Voter, what do you think?
View(s):If you’re looking for me to tell you whom to vote for, folks, think again. I wouldn’t dare. I don’t care too much about which party or coalition or political grouping wins. As long as we get what we want and don’t lose some of our – yes, our – hard-won victories. The politicos and their spinmeisters would have you believe that they pulled a rabbit out of a hat with their revolutions and all that jazz. True. And. Accurate. But not yet complete. Because civil society – for reasons entirely apolitical – played a major role in the transformation of our nation.
For too long the equation has been balanced rather heavily on the side of those seeking election or re-election. At times like that, the voter is king. As you have probably seen and experienced for yourself these days, being wooed in order to be won or won over. After they’re voted in, the electorate can grovel in the dust for all they appear to give a, er, democrat’s curse for! That’s not to say that a few good men – and women – true don’t genuinely share the people’s aspirations. But a majority of them don’t care. Even those who seem to, express their strange longings in less than loving language. One no doubt well-meaning minister and would-be-again MP has said that he yearns to share the “common people’s” pain, etc. Sir, whom are you calling “common”?
So, in the interests of assuring our MPs and would-be-ministers that we are in this game, too, and that we’re also stakeholders and shareholders in the state of the nation and its future, permit me to address the polity directly. As you gird your loins to ink little pinky (don’t picture that), put on your thinking cap for a moment and ask yourself two questions (ponder these):
Firstly, which hell do you not want to return to?
Let me answer my own question to you and I by drawing an illustration from history:
When the ambitious Emperor Napoleon marched into Russia against the advice of his more seasoned generals, he found that the enemy was not flesh and blood alone. His greatest adversary was General Winter – the ice cold snowbound landscape with chilly winds that could freeze man and horse and cannon alike in a matter of mere minutes, laid like a pure white landmine over treacherous mud and bogs underfoot. While loathe to admit his error of judgment, Napoleon was also goaded on by the latent desire to be Emperor of not only Europe but also the sweeping wild country from the Western Steppes to the Wastelands of Eastern Siberia. So he marched on – and his army was compelled to march on (and retreat in glorious defeat and gory disarray, target alike for Cossacks and lack of courage to soldier on). In capturing the utter carnage and desolation of that historical event, the poet Walter de la Mare put pen to paper in this poignant piece which I’ve never forgotten and which the contemporary historians of today – to say nothing of tomorrow’s voters – would do well to learn, and learn from…
“What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky.
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.”
That, for me, is a poetic description of hell. The naked ego, soul, and ambition; corrupting and tainting and spoiling everything and everybody around it with its despoiled and tainted and corrupt nature, character, and personality. Could you conjure up in your mind a modern political leader on the local scene – treacherous mud underfoot – who is similarly driven and despotic and dangerous? Would you vote for him and the army of ambitions that he stands for?
Secondly, what is wrong with the world the way it is?
This, too, let me answer with an illustration from the cosmos of orthodoxy in literature.
In the 19th Century, The Times of England invited its readers to write in to the Editor in response to the question: “What’s wrong with the world today?” In response, a great wit and sometimes half-witted author wrote back thus…
Dear Sir,
I am.
Yours,
G. K. Chesterton
What wit! What humility! What simplicity! What perspicacity!
Dear reader, do you have the wit and good sense to know that you’re not perfect? Dear critic and condemner of all things political, do you own the humility to see that you’re carping and cavilling at people just like yourselves? Have we the simplicity to want, seek, desire, earn, cherish the good that we have before our eyes, the governance we have experienced for a while now – with all its warts, scams, denials, excuses, chickening-outs? Have we the discernment to distinguish between the good, the bad, and the ugly?
Can it be that you already know what I think? When I want your opinion, I’ll give it you – says the Napoleon of Nothing Hill (with apologies to G. K. Chesterton). There but for the grace of God and Good Governance go I, say the witty and humble and simple and perspicacious parties of the other part who are contesting the armies of the ambitious one. Go and vote. There is no real choice.
The absentminded Chesterton once wired his wife from a wayside railway station after woozily disembarking from a train: “Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I be?” You, presently concerned reader, are about to entrain a sleek express on the fast track to tomorrow. Do you know where you are – and ought to be?
See you at the (not railway, but polling) station.