If I know her ilk they join starry-eyed and are stunned soon enough before they discover that their party is living a lie. The doors to the garden of all possibilities close in on one, stifling any dream of equitable change. In her case homo sapiens can play neanderthal for a bit and, if she passes and understands the rules, though she may grow to despise them, she learns fast.
But whoever joins most political parties, one realises that liberty, the way to lead the people to freedom, is blocked by the Deep State. Disillusionment sets in, hope fades, frustration jades, boredom breeds and, even for the most serious of idealists, the dream slides into a cauldron that delivers one up to a paralysing nightmare, a moment of truth: 'The system has failed. It's a false ideal that I chase! My culture and education are a waste. I have become cold-blooded reptile and I cannot escape this hell. I am trapped by my own naïveté, so I may as well start liking it, and make the best of it.'
That is how, in politics, unless you are well aware of your only saviour--speaking to, and being spoken to by what is true, about your times, about yourself, and reminding yourself that you are fallible, and have the truth to protect, (as does our friend across the Table, all the time, who seems to be practicing an Anglo-Saxon genre of taqwa)--the occupation simply mutates into a cushy job.
That is the point at which the Lord of the Game (Magister Ludi) arranges to offer one the opportunity to slake one's thirst for escape from the reality of paralysis: diversion beckons and one awakens, again, glinty-eyed this time, to one's power to do mischief by playing for big bucks, à la vie risquée. The yeast is in and now, the more infamous one's record the higher one rises, supremely untouchable.
It's heady, this glue that emerges from the substance that emulsifies idealism.
But did Priti Patel join politics to pursue an idealism? Was her priority to protect the truth, or was it to forward a career that would accrue for her the side-effect of power, contacts, favour and wealth? The best judges of her motives could be her community and a bird's eye view of the values they espouse in order to maintain a balance between what keeps non-white minorities British as well as secure from, as it happens, the risks of buying into membership of the Right.
Mohamed Jiwa
@kirimba
Nairobi
