Quote Originally Posted by Phil View Post
I am sure many present-day clan chiefs have little or nothing in common with their predecessors and can appreciate why they may find their role nowadays to be thankless. Why anyone would feel the need to "bend the knee" to them, however is completely beyond me, particularly as so much social change has taken place in this country to reduce the relevance and influence of people derived solely from an accident of their birth. In a country such as America where success is based principally on ability, reverence for inherited influence seems totally incomprehensible. I can only assume that there is a latent desire to look up to such people much in the way the late Princess Diana was revered as a fairy tale princess.
That's pretty much it.

Americans of Scots and other British descent are by and large so far removed from that. We also are used to self-autonomy and creating ourselves, creating our own identities, often by appropriating artifacts and identities from other cultures and times as we (mis)understand them and making them our own. We may bend a knee or two, but do so in something of the spirit of a tourist in another country (or a time traveler from another time) who always has the ability, if we wish, to stop pretending and go home to the real world where we really live.

If I were you, I wouldn't complain about it. I would do what others seem to be doing, and try to figure out a way to make money off of us. But that's just me.