Angela Rules OK.

I read the report on the last day of the Democratic Convention this morning. The BBC correspondents were clearly enraptured by it, claiming without let or hindrance that it was overwhelmingly more vibrant, more cohesive, more confident, and altogether happier than the fractured Republican effort a couple of days earlier. Maybe it was because they were there; maybe they were carried to dizzying heights by the irresistible combination of euphoria, expensive perfume, and Barack Obama’s ‘poetic’ speech. I wasn’t there, and all I could smell was artifice.

It seemed to me that the Democratic Convention was simply better stage managed than the Republican one. It obviously had better script writers. While Donald Trump was pictured doing air kisses, Barack and Hillary were locked in the genuine embrace of true blue friends, which just goes to prove that Hillary is a splendid person after all. (Doesn’t it?) The whole thing smelt very much of political exigency and very little of anything remotely genuine, and my impression was that they all come from the same stable. But that’s politics, and that’s why my bottom line on the whole disingenuous business is:

I don’t want my world to be ruled by the sort of people who rise high in the political machine.

I don’t, I really don’t. But then I skimmed through the rest of the world news and came across something very interesting: Angela Merkel has declined to rescind her policies on immigration, even after the recent atrocities in Germany and France. She says she won’t abandon the refugees.

I’m suspicious; I have to be suspicious because if there’s one thing I’m hyper cynical about, it’s politics and politicians. Can it be that here is a senior politician who is putting humanity at the top of her list of priorities? Is it possible that a woman who has risen to the highest branch of the political tree is declining to engage the usual animal instincts, preferring instead to aspire to human potential? Can she be the one to prove me wrong? God, I hope so.

And so, Angela, if you should ever want to take over Europe and annexe Britain in the process, you have an ally in me. If you need helping hands to remove the drain covers so the rest of the political ne’er do wells can be shovelled into the sewers, give me a call. If I’m right in my assessment, many thanks and blessings. If, on the other hand, I’m wrong about you, don’t worry about it. I’m good at shrugging and carrying on regardless.

Literary Reprise:

Just to get back to the goings-on-in-America (because they were so goddam inspirational.)

I was trying to decide which of the sound bites I read in speeches at the conventions best deserved the prize for the Sound Bite Which Proves What a Load of Dingo’s Doings the Political Machine Really Is. It came down to a short list of two:

Donald Trump: Believe me!

Michelle Obama: Don’t let anybody ever tell you that America isn’t great.

I decided to be magnanimous and concede a dead heat.

Epilogue:

There is much to be anxious about in the world of JJ at the moment. Blog posts don’t come easy in an atmosphere of high anxiety. Just saying.