Grip on the nose

From wikipedia

My thought are still somewhat schnoz-driven, but here goes.

It seems to me that those people who support a political party are doomed to disappointment whenever or if ever their party achieves power. People who lead political parties always turn out to have little in common with their supporters, let alone voters.

In times past, the elite may have had a somewhat diffuse and unreliable sense of responsibility – the noblesse oblige of Bertie Wooster perhaps, but that comfortable notion faded away some time ago, if indeed it ever strayed beyond the pages of agreeable fiction.

Now we are left clinging to the cold comforts of naked political ambition coupled to the need for economic stability - shaky though the goal so often seems. We ordinary folk are little more than economic agents needing a few ameliorative measures to nail us to the straight and narrow.

These ameliorative measures keep us penned in, allowing our productive lives to be sucked dry without actually causing the system to collapse. Folk with full bellies and a warm hut don’t cause much trouble. What trouble they do cause can be controlled by other folk with full bellies, a warm hut and a uniform.

Political foot-soldiers seem to expect more, being undismayed when their lot turn out to be at least as bad as the other lot. Most seem happy enough to go to their graves with all their illusions intact, wholly immune from the canker of doubt.

It’s not so far removed from the old days where loyal family retainers spent their entire lives serving the needs of their masters living their comfortable lives beyond the green baize door.

And yet... 

...and yet it is never quite clear who really runs the charade. Which side of the green baize door keeps the show on the road, whose appetites are the more contemptible, whose social conventions have a firmer grip on the nose.