The Age of the Ass in the Lionskin

My political education was in the 1980s, the time of Thatcher and Reagan. I found myself on the opposite side to them, and still do. Yet my current sense of being a stranger in my own country is different. Perhaps it comes from being more aware than I was then, of knowing more and therefore knowing better how the narrative of the past and present can be wrenched away from what I think of as the truth towards something else. But there seems to be something different in the air now. Thatcher and Reagan saw the world differently from me, but they didn't seem to inhabit an entirely different world mentally. They were not, by and large, liars. Still less did they subvert the entire notion of truth: that is, they did not say things that they knew were false, and that they knew everyone else knew to be false, and that they did not intend anyone actually to believe. Most political lies, like our new Home Secretary's previous falsehoods about her trips to Israel, are attempts by people who know the truth to cover it up; or else they are rosy interpretations of reality, expressions of what their perpetrators want to be true. But now, we have something unprecedented, I think, in the political life of Western democracies. Thatcher's Britain never felt like a bizarre pantomime presided over by Delusion, as this country does now.

These thoughts clouded my mind during my prayer time this morning, not helping at all the general sense I daily have at the moment of having to remind myself that, with God, nothing good is finally lost and so my endeavours will still mean something even if human civilisation collapses in ruins after about 2050. I went down to the Steeple House for Mattins and found Rick our Verger and Russ who helps him out now and again waiting to say it with me. One of the Psalms set for today is no.120, and, not for the first time, the Lord had provided an echo of my own feelings:

When I was in trouble I called to the Lord : I called to the Lord and he answered me.
Deliver me, O Lord, from lying lips : and from a deceitful tongue ...
Woe is me, that I must lodge in Meshech : and dwell among the tents of Kedar.
My soul has dwelt too long : with enemies of peace.
I am for making peace : but when I speak of it, they make ready for war.

That helped. Some admin done, I went over to the café. Ethiopian coffee today, I said, I had the Brazilian last week. Emma, who can't be more than 20 or so, came to my table to administer the Ritual of the Filter and asked me how I was so I shared some of my ruminations. It was like lighting the touch paper: 'madness', 'out of control', and 'a pair of blond toddlers only one isn't quite as orange' were just some of the phrases she utilised. I think she poured rather quicker, too. She is one of the young people to whom the new leader of the Conservative Party will clearly appeal in vain.