A sip of Starrshine

bill bryson once actually wrote down in a whole book and got published that the english were superb gardeners and i about threw the book out the window i was that outraged. the english!!! the fucking ENGLISH. them? that's who you want to laud? the english

the

THERE ARE A GRAND FUCKING TOTAL OF ZERO STAPLE CROPS ORIGINALLY OR EVEN PRIMARILY CULTIVATED BY THE ENGLISH. NONE OF THEM. NOT POTATOES NOT WHEAT NOT TURNIPS NOT RYE. THEY GNAWED THEIR ISLAND DOWN TO A NUB FOR NOTHING. THE WOLVES AND BEARS ALL GONE FOR NOTHING. THE WILDCATS AND BIRDS AND MUSTELIDS AND INSECTS, GONE IN THEIR THOUSANDS, FOR NOTHING. FOR SOME SHEEP. FOR

THEIR MAIN AGRICULTURAL EXPORT IS FAMINE

anyway the english approach to agriculture, biodiversity, and environmentalism is roughly on par with a dog's approach to someone else's homework and everywhere in the world that has inherited their cack-fisted disdain for nature has suffered immensely. i can't overstate enough how bad things have been and still are.

The only wildlife bigger than a cat I've ever seen (birds aside), is some deer. From very, very, very far away. I've seen foxes maybe a dozen times? And that's it.

The fact we have A FUCKING LYNX CENSUS may tell you how common they are. The 2401 number is a huge success, because back in 2002 there were only 94 of them left.

But go off I guess.

This article is from 2022, but it came up in the context of Palestine:

Here are some striking passages, relevant to all colonial aftermaths but certainly also to the forms we see Zionist reaction taking at the moment:

Over the decade I lived in South Africa, I became fascinated by this white minority [i.e. the whole white population post-apartheid as a minority in the country], particularly its members who considered themselves progressive. They reminded me of my liberal peers in America, who had an apparently self-assured enthusiasm about the coming of a so-called majority-minority nation. As with white South Africans who had celebrated the end of apartheid, their enthusiasm often belied, just beneath the surface, a striking degree of fear, bewilderment, disillusionment, and dread.

[...]

Yet these progressives’ response to the end of apartheid was ambivalent. Contemplating South Africa after apartheid, an Economist correspondent observed that “the lives of many whites exude sadness.” The phenomenon perplexed him. In so many ways, white life remained more or less untouched, or had even improved. Despite apartheid’s horrors—and the regime’s violence against those who worked to dismantle it—the ANC encouraged an attitude of forgiveness. It left statues of Afrikaner heroes standing and helped institute the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which granted amnesty to some perpetrators of apartheid-era political crimes.

But as time wore on, even wealthy white South Africans began to radiate a degree of fear and frustration that did not match any simple economic analysis of their situation. A startling number of formerly anti-apartheid white people began to voice bitter criticisms of post-apartheid society. An Afrikaner poet who did prison time under apartheid for aiding the Black-liberation cause wrote an essay denouncing the new Black-led country as “a sewer of betrayed expectations and thievery, fear and unbridled greed.”

What accounted for this disillusionment? Many white South Africans told me that Black forgiveness felt like a slap on the face. By not acting toward you as you acted toward us, we’re showing you up, white South Africans seemed to hear. You’ll owe us a debt of gratitude forever.

The article goes on to discuss:

"Mau Mau anxiety," or the fear among whites of violent repercussions, and how this shows up in reported vs confirmed crime stats - possibly to the point of false memories of home invasion

A sense of irrelevance and alienation among this white population, leading to another anxiety: "do we still belong here?"

The sublimation of this anxiety into self-identification as a marginalized minority group, featuring such incredible statements as "I wanted to fight for Afrikaners, but I came to think of myself as a ‘liberal internationalist,’ not a white racist...I found such inspiration from the struggles of the Catalonians and the Basques. Even Tibet" and "[Martin Luther] King [Jr.] also fought for a people without much political representation … That’s why I consider him one of my most important forebears and heroes,” from a self-declared liberal environmentalist who also thinks Afrikaaners should take back government control because they are "naturally good" at governance

Some discussion of the dynamics underlying these reactions, particularly the fact that "admitting past sins seem[ed] to become harder even as they receded into history," and US parallels

And finally, in closing:

The Afrikaner journalist Rian Malan, who opposed apartheid, has written that, by most measures, its aftermath went better than almost any white person could have imagined. But, as with most white progressives, his experience of post-1994 South Africa has been complicated. [...]