Melancholia Terrestrium

The most depressing thing about the condition of politics in western liberal democracies today is not so much the cynically low expectations that politicians have of their public, as the extent to which the public has merited this. So ruthlessly committed are the masses now to their own credulity that they are nearly of one sneer, of one unwavering snort of contempt for the time when--as it were--horses preceded carts.

If it is true that governments exist to serve their peoples and not the converse, then it follows that we have failed them almost utterly as masters; that, indeed, we have contrived to become lumpenproles in the very territory of our abdication.

I blame you.