Waiting For The World To Resolve Itself

Reading detective fiction is very different
is very different from trying to follow politics
via the running commentaries of the pundits.

What both share is an interest in what makes
readers and followers care about what they follow,
and goads both further, leading them to who did the deed, 
how it was done, and why they did it. With a cast
of engaging side characters who act as collaborators
who aid and abet the lead character on their journey.

Political pundits today have quite the battle
with many world leaders who occupy prime place,
in making their deeds, their wealth, and the way
they lead their country, seems mysterious.

Wrong footing the pundits tracking them,
both when the pundit offers soft ball questions
 that flatter the leader's profile, or when the journalist
finding villainy in the leaders errant accountability,
is easy when the man with power hides how he got it.

It is at times like these that the reliability of fiction,
a good murder story, seems all the more attractive:
the author has a much firmer control of the narrative
than the political pundit who is struggling to discover
where the bodies are buried, and who put them there.
Although the pundit is dealing with real life, and death,
they have a harder time making the reader care
about futures that they can't make any clearer.  

The Belicose And The Technocratic

Governments vary in character
from the technocratic to the belicose
where the latter hides in the plain sight,
through the volume at which it declares itself,
that many governments have no vision
of the future beyond their enlightened
self interest in seeking to be the whole
of any future that there is for anyone.

This makes the task for the citizen
seeking to renew the idea of citizenship
a more uphill battle than you might think.
Because when the same old faces repeat
their claim as to being the only legitemacy
of choice peoplel can point toward, where
the eponymous Tina tells us There Is No Alternative,
like the one time M. Thatcher, who was always right.

Technocratic governements are happier
are being exchanged, one for another,
they know that politics is a roundabout
and we all get off to make room for others
before we are inevitably be let back on
the roundabout of government, again. 

Hollowness Rules

When our choice is which autocrat
to take most literally, or disbelieve,
according to the media open to us,
the choice is somewhat rhetorical:
the winner will be the public speaker
whoever can fake sincerity the best,
whilst bluring the edges of gov't consent
being built on clear consulting citizens
is going to be the winner.

But in a world built on entertainment
it will be increasingly the case that politics
remains religion with no interest in the soul,
showbiz for ugly people; vanity is the currency
that waives the rules, in it's inconsistency.

Pressing Times

The difference between the politician
who thoughtfully leads his cabinet
using policies, and the leader who leads
his followers by how credulous they are
is that the latter is blind to the folly
of making the leader the whole story,
and even more blind to how the opposition
would oppose him with greater civility
if they could oppose his policies,
rather than aiming at a thin skinned person.

Whereas the policy takes the lead 
different arguments can follow,
and the press can explain why
whoever is wrong is that way.

When Dark Days Require Darker Satires

In these days black ops politics
where virtue of intent is always relative,
and so many moves hide dark motives
and unresolvable circular thinking,
so the commentaries on politics
have, of necessity, to become darker.

I drew comfort from the latest I heard
in my favourite broadsheet newspaper,
where the headline is 'Like a cockroach
in the nuclear winter, the return of....  ',
where the winter is forever ours to share.    

The Opportunity For Failure Has Never Been Wider

Political leaders strike different chords
in the adults who, because they can vote
and have to pay their taxes have a material stake
in the future, makes it their duty to have an opinion
on who leads them, from 'FFS Alexa turn that man off',
to  'I like him', where in previous eras there would simply be
a rush to turn the radio off when the speaker announced
a man who was so disliked was appearing next.

Voters have three questions about politics
which has balance against each other
to help them decide how to listen, and vote. 

The first is 'Is the party leader a good public speaker?'
meaning is the sound of their voice easy on the ear,
can they speak off the cuff, can they tell jokes
that score the right points when he is required to.
M. Thatcher was famously tone deaf to puns
but when her speech writers gave her humour
to deliver, she delivered as a straight man might
in a comedy duo, and got away with it.

The second is 'Is the leader a good administrator'
Clement Attlee became the best Prime Minster
Britain ever had in the six years he was in power,
for all that he was by no means public orator
and had the charismata of a local bank manager.

The third is 'What state is the leader's party in?'
A disciplined party with an atypical leader
can withstand a hostile press when the party
are behind a distinct programme far more
than a divided party can get behind anything
when they are the target of the press for reasons
that the public don't need the press to see why.

An undisciplined party with catch phrases
for programmes can get elected with a leader
who has the means, and the malcontent, to draw on.

But woe betide the country who elects such a party
-drawing on malcontent and rumour for having no other ideas
feeds what it draws on even more, and makes the leader,
the party and the (lack of) programme for government
prepare for ever bigger government failures for the future.