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Oh God, I can relate to that feeling of being "drenched with a kind of weariness as if I just turned on the TV and there's a game show on that I don't understand." That's how I felt yesterday when I was getting texts and phone calls every few minutes about 'Trump indicted on all 34 counts!!!" As if it will make one iota of difference. The righteous feel vindicated, but schadenfreude is a dangerous thing. It makes you feel a sense of potency where there is none.

I can also relate to wanting to say, just "go outside tonight and watch the darting swallows and later, the stars - you might feel differently about it all." I'm reminded of what poet WC Williams said: β€œIt is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

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It's good to hear you're feeling better.

I too have been disappointed, indeed demoralised, by Tory Misrule. I too swung left and re-joined the Labour Party (but not Momentum) from the LibDems because of Corbyn only to resign a few months later because of Corbyn. However, I don't think β€œthey're all as bad as each other” although I do think politics overall across the Globe has become far too polarised and don't know how that could be changed. It does depend on the constituency, however, my last being irrevocably blue. My current one is up for grabs. Notably, the Labour candidate is a non-hysterical, centrist thinker compared with the incumbent Tory who claims mentally-impaired people should be paid less than the minimum wage because they don't know what's going on. Perhaps it's because I don't see politics as quite life-changing that I still hope this election in particular will give us more decent people, at the very least. They certainly couldn't be worse!

Btw I came to Substack via David Allen Green, who I followed on Twitter (now X) during the Referendum and on his blog afterwards.

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Hi Mike. I fully sympathize with your view, it may be my age but I just cant get excited about this general election. To quote something I've read, I'd tick 'none of the above' on the ballot paper if it was possible. But that would be as bad as not voting at all, and then I'd be joining the approximate 30% non-voters in the Brexit referendum, who I blame for the outcome. Contrary to what you might have thought, I've never voted Conservative in my life (or Labour for that matter). I've always sought an alternative to the two big parties, who now seem indistinguishable from each other. So I'll continue to vote for my small Liberal Democrat party which has now almost disappeared without trace. I consider the UK well and truly f*cked, whatever the outcome, and hope I might follow you to France one day. I saw Macron interviewed on TV last time I was there, and it was eye-opening. Respect from the journalists, and articulate presidential responses. Such a change from the UK mud-slinging. For the moment I'm enjoying the 6 months a year in France that the post-Brexit rules allow.

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