The Queen is Dead. Fuggedaboutit.

Some of those shedding crocodile tears are real crocodiles

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

Do you really feel cool about all the fawning over a dead foreign queen?

Maybe it depends on who’s doing the fawning.

Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, decreed his nation would observe three days of mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, and he’s making sure to attend her funeral Monday.

As far as I can tell, if he catches a glimpse of her lying in state, it will be the first time he’s ever seen her.

Bolsonaro, who really wants to be a dictator, not a president, has two things in mind with this sudden affection for the British royal family. He wants to look like he’s an international big shot so he has a better chance of winning an upcoming election. And he wants Brazilians to identify him with a chic, established monarchy so when, Trumplike, he refuses to leave upon losing, it’ll be less weird. And then when he governs like Mussolini, that might not seem so icky, either.

When much of the world is tilting toward fascism, kissing up to monarchs might not be the way to go. Budding dictators don’t deserve the validation of association with popular potentates. Or any other kind of validation.

Bolsonaro’s not the only winking fan of the deceased queen. There’s Xi Jinping, the Chinese boss who regularly violates an agreement with the queen’s country that requires he govern Hong Kong fairly. But all that aside, he said the queen had been a rad old dame, and he can’t wait to whisper into the enormous ears of her son.

Vladimir Putin lined up to smooch the royal butt, too, saying the queen “rightfully enjoyed the love and respect of her subjects, as well as authority on the world stage.” 

Russians have long had a soft spot for English royalty, probably dating back to the days when they had a similar setup. One would think that would be soured by the UK sending billions of pounds worth of weapons to Ukraine, in the interest of killing as many Russkies as possible. But Putin says he just loved QE2.

The two big Asian arseholes just had an interesting summit with the third, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi looks at the whole British Empire thing a little differently, though.

As Beth was on her deathbed, Modi was presiding over the change of street signs marking New Delhi’s wide Rajpath (British-India Path) to Kartavya Path (Path of Duty). He may be as miserable an autocrat as Putin and Xi, but he runs a country that actually still resents being squished under the British thumb.

At the summit Friday, Modi told off Putin for his war in Ukraine, and Xi reportedly wasn’t too happy, either. That kind of unpopularity and failure doesn’t pave the way for a nifty invasion of Taiwan.

Nicolas Maduro, the illegitimate president of Venezuela, would probably like to go to the royal funeral, but the Brits say he can’t come. The UK, along with a few dozen other countries, doesn’t recognize the autocrat as Venezuela’s real boss after he orchestrated a sham reelection in 2019.

Unfortunately, the 96-year-old queen wasn’t on the same page as Parliament. Last month, Maduro delightedly produced three recent diplomatic letters from her referring to him as “President of Venezuela.” 

More than bragging rights are involved. Her koshering of Maduro’s status may lead to him getting his hands on $1 billion in Venezuelan gold stashed in the Bank of England.

In general, almost everywhere fans of authoritarianism hang, there’s affection for old Liz. Even here in the U.S. 

“The British Empire was not perfect, but it was far more humane than any other, ever. It's gone now, barely even remembered. Queen Elizabeth II was the last living link to a truly great Britain,” Tucker Carlson said.

Well, he’s right about one thing. The British Empire is indeed barely remembered. By him.

“(W)hat did come after the British Empire?” Carlson went on. “How, for example, did Africa fare after the British left? Let’s see, Uganda got Idi Amin, who was a cannibal. Rhodesia became Zimbabwe and then became the poorest country on the planet under the racist lunatic Robert Mugabe. As of tonight, South Africa is still being run into the ground by an incompetent kleptocrat called Cyril Ramaphosa.”

Ah, I see. The current troubles of Africa have nothing to do with the foreigners who used to run it. And the only real racists in Africa are Blacks. So it would be terrific if Carlson's delightfully benign colonialists could start running things again, telling the people who actually populate the continent how they should behave.

And what’s that about kleptocracy?