Yesterday was another election day. I find myself trying to avoid most of the coverage to avoid facing the disconnect between our national leadership and the people getting up everyday and getting it done.
But here are some quick quotes to make me feel better (it's nothing new, GK Chesterton, 1910ish):
What I have lost is my old childlike faith in
practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of
Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a
babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision
is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality
that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe
in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in
Liberals.
And here's the closing of an argument of two political parties proposing to paint something red or green -
Nearly all the great newspapers, both pompous and frivolous, will
declare dogmatically day after day, until every one half believes
it, that red and green are the only two colours in the paint-box. THE
OBSERVER will say: "No one who knows the solid framework of politics or
the emphatic first principles of an Imperial people can suppose for
a moment that there is any possible compromise to be made in such a
matter; we must either fulfil our manifest racial destiny and crown the
edifice of ages with the august figure of a Green Premier, or we must
abandon our heritage, break our promise to the Empire, fling ourselves
into final anarchy, and allow the flaming and demoniac image of a Red
Premier to hover over our dissolution and our doom." The DAILY MAIL
would say: "There is no halfway house in this matter; it must be green
or red. We wish to see every honest Englishman one colour or the other."
And then some funny man in the popular Press would star the sentence
with a pun, and say that the DAILY MAIL liked its readers to be green
and its paper to be read. But no one would even dare to whisper that
there is such a thing as yellow.
