by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Americans think of Great Britain as our far older, posh relative that swings by every once in a while to hand out Fleabag DVDs. The United States is so big that we only have a hazy understanding of the outside world. Canada, cold. Mexico, hot. Great Britain — King George III was an asshole, Churchill was cool.
I’m not in any way suggesting I have any bead on the slow-motion collapse of Great Britain, but anyone paying attention to the goings on there will have to admit that the United Kingdom of 2021 has a very 1918 Austro-Hungarian vibe to it.
Or, to put a more fine point on it, a closer historical approximation might be Czechoslovakia. The two nations that made up that multi-ethnic state just gave up and split because they no longer had the energy to stay together.
The same thing with Great Britain, in that it definitely seems as though the very concept of being “British” is beginning to evaporate. Just look at how worked up the English got when they faced Italy on the football pitch recently. The English team didn’t go into that sports battle as British, they went into it as English.
This leads to the question, “How would America react if Great Britain finally buckled and ceased to exist?”
Well, ironically the United States is, uh, going through somethings right now itself. The United States is suffering a similar disunity momentum as Great Britain is. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say at some point between now and when the US is likely to go tits up (2024-2025) the UK beats us to it.
First, there would be earth shattering shock that the Union Jack was no longer applicable. The idea that once the Scots bounce out of the UK that the Union Jack would be moot would be something the poor old American brain could not comprehend. It’s a simple thing to grasp and a lot of people who don’t care about geopolitics would gasp.
Then, as the whole country pealed away with the departure of Wales and the unification of Ireland, Americans would start to make comparisons to the other big collapse of the last century — the Soviet Union.
But the dissolution of the UK would be one of those rare occasions when the United States would sit up and take notice that there was an Outside World beyond our boarders. Comparisons would also, likely be make to the shock of the 1940 Fall of France.
There would even be a bit of a question as to how difficult it would be to make the rump state of England a US state. (This would happen in some of the more bonkers portions of MAGA because, well, white people.)
We just would not be able to process any of it at first.
Until, of course, we had our own civil war and then everyone would say, “Fuck, both major Anglophone nations collapsed within years of each other.”
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