A Shameful Choice

My compatriots just elected Boris Johnson's newer and viler edition of the Conservative Party, with what looks like being a lavish majority, to make an even bigger bollocks of Brexit than ever before, and to pursue its self-chosen mission of setting everybody at everybody else's throats. I am sick and tired, and ashamed to my boots, and mad as hell.

I see hard times, hard work, and hard fights ahead. We didn't need to do this. But it is damnably done. So now we get to undo it again, before it undoes us...

The Battle of Maldon poet says (in the Tolkien translation):

"Will shall be the sterner, heart the bolder, spirit the greater as our strength lessens.”

It is not much comfort, nor surely was it ever intended to be; but at times like this I find that general sentiment keeps me from flailing or pulling the covers over my head or just falling into misanthropy; so I offer it in case it takes anyone else the same way.

Not that "stern, bold, and great-spirited" is an obvious description of me or even a particular aspiration of mine - I would put "kind and brave" in place of the first two, given my druthers, and gods know the world could do with more of those right now - but, considered as a direction and a reaction, it works for me and I'm glad I've got it.