In Darkest London

A writer friend of mine who has been traveling abroad recently sent me the following letter from London, which he had not visited in over a decade. It seems that England has almost totally exhausted the cultural capital of Anglicanism. Here is the letter (my friend asks to remain anonymous):

I've been in London for almost a week now, and I think it just might have been the longest week of my life. If you want to know what the Camp of the Saints is going to be like when it hits Pennsylvania, come to London.

The tragedy of modern London is that if it did a Queen Isabella and expelled all its Muslims tomorrow, the situation would be no better. Peter Hitchens, the excellent Daily Mail columnist, has even argued that Muslims could be our short-term allies against the banksters and pornographers who control both major parties. He is not, of course, suggesting that any more permanent agreement should ever be made with them. He is merely paying credit where credit is due to the fact that Muslims actually believe their own stuff.

What are the two greatest horrors of London in 2009? I would say they are
slovenliness and credulity. The slovenliness has to be seen to be credited. Almost nothing works: showers, baths, light switches, most public telephones. E-mails and phone messages hardly ever generate a response. Allegedly competent businessmen will answer the phone by saying, not "Acme Enterprises, John Doe speaking", but "Hello". Even billionaires cannot afford a decent education for their children. (Homeschooling would be punished with the full ferocity of the law.) My hostess's son, who I believe graduated from some institution optimistically called a university, grunts - one can scarcely say "converses" - in a relentless mumbled prole-speak that, during my English childhood, was totally unknown outside the vilest Birmingham public housing projects.

Yet the slovenliness is as nothing compared with the credulity. To the spite of a Parisian concierge, the average Londoner (especially if elderly and female) adds a most un-concierge-like capacity for believing the most outrageous lies. If these lies involve blacks, Arabs, or Catholics - let alone black Arab Catholics - so much the better. Sancta simplicitas!

I'm no greenhorn. I've visited the slums of Los Angeles and Detroit. I've been in the Washington D.C. suburb which, during the 1990s' "crack wars", had the highest murder rate in all America. But London in 2009 is different. Those other places were jungles, with the robustness as well as the vices of jungle life. With London I perceive, instead, an atmosphere of an almost palpable evil.

I rack my brains to come up with any society in European history that could be comparable. East Germany was just as officious, just as moronic, and just as contemptuous of the sanctity of marriage, but (save to outright dissenters) less violent. The only parallel I can think of - and you might find this of interest - is ... the rise of the Cathars. From what little I know of the Cathars, I recognize the same subterranean sort of cultural and spiritual malice.

Here is an article about the new Britain. My friend is not alone in his impressions. Share