With the death of Her Maj, I have seen so many of my social media connections somehow feeling the need to comment about her in a favourable way, even though they would normally count themselves as republicans, or anti-monarchy, or anti-hierarchy, or anti-being-ruled-over-by-a-stinkingly-rich-elite.
But now, they say, whatever our feelings about such things, we must put them aside because the nation is in mourning and an old woman has died and her family will be grieving and it is so disrespectful to say otherwise.
But then, why say anything at all?
Fair enough if you don't want to offend, but why join in with the posh-washing?
If one of the Kardashians (or insert any other wealthy celebrity family of choice) died, would it be fitting for me to come out and publicly say that although I disagree with the whole notion of the celebrity worship culture that is almost epitomised by the Kardashians, this is a terrible time for a family who have lost a loved one?
And if so, why am I not publicly expressing my support for the families of the 178,000 other people who die every day across the world?
In the end, the only thing I wrote on Facebook was *cough* virtue-signalling *cough* but didn't hit enter.
I sat staring at it for a full 2 minutes before concluding that all I would be doing is upsetting a few people for a few seconds for my own self satisfaction, and what's the point in that?
Each person's righteous outburst on FB is toxic to someone else.
So I deleted it before I could change my mind, and it was never posted.
Instead I wrote about the whole thing here on this blog post as a way of getting it off my chest, secure in the knowledge that it's unlikely to be seen by more than 2 or 3 people at most.
Actually, I did also type, "love the monarch, hate the monarchy", on the page of someone who has been known to write "love the sinner, hate the sin" about homosexuality. But I don't think they understood...
