4 ms·
I was watching a TV show called Downtown abbey and one of the things that pleasantly surprised me was that the lord of the manor joined up in the British army a
by MomoXenosaga 4y ago
I was watching a TV show called Downtown abbey and one of the things that pleasantly surprised me was that the lord of the manor joined up in the British army and served as an officer in the trenches.
Fast forward a hundred years and the elite can basically avoid any crisis short of a meteor strike.
If the US instituted a draft you'd see a thousand privately chartered planes head out of New York.
- jgalt212 4y agoIndeed, a phrase you no longer hear about rich people: "They've fallen on hard times". Because they don't, the Fed keeps bailing them out.
- jfengel 4y agoThe big difference now is that there is a standing army. I don't particularly want troops led by some guy who gets to be in charge just because he's rich. Note, by the way, that the British notion of service for their elites does still exist, at least for the royals. Both Prince Charles and Prince Andrew served in the military. Charles didn't serve in wartime, but his sons both served in Afghanistan. These were not ceremonial; they trained and fought. They certainly got a leg up, being easily admitted to officer training rather than enlisting, but they weren't simply dubbed "officers" the way Earl Grantham would have been.
- rsynnott 4y agoI mean, it's _very much_ a sympathetic view of the early 20th century British upper class. Like, notably so. For a more cynical take, see... well, virtually anything actually written during the period in question.