THESE days I seem to live with a low-lying, constantly swirling well of rage and irritability. It peaks in the week on Thursday when against my better judgement I find myself once again facing the television, groaning and moaning.
Already dropped further into the pit by another day on the ever-open doors of the internet, I am in a dark, dark place.
Actually I’ve been in that place since learning of the Brexit referendum result when I shocked myself by weeping at the slender majority and all it would bring.
But Thursday night’s Question Time is almost a masochistic exercise without the pleasure, or so I’m told, to be taken in such abasement.
It is the audience that brings me to my knees as angry men and women yell pointless, discredited words such as ‘sovereignty’ ‘control’ and the killer ‘will of the people.’
For a start have they no intellectual shame in repeating the trite mantras? No better arguments to use beyond the brain-washing dogma still taken as truth when all have proved false?
But beyond the words I am more and more disturbed by the faces; often contorted with the bitterness, the fury, that has been unleashed with this decision.
And, when reading the comments under newspaper stories relating to this daily torment, I wince and burn with disgust at what has been given license by cynical, ambitious, duplicitous politicians playing deadly games.
Barring the zealots, the racists, the fascists, I have always had a willing ear to give to any opponent who wishes to convince me otherwise.
Indeed I have had great amusement often at playing devil’s advocate on occasions and reversing all I hold dear for the sport, for the word play.
But with this, there is nothing to grasp, little to understand, and not one person, not one politician, not one advocate, has advanced a reasoned logic for this suicidal dash that I could respect.
Perhaps in my world, now formed by the portals of the net into global newspapers, opinion, and like-minded followers on social media, my view is actually distorted, not enlarged.
After all, in my field in La France Profonde, I am hardly engaged with the daily life of the UK and the hubbub of different views about me.
I wonder that often as I peer down my telescope from this distant world where I often lack daily human contact. Am I a naive baby boomer with a ridiculously now old-fashioned belief in the basic decency of man?
These days, these times, I sadly think I may be. A generation of us may be. Many in my old trade, whose primary duty is to shine a light on lies, evasions and injustice, have become propagandists instead of voices for those who have none.
Of course the route of news distribution changes over and over, but the basic independence and fearlessness of those seeking truth must always be its heart. Always.
Forgive me for this polemic. I have been reading testimonies from British citizens living in the European Union and EU citizens living in Britain.
Been reading of lives potentially destroyed by a Tory party power struggle, of a Labour leader stuck in an ideology of the past with opposition paralysis.
Personal stories of men and women hurting and hardened by the taunts and harshness now unleashed against them in the UK they have considered home for years.
It is not the same here on the continent.
Watching the sophisticated, lucid, calm never changing statements from negotiator Michel Barnier I feel a pride and a faith that he and the others will care for those about to be discarded ‘abroad’ more than their own Government will.
I listen to the vox pops on the British news who, when asked about the ream of evidence of the disaster-unfolding repeat like zombies: Sovereignty, control, will of the people.
And a part of me, a big part, thinks: ‘Ah, go to hell in a handcart. Go on and we’ll see what unfolds.’
Schadenfreude is a nasty pleasure and often an ugly one. I’m better than that; most of us are better than that…aren’t we?
So this must be stopped. How I fantasise about Theresa May stepping up to the podium and saying: The Referendum was advisory. We have now taken all the evidence and projections and can say it is not in the interests of the country to proceed.
‘And so, I step down, ask for the dissolution of Parliament and move to a General Election on that basis.’
Dream on. And anyway, God look at the choices.
By the time this column appears, Mrs May will have given her ‘Road to Brexit’ speech; the other hardline opportunists, Gove, Johnson and the quite despicable Rees-Mogg, will have been on the road to doing similar.
Well, we know what to expect by now: Ignorance, embarrassment and frankly shame, deep shame at the ripping apart of a nation for personal gain.
I exclude Scotland in all this. There is integrity there, rising above the Westminster ignominy and a constant desire, so I see, towards a united Europe.
But hey, what would I know in my field – my French field, my truly European field.
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