How Very Dare You!

Yes, we know, the British are the world leaders in “la politesse”  and “cortesia” (ironically*). They will never be impolite to anyone. They would never call a black person a “nig-nog”. Not to their face.

They would never call an Australian a “colonial” or a ” convict”. Not these days at least. Except in private huddles amongst friends, or if they are frustrated that their inferiors refuse to do as they’re told.

To be fair, this is no longer the case in general. Only in the upper echelons of the well-bred, entitled and deluded.

One is required only to refrain from impoliteness. One is required to refrain from the appearance of disrespect, but not at all to actually respect those beneath one. The more politeness you can fake, the more superiority you display.

Politeness is so central to British authority that its absence in a social setting—seemingly, although anything but, an oversight—has become, as a diplomatic tool, a floating signifier. The story goes that if a foreign country was doing the wrong thing and the British were furious about it, MI5 would call in a representative of the offending country. To indicate the level of anger, the foreign official would not be offered a cup of tea.

Politeness as a mark of superiority is not limited to the increasingly Dis-United Kingdom of course [see, “No Longer Great Britain”  ^1,2,3 ]. The French are masters of a cold politeness.

Democrats in the US are politically hobbled and strangled by it.

Spain and Portugal are home (and motherland) to some of the most generous and polite people, their languages very courteous, por favor.  

The Dutch are not so much polite as “pleasant”. At least these days.

Not unrelatedly, the Italians long ago invented the concept of “Sprezzatura“.  The inventor of the term, Baldassare Castiglione, Count of Casatico, wrote his most famous book, Il Cortegiano, The Book of the Courtier. , in which he described Sprezzatura as:

“a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”. 

According to Wikipedia,

“It is the ability of the courtier to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them”. Sprezzatura has also been described “as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance”   

. . . .

Wescott states that Sprezzatura was, in a way, “the art of acting deviously“

So for centuries the royal courts and their dominions have been suffused with the studied nonchalance of Sprezzatura. To put this another way, most western countries remain suffused with a culture of social deception. Hiding, disguising, masking the truth.

• An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. (Henry Wotton)
• All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. (Zhou Enlai)
• DIPLOMACY:  The patriotic art of lying for one’s country. [Ambrose Bierce]

You might think that the rude, impolite, professional liar, Trump, is worse than this dishonest politeness but, despite the ugliness and the stench, his malignancy, poisonousness, narcissism and subnormality, his mendacity and fraud, are palpable. Not hidden, not masked. There’s never been any pretence of politeness. (He doesn’t know how.) At least his vulgarity is honest in a way because it’s utterly transparent. At least as transparent, unapologetic and foul as a Giuliani fart.   

In Australia, we are still clutching at the last fine thread of spider’s silk blowing out of Mother’s spinneret. . .

. . . the last sticky piece of the (once Great) British web to leave her arse.   

You see . . .

There is a thing that is pretending that what is so is not so—that the fortune; the titles; the servants and land; the privilege and status you enjoy, were not stolen by you or your murderous, barbarian ancestors—and that what is not so is so—that the world is cucumber sandwiches for tea; silk dresses; that the forelock tugging minions admire and respect you; and the divine right of robber barons). 

The British don’t like you to disturb these pretensions. They will say you are “uncouth”. Uncouth literally means “unknown”, or unfamiliar, unfriendly, unkind, or to put that another way, ‘you do not, as we do, hide your malignity behind a mask of stinking courtesy, refinement and elegance’. 

The sons of the British landed nobility have a necessary limit to their ambitions. They must join the military (as an officer of course), parliament, the clergy, the bureaucracy, or the diplomatic corps. These are perfect vocations where politeness is required.

Yes, even the military.

“I say, you there. You. Fellow, How d’you do? Pleased to meet you. We have been admiring your very pleasant country. You and your peasants have done an wonderful job of looking after it, don’t you know. It’s very beautiful and very large and you’re to be congratulated on the hard work you’ve done. However, we note that you have not made the most use you could of all the oil and ores that sit below your magnificent cities and gardens. In fact. it’s so beautiful and full of financial opportunities that we’re going to relieve you of it. So if you would be so kind as to hand it over immediately. . .  I understand that this will have come as somewhat of a surprise. Unfortunately, if you choose to decline this generous offer we will have no alternative but to destroy it all. You are an intelligent fellow and I think you’ll agree that this is the last thing either of us wants. I don’t know if you can see those large machines over there. They’re very powerful, ah, thingamawhatsits that blow up things and will wipe your towns and gardens completely away. I’m sure you will agree that this would be a very sad ending for your people after all of their hard work. But before you decide . . .  cup of tea?”

The most polite countries are also, under the skin, the most violent, brutal, murderous, barbarous, merciless, savage and, frankly, rude cultures. They are historically empire builders, looters, sackers, pillagers and thieves. Their roots go back to the warmongering Picts, Romans, Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Etc., etc. 

The Spanish and Portuguese shredded and annihilated rich Central and Southern American cultures for gold and glory. 

The Romans came, saw and conquered England, as did the French, and as the English did to the French. 

Christian—and therefore of course loving, as Jesus commanded—Europe for centuries ran numerous religious crusades against the Islamic tribes of the Eastern Mediterranean with varied (to put it, you know, politely) success. For example, In the Fourth Crusade the western Christian countries, rather than defeating Islamic Egypt as per plan and as advertised, decided to sack the Greek Christian city of Constantinople instead. For which they were excommunicated by Pope Innocent III. Spectacular own goal.

Italy in the un-distant past summarily made a ruthless grab on Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935. It was Mussolini’s idea and you would surmise that he had, nonchalantly, made the decision with full-on sprezzatura. So what was the extent of this Italian politeness, this cortegia, raffinatezza, eleganza? 

“The war was full of cruelty. Italian troops used mustard gas in aerial bombardments (in violation of the Geneva Conventions) against combatants and civilians in an attempt to discourage the Ethiopian people from supporting the resistance. Deliberate Italian attacks against ambulances and hospitals of the Red Cross were reported. By all estimates, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians died as a result of the Italian invasion, including during the reprisal Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa, in which as many as 30,000 civilians were killed.^[    

 Not particularly polite, courteous, refined, or elegant then. 

In the US only the Democrats are truly “polite”. Only Democrats would rather lose an election than be rude. In the most recent election they have had to rely on the “uncouth” anti-Trump, disillusioned ‘Lincoln’ Republicans to do their dirty work. 

No Democratic First Lady would ever say, “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?” A Republican FLOTUS did.

But Democratic as much as Republican administrations have done horrific damage in the world and to indigenous and black Americans. They have razed countries on spurious grounds; Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. With a polite, have a nice day, botox smile they continue to deny all Americans the decency of universal healthcare which all other “civilised” countries have take for granted for decades.  

To the extent that Americans are polite it is astonishing how much they hate themselves.

The rate at which they kill each other is bewildering both in the streets and by judicial murders. 60% of states still have the Death Penalty. Americans have long loved to kill Americans by lynching, stabbing, shooting, dragging them behind a truck, and even more entertaining ways. They have basked in the joy of legally killing people by firing squad, hanging, electrocution and lethal injection.

As Texas Governor, George W. Bush executed a record 153 people. His successor (2000-2015), Rick Perry, was not to be beaten. He executed 279 people. In Texas (12% of its population black) 70% of the executions were of black people. 

Americans are masked barbarians, who smile the polite smile of moral certitude and white supremacy. 

The rate at which Americans imprison each other is, if anything, even more bewildering. With 4.3% of the world’s population it has almost 20% of the world’s prisoners at any time. About 5%, one in 20, of all Americans but 33%, one in three, of black Americans can expect to spend time in prison in their lifetime.     

Israel? [Note: this is not about any religion but about the State of Israel. Note 2: Sir Roger’s Great Great Grandmother was a French Jewess and he can trace this ancestry down through the maternal line to his mother, which makes him Jewish if he chooses to be (even if secular) so . . . ]
Not sure if Israelis are polite, although the ones Sir Roger has met have been both pleasant and interesting. Many Israelis are very refined and their social culture goes back centuries, millennia, steeped in the arts, science and humanities. However, despite many being interesting and pleasant some Israelis have been as cruel and inhumane as any. Several Israeli Prime Ministers and politicians—including Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon—honed their skills in “militant” groups like Haganah, Lehi (the ‘Stern Gang’), Irgun, and the IDF, which grew through the 20th Century in the period up to and after the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. 
So despite our understanding of the horrific conditions faced by Israelis and their forebears throughout their history, we might have thought that with their intellect and humanity they would be more, you know, humane when it came to the plight of those who also for millennia had called Palestine home and who now were, and are, themselves systematically displaced. But Israel has not hidden the single, central tenet that drives the Israeli state:

NEVER AGAIN
WHATEVER IT TAKES     

So really there’s no subterfuge here. They are ruthless like everyone else and they don’t pretend otherwise.

The great British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, Russian, German and Dutch empires were all created through brutal invasion. 

At the height of European civilisation, civility and enlightenment the wealth of many western countries was built on African slavery.

The polite British did their best to wipe out the Australian indigenous peoples and the polite Australians themselves tried to finish the job in the 20th Century under the disguise of “Aboriginal Protection”. Unsuccessfully.

The courteous Dutch and English fought the Boer War to win ownership of the South African people, their land and their resources.

The ‘Dutch’-speaking white supremacist (baasskap) Afrikaners held the non-white South African people down through ruthless and inhumane segregation and through Apartheid from 1948 to 1991. (We did say the Dutch were pleasant rather than polite.)   

Ah, France! Douce France, land of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen, country of surely the most refined, most elegant, most cultured. most diplomatically polite (well, if you pronounce French correctly). Chère France, sentimental home of the Guillotine, although the “display of severed heads had long been one of the most common ways European sovereigns exhibited their power to their subjects.” Cultured. Refined. Awfully polite sovereigns. 

But this was long ago. In fact the last beheading by guillotine in France was as long ago as 10 September 1977.

Nevertheless the French have worked hard to maintain their reputation for barbarism obscured by refinement.

Mon Bleu! Paris, city of Romance, as recently as 17 October 1961 hosted the intentional massacre of up to 300 peacefully demonstrating Algerians under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, formerly a Vichy Gestapo collaborator in WWII.  Many were murdered by brutal police beatings. Others died in mass drownings, when police threw demonstrators, who sometimes had been knocked unconscious, into the river Seine.

And Australia?

British patricians brought their politeness to Australia along with the convicts and free settlers. We wanted so much to be like the “real British”. 5th generation Australians used to call a trip to England on a P&O boat “going home“. We copied the British. We learnt how to pretend to be polite, even when we were angered when the Aborigines refused to understand that they no longer owned ‘their’ land, and that we couldn’t care less about their savage “culture”. We still offered them a cup of tea. 

But in the fullness of time Australians got sick of the English bullshit and dissimulation. On the upside it was useful to know that language at the same time we were becoming more and more pragmatic about language. We were busy working, creating a nation. That took all our effort. We didn’t have time for bullshit. The British thought we were uncouth because they didn’t understand this unfamiliar idea of truth. With all this we developed as a culture of openness, straightforwardness and a remarkable talent for bullshit detection. We have the British to thank for that.

Not that we don’t still have many polite liars in our midst but they are mostly limited to politics and religion (now worryingly closing in on each other), the law and bureaucracy, banks and finance, real estate and advertising, and other scams.  

It’s not that politeness is not one of Australians’ endearing qualities along with friendliness and openness.

It’s just that when we’re polite it’s because we’re actually polite. And when we’re polite it’s real.     

. . .

Post Script: 
Sir Roger has asked me to point out that he does know Australian values and culture are slightly more complex than your interlocutor has suggested above  

* (go for it)