Well, folks, this has been quite an eye-opener! At least the old forum has livened up a bit!
My base post was about how I, as an ex-pat Brit, feel like my country is living through a book called “The Last Battle”, by C.S.Lewis, whom some here may remember. I provided a few examples as to why, and will provide more. But the topic has quickly degenerated into a squabble about Rep/Dem politics, immigration, colonialism, racism, war…
Elizabeth has even suggested that my original post is “unsuitable” for a C.S.Lewis forum and presumably should be deleted: Woke “Cancel culture” for SpareOom?
“I did not know till now that the usages of Sulva were so common among you.” - from “That Hideous Strength”
(Yes, I know, Merlin is talking about contraception here, but that’s a squabble for another day).
First, a word about Calormenes. In the Narniad these are the traditional enemies of Narnia and of Aslan; inhabitants of a country beyond a desert, far to the south. They are almost universally depicted as cruel, mendacious, treacherous and avaricious. In “The Horse and his Boy” they attempt to conquer Narnia by stealth. In The “Last Battle” they succeed.
“Certainly”, you say? Perhaps you’d like to provide some evidence for that opinion? For my part, I suspect Lewis would say it rather depends on what they are seeking besides “safety and a decent life”. Take the following quote from TLB:
There was no reason, of course, why one should not meet a Calormene or two in Narnia — a merchant or an ambassador — for there was peace between Narnia and Calormen in those days. But Tirian could not understand why there are so many of them: nor why they were cutting down a Narnian forest. He grasped his sword tighter and rolled his cloak round his left arm.
Now the fact is that organized boatloads of mainly fighting-age men land frequently on the British coast, and quickly disperse to avoid capture. They despise the decent life that British citizens have had hitherto. Their idea of a decent life is to wage jihad and impose sharia law on everybody else, that is, to recreate in the UK the same oppressive regimes that they are supposed to be fleeing from. Note that Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Caribbean and East Asian communities are usually peacefully integrated, i.e. this is an ideological problem, not a racial one. Moreover, for genuine refugees there has always been a legal immigration process.
And then the last battle of the last King of Narnia began. What made it hopeless, even apart from the numbers of the enemy, was the spears. The Calormenes who had been with the Ape almost from the beginning had had no spears: that was because they had come into Narnia by ones and twos, pretending to be peaceful merchants, and of course they had carried no spears for a spear is not a thing you can hide. The new ones must have come in later, after the Ape was already strong and they could march openly.
Now the sad thing is that, in today’s UK, the Ape and the Cat and the old home-grown enemies of Aslan are already in power. Cair Paravel has already fallen. Roonwit’s army has been annihilated. The Calormenes can carry weapons openly, aided and abetted by a corrupt government, judiciary and “two tier” policing. Nor, sadly, do we have a faithful and valiant king like Tirian to lead the remnant – King Charles III still thinks “Defender of the Faith” has something to do with his Land Rover.
So that’s the enemy within; enough justification, perhaps, for a Brit’s feeling he’s living through “The Last Battle”? But what about the enemy without, the threat of annihilation from Putin’s Russia?
Some of you may remember the “Cuban missile crisis” of 1962. It is frequently portrayed as the closest the world has come to nuclear war. Now imagine that JFK had blinked first, that the missile bases had been set up in Cuba and that Russian missiles are being fired (by Russians of course, because the Cubans are not trained to use them) into the USA, bringing destruction to US cities. Now, whether you think him a monster or a saviour, Putin is currently in the situation of that hypothetical JFK. What would JFK have done? This is the 1962 crisis on steroids, and it is here and it is now.
So I repeat my request, please pray for the country Lewis lived in, loved and (in all charity) fought her enemies for. Those enemies, within and without, have never posed a bigger threat to her.