Having come through an all-too-brief period of intense possibility it now looks as if any hope of redemption has gone. It seemed impossible that we could experience such anguish and not respond with some fundamental change – but the facts indisputably tell us we have. The public purse has been brutally raped and in return we have the most insultingly insignificant change that could possibly have been offered, a change of speaker. No significant financial, constitutional or other political reform.
The public are not stupid. They are not stupid enough to believe that what has been done is for the best, nor are they stupid enough to believe that raising their voices will have any effect. Let no-one even begin to suggest that to vote Conservative, or for that matter any party, is sufficient. And neither am I so stupid, having carped on and on, I am now utterly bored and repulsed by my own pointless words of protest.
The press have already apologised for the inconvenience they caused to politicians and have returned to tit-for-tat pre-election tendentious party political campaigning. The Times started early, but after a good start the Guardian hasn’t been slow in its response. The small hope of our fourth estate seeing beyond myopic tribalism has been shafted by Rupert once again.
In the longer term I am not a pessimist. The trend of human progress while being extraordinarily circuitous has always ultimately been for the better. However, all too little of that progress can be attributed to a deliberate act of individual or collective will. It feels very much as if history drives us towards a better future despite ourselves.
Do we really have to leave the rapacious, insatiable vacuum in collective purpose alive and bleeding its pustulous corruption to accommodate the baser veins of greed and excess in our nature? What will it take to make a future collective good seem tangible enough, under a sufficient threat, for us to take radical action prioritising it over the security of inaction?
There is of course Obama. The single shining beacon of hope in the whole world that someone who may actually be inclined to selfless care would have sufficient powers of organisation to effect some real change. His intervention on Africa is a welcome relief from oil-fuelled war-mongering.
Regardless of whether he can live up to the promise or ultimately gets shafted by the cynics – whatever he does is utterly outside of my power to have any influence on either by action or inaction, speech or silence, belief or cynicism.
The only thing any of has any reliable control over is our own actions. In that at least we can have some small comfort, so long as the people we live and work with can be persuaded to care.
I am now desperate to write of anything with some lightness and hope.
