THE FEUDAL SPIRIT

MY GRANDMOTHER’S MINDSET 

If my grandmother had been alive today, she’d have screamed blue murder about the US outsourcing its manufacturing to China. She had a feudal mindset, whereby even letting domestic aides wear slippers was too much. 

Our family joke was that ‘good things are bad for domestics.’ That was her worldview in a nutshell.

When you look at the United States today, you’ll know why she would have shaken her head. It is barely 250 years old, practically a teenager in national years, and still trying to figure out who or what it is… 

Still trying to grab land and influence from Venezuela to Gaza, and threatening anyone who gets in its way – friend and foe alike. A spoilt teenager that hasn’t come of age but wants to run the neighbourhood.

What takes the cake is inviting King Charles III to celebrate its 250^th anniversary of independence, which was gained from his ancestor King George III. Have the Americans forgotten the whole point of the revolution? Or perhaps they want to crown him king of the US and Canada. Who knows? These people have a mindset all of their own.

Recent research by University College London (UCL) shows that European colonisation killed so many indigenous people in the Americas that it cooled the planet – genocide so large-scale that it changed the climate! 

After wiping out the native Americans and grabbing their land for free, the new country became rich in record time. It skipped all the slow steps that older societies go through – such as implementing a system with serfs, peasants, landowners and gradual development – and jumped straight to wealth. 

No wonder Americans behave like the nouveau-riche. Do you remember those gaudy Chevys, Buicks and Cadillacs from the 1950s, which contained more chrome than steel?

Such ostentatious displays of wealth in the drawing rooms of Colombo would have been called the mudalali style. I first heard that word in the 1960s after former prime minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike overturned the social apple cart and all the gaudy apples bobbed to the surface. 

Suddenly, everyone was showing off!

Americans love big things: big houses, big cars, big steaks; and worst of all, Big Macs. Two tasteless beef patties drowned in mayonnaise and tomato sauce, and placed between two slices of tasteless bread. And the burger must be followed by a Coke. It’s no wonder that 42 percent of Americans are obese.

Because they didn’t grow slowly as a society, they missed out on the social norms that evolve over centuries. They didn’t have the long history of class boundaries, etiquette and caution that older societies developed. 

Nor did they have the stage where domestics knocked on the back door, sat on benches and slept on mats… or centuries of learning how to handle wealth, knowledge and power in a responsible manner.

And because they didn’t have colonies like the British did, they didn’t learn the art of using other people’s labour while retaining the brains and manufacturing at home. The UK perfected that system by using colonial raw materials, manufacturing the goods in Britain and selling them back to the colonies. 

They were so good at it that London had a tea market in 1689 even though tea wasn’t grown anywhere near the UK at the time!

But in its rush to garner profits, the US threw caution to the wind and outsourced manufacturing to China, and forgot what a production line even looks like. Then it outsourced information processing to Indians who hailed from the subcontinent. Once called the ‘tech coolies,’ the Indians now run half the IT companies in the United States.

Americans love big things: big houses, big cars, big steaks; and worst of all, Big Macs 

I sometimes wonder if Indians privately call Americans ‘war coolies’ since the US spends all its money busting up countries and propping up unstable regimes.

And now, the unthinkable has happened. Descendants of the ‘half naked fakir,’ which was the derogatory term that then British premier Sir Winston Churchill used to describe Mahatma Gandhi, are being welcomed at the White House – wearing jackets and turbans, no less.

Meanwhile, China has aircraft carriers and fighter jets that are as sophisticated as those owned by the US. The real coup de grâce would be a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, though it’s doubtful Beijing would be that foolish. 

With 3,000 years of history and countless dynasties, the Chinese can spot an overstretched and declining empire from a mile away. 

It reminds me of the quote from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade: “Someone had blundered.” 

So far, only a few American service personnel dead but the threat of boots on the ground and the feeling of Vietnam is creeping back. You can almost smell it… is this the swan song? 

Hard to say but the tune is beginning to sound familiar.

Grandma also said that if you give domestics too much, they will climb on your back and try to go to the moon. Her words are apparently ringing in US President Donald Trump’s ears as he followed China to the moon – somewhere he had gone before.