have begun to understand, but it makes sense the even one of them was like "you people are fucking crazy, I'm moving to Santa Barbara." Is it coincidence that the only one left has exactly the same job/expectation/predicament as Charles? Prolly no.

Last thing I'll say is this: you wait and you wait, even setting every record available for heir-in-waiting. Your mom just lingers and lingers, not as long as her own centenarian mother did, but bloody long enough. And finally, at last, it's your day and every camera in the whole-ass world is gawping and fawning, drinking it up. And the next day, what is the main story? Some rando there had an unusual hair and mustache situation going on. It was bound to happen as every public event is a pageant of blurry backbenchers and side characters waiting to be made one day's Internet Main Story by perpetually starving meme hunter-gatherers. That one stings, even from here.

The only person happy about that had to be Prince Brother the Affirmed Creepy Nonce, who was also poised to be Front Page News just by showing up as his sweaty, repentance-proof self. Charles has not been blessed with the greatest cast of support characters. In the end I'd like to feel bad for him, but honestly it's hard to get too teary eyed for a guy who is going to end up with his face on all the fucking money.

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*I'm not sure what the King's English Received Pronunciation equivalent of "bollocks" is. Probably something euphemistic and maybe in Latin.