POLITICS

So politics is in a mess. Again. It must be a generational thing - I remember this from my childhood. The Left is left and lefting and the Right is right and righting. I still don't really understand what any of that really means, to be honest.

Here's my problem: I just don't like political parties. I do a survey that's supposed to tell me what I think and who to vote for, and a colour emerges from the numbers as a closest fit. But it's a closest fit in the same way that a police officer's uniform is the closest fit compared to a giant clown costume.

It's the same across the Pond too. There, the stark choice of Dubious Dragon or Deranged Despot presents itself to 320 million people.

Twitter says: want to change the world? Join a political party! No wait, not just any party - pick yellow! no red! no, green! and for the love of God not blue, don't pick blue. Pick me, pick me, we're the best, we're the best!

Well. I don't know how we ended up with this ding-dong system. Presumably, people with distinct beliefs once gathered together with like-minded individuals and decided that everyone ought to agree with them about how to run the country. And if you're not with us, you're against us.

So the Left go one way, the Right go the other and everyone else has to figure out whom they should follow in this multi-coloured cold war, and worse, whom they ought to hate.

I wonder though, whether there's good to be done, while the pantomime runs its course? I disagree with the tribalism of political parties, but it doesn't mean I don't care about the same things many of them care about. Maybe, in the melée, it's possible to do something to change the world without a flag or a coloured banner?

This thought continues.