Essays in Idleness

Am I a dupe of the “Far Right”? … Or, alternatively, a chump for Trump? … Or perhaps there is no distinction, and I am more generally far-righteous? I have received a modest amount of criticism (appropriate to my modest readership) on the assumption that I, who despise politics and politicians, am a one-man fan club for the most intolerable of them.

In reality, I am an absolute Monarchist; but there are no absolute monarchies about for me to favour. They’ve all been replaced by dictatorships of the proletariat. … Eheu!

And to be fair (do you anticipate irony?) such criticism is a sign of the times. It has been an offence against my heroes for many decades. It was perfectly common for, say, Evelyn Waugh to be condemned as a Fanatick Conservative, even though he had gone to the trouble of saying that he never votes for them. “They’ve never set the clock back a single minute.”

Today, anyone who is contemptuous of political operators, and votes only in the most extreme conditions, when he thinks in defiance of reason that it might do a tiny speck of good — or more likely for psychological relief, because his despication of the Trudeau boy or the Freeland woman is more than he can bear — will be accused (by them) of supporting the Far Right.

This is irrational, as my critics should have admitted by now. What they call the “Far Right” consists of political operators, too; therefore I despise them. It is just that befouling them is less urgent, since everyone and his dog are supplying this service.