Thus, did Caius Marcius, a.k.a., Coriolanus, describe, in the words of Shakespeare, the ordinary people in the process of attempting to choose a leader, and that, I would hazard, pretty well describes the attitude of most of today's professional politicians. What a peculiar relationship has evolved, both here and across the Atlantic, between us and them, the governors and the governed. We loathe them, and they despise us right back! It is slightly more difficult to discern this 'mutually assured damnation' in Britain where a certain reticence still survives but, God bless 'em, you can always rely on the Yanks to tell it the way it is.
In Coriolanus, the hero, having won his laurels by an act of stupendous courage, is forced by age-old custom to walk in the market place, naked beneath a thin robe in order to show his scars to the people and thus gain their 'voices' in the general acclamation which will install him as a Consul of Rome. Watching the seemingly endless acting-out of the American presidential selection process, the similarities are too big to miss. In the play, Coriolanus hates demeaning himself in such a humiliating fashion but with so many of the American candidates it would take a platoon of marines to stop them! They seem possessed of some peculiarly pathological mentality that drives them to any degree of self-humiliation and self-abasement in order to shin up that greasy pole to the very top. This is especially apparent in Hillary Clinton, a driven woman whose creepy ambition seeps from every pore and orifice of her being. I wouldn't put this demented woman within five miles of the nuclear trigger because she wants it so badly!
Of course, not all of us feel this way, indeed, perhaps worse than the vaulting ambition of the psychotics seeking political power is the fanaticism of those who wish merely to bask in the reflected glory, or even more dangerous, those who quietly, and mostly anonymously, insinuate their slippery fingers onto the levers of such power. Turn over any stone in nu-Labour Westminster and such creatures wriggle out, blinking in the unaccustomed daylight, with the words 'Special Adviser' tattooed on their backs. Or better still, cruise round some of the political Blogs and listen to the shrill chorus of this or that faction who, blind to any wider, more complex world view and devoid of the slightest scepticism, are simply happy to chant their favourite mantras, over and over and over again.
Was it ever thus? Possibly, but reading history I do get a sense that, at least here in Britain, in the 19th and early 20th centuries the 'big cats' in the political jungle, though they fought hard for power, did so on the basis of a personal vision, they had a sense of where they wanted to take the country. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that many of them were gentry and toffs from what was quite literally, the ruling classes. The need or requirement to actually grovel and ingratiate themselves with the people was not necessary and if it had of been, I suspect many of them would have demurred on the grounds of good taste. Did Anthony Blair, Esq., have a vision beyond simply oiling his way to the top of the pole by saying whatever was fashionable, and then hanging on to the job for as long as possible? I never thought so, and still don't, despite the eloquent blandishments of Oliver Kamm who urges his virtues on us as part of a campaign to make 'El Tone' president of Europe.
I have always clung, and still do, somewhat desperately as my grip loosens with cynicism, to the saving grace that at least we get a chance to turf the rascals out every five years, but if all we get back is more of the same, what's the point?
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