• 20th century was rough for England.
  • They won the World Cup in ’66, so that was a high point, but things went downhill after Victoria.
  • Don’t feel bad, though: the country’s still a military power with a high standard of living, and London is one the financial capitals of the globe.
  • It’s just that they don’t own the world any more.
  • In the 18th century, an Englishman could open fire on villagers on every continent except Antarctica.
  • He could open fire on penguins in Antarctica, I suppose.
  • Penguins have evolved in an environment free of predators, so they have no natural defenses, especially if said predators have rifles.
  • In 2016, an Englishman can open fire on neither villager nor frozen seabird.
  • A lot of folks have ruled the world, and then one day they didn’t any more.
  • America rules the world at the moment.
  • Surely, we’ll be the ones to figure out how to do it forever.
  • The sun used to never set on the British Empire, and now they’ve voted themselves into isolation, and Scotland will probably be gone within a few years.
  • I’ll get to the Brexit, or maybe I’ll forget; who knows, but first: Churchill!
  • YAAAAAAY!
  • Churchill! Churchill! Churchill!
  • That sound you hear is dads from three blocks over running towards the sound of Churchill: dads love Churchill.
  • But before Churchill was Churchill, he was also named Churchill, but he hadn’t done as much stuff.
  • That’s the sentence you’re going with?
  • Shh, I’m talking Churchill.
  • Okay: Winston Spencer Churchill was born in the 19th century, and was a fat little baby; his childhood is completely irrelevant.
  • Then he joined the army and bopped about the planet shooting at the dusky, gaining fame back home as a war correspondent.
  • You were allowed to hold both of those jobs at once back then, apparently.
  • Seems like a conflict of interest.
  • If you didn’t have a story, you could order your men to blow something up, and then you would have a story.
  • The wrong kind of behavior is incentivized.
  • Churchill fought the Mahdis, and the Mohmands, and the Boers; his success led him to a seat in Parliament and the office of First Lord of the Admiralty; in WWI, he helped plan the invasion at Gallipoli.
  • That did not go well at all.
  • You know your battle has gone poorly when the movie about it ends with the main character running in slow motion: Gallipoli, Glory, Black Adder Goes Forth.
  • In the years between wars, Churchill was a complete shitheel: he gassed Kurds, and would have gladly had Gandhi shot if he could’ve figured out how to do it without setting off subcontinent-wide riots, and screwed up Iran a little on behalf of an oil company, and was a staunch supporter of Edward VIII during the abdication crisis.
  • Never forget that England once had a king that gave up his throne in exchange for American blowjobs.
  • Eddie was a Nazi sympathize, though, so fuck him and his Baltimore floozy.
  • In the credit column for Churchill, he advocated attacking Russia during her revolution and killing Bolshevism while it was still a baby.
  • Years later, Churchill (along with Patton) would advocate attacking Russia after Germany’s surrender, when she was at her weakest.
  • Say what you will about the man, Churchill recognized the Cossack as the enemy to all that is good, and he should be saluted for this belief; it is still true.
  • And then along came Adolf.
  • Britons realized that perhaps the man to deal with Hitler was not Chamberlain, the man who made a deal with Hitler, and the minute that the Germans pointed their panzers west and took the Benelux countries, Churchill was made Prime Minister.
  • From a narrative point of view, it had to happen: if the bad guys have a Hitler, then you have to get a Churchill.
  • Just look at the names.
  • Hitler leads with violence
  • Churchill is on God’s side.
  • I keep telling you we’re in a novel, and you keep not listening to me.
  • Winston Churchill did not fight in the Second World War Two, as he was old and fat and drunk, but he made many speeches and smoked many, many cigars.
  • Everyone was drunk all the time in the past.
  • Maybe that’s why it was so awful.
  • Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin: constantly shnockered.
  • Of course, the bad guys were led by a speed freak and religious cultists, so maybe a tipple isn’t the worst thing in the world.
  • (I am not including Mussolini with the bad guys: Mussolini was the Shemp of the Axis.)
  • Anyway, the Nazis push the British army out of France.
  • Literally: the army was on the beach waiting for boats, and all of them showed up.
  • The Royal Navy, but also fishermen and pleasure boats and yachts, and 200,000 men were evacuated from Dunkirk in ten days.
  • This began England’s first strategy in WWII: be an island.
  • There are very few defenses against Nazi tank divisions better than being surrounded by the ocean.
  • Planes could get there, though.
  • London burned.
  • You know the rest of this story: the short version is that America saved the world all by herself.
  • The long version contains many facts which directly contradict the short version.
  • After the war, everything was fucked up and shit. (That is a direct quote from some tedious bullshit Niall Ferguson wrote, I swear.)
  • There were austerity measures, and not enough food, and the draft continued for some reason; Churchill returned as Prime Minister for a few years, but then he had a stroke and died, after which he no longer was in politics.
  • The fifties were when everything associated with modern-day Britain came into being: the NHS and the BBC were created; Elizabeth became queen after the death of Colin Firth; a group of Oxford pranksters wrote the fake plays that would be credited to “Shakespeare” in the greatest hoax ever played.
  • And then there was rock and roll, and comedy, and Thatcher, and the car industry collapsed, and chavs, and ASBOs, and the invention of closed-circuit culture, and the Spice Girls, and a Prime Minister stuck his dick in a pig.
  • That’s a lot of stuff.
  • And I am so sleepy.
  • GodDAMMIT.
  • This post is never going to end.