Looking at the people who now describe themselves as politicians, it's reasonable to ask why they are pursuing that vocation because they don't seem to have a conviction of consequence between the lot of them. Could it be that they're a bunch of dopamine junkies, in it for the short-term fixes politics gives them?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Are all politicians junkies?
There are lots of people seeking answers as to why politics has failed in the UK, has failed right across Europe, has failed in the USA, and my suggestion is that it is actually the case that all modern politicians are simply and straightforwardly junkies.
Now, I'm not accusing them of taking illicit substances or even illegal substances. I'm accusing them of being addicted to dopamine hits.
Dopamine is the natural substance that we release within our bodies when we have a high.
That high can come from eating a chocolate. It can come from the greeting from a friend, or being told we've done well, or in my case, it could come if you click the subscribe button and the like button for this video because that would make me happy, which probably is the worst ever link to such a request in the history of YouTube. But the point is that dopamine is the thing that makes us feel happy in the short term. And I have a very strong feeling that most politicians, now serving their countries, are only in the game for a dopamine hit.
That's definitely true of Keir Starmer because when it comes down to it, why did he want to be Prime Minister? The only reason that anyone can offer is that he didn't want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister, and that is it; a point that he has proven time and again since he became holder of that office.
And in that sense, he's exactly the same as a predecessor in office not so long ago, too. Nobody could ever work out why David Cameron wanted to be Prime Minister. The only goal he had was to get into office, and this I think is true of the vast majority of modern politicians. What they want is the dopamine hit from winning.
And winning is all that matters to them. They are desperate to get into office just to say. I won, but they don't know why they wanted to win and, in that sense, their goal of winning is as hopeless as the goal of making a profit is for a business, or the goal of being happy that many people say that they have in their personal lives.
Each of these is, in effect, an epiphenomenon. An epiphenomenon is a byproduct of something else.
The dopamine hit from winning an election comes on the night that the result is announced.
The dopamine hit from maximising profit comes from when a profit is reported to the press, and happiness, well, what is happiness? You can't actually pick it up, or see it. You can feel it, but it never comes as a package in its own right. It always comes as a consequence of something else.
And it's that something else that really is important, and that's just as true for politics. In politics, it's what delivers the dopamine hit to the politician that matters.
I don't mind them being dopamine junkies, if that's what they are, if they are also seeking to understand what gives them the hit.
If they got their hit from reducing child poverty, I wouldn't mind them being high when they can announce that they've succeeded in that goal.
If they get it, by putting people to work, or by delivering sustainability, or by improving the quality of a child's education - I mean a real education, not just exam results - then again, I wouldn't mind if they had the dopamine hit, because the dopamine hit would then be the epiphenomenon of something well done.
But the trouble is, our politicians are dedicated to dopamine hits that come from simply stabbing their enemies in the back. Keir Starmer stabbed Labour's left in the back. Now he plays the game where the high point of his week is to have a go at Kemi Badenoch at Prime Minister's Question Time.
Is that all it's really about?
That, plus the little news slot that he might get each night which makes him feel happy that he is supposedly setting the agenda, although what for and why, no one knows.
This is really worrying. There is no substance to create the dopamine. There's just the media hit at the end of the day when it comes to most of these politicians, and media hits don't count.
People don't care about their politicians getting media hits. In fact, they'd rather their politicians didn't get media hits when they've got nothing to say because most people are pretty bored by politicians who do have nothing to say.
What they want to hear is that the politician has something good to report. That is truly justifying their presence on our screens. And that so rarely happens that we have to come down to this idea that the politician is only in this game for the dopamine hit and nothing else. The short-term, easy win that gets them a headline is all it's about now. And that has hollowed out politics to the point where it is simply not delivering for the people of this country or a great many other countries.
The politician has stopped trying to understand what it is - what the real matter of substance is - that will deliver the epiphenomenon of the dopamine hit and simply goes for the hit in itself, which the media provides. And until we can persuade politicians to go back and deliver substance and not just a temporary high for them and no one else, I would stress, then politics is not going to answer any question that our society poses of it.
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Along similar, but unconnected, lines, I was musing last night at why ‘Strictly’ is so popular. I only watch because my wife watches it but I was struck by how ‘collegiate’ the contestants were, taking delight in each other’s successes as much as their own. Similarly, in Masterchef, the contestants definitely wanted to win but were pleased when others did well. I think it was because it was skill that was being judged – not what passes for personality such as on the Apprentice. Could it be that people are happier to see success based on real skill (or, in your piece, something actually being delivered)? I hope so, because then the public might begin to call politicians to account in more meaningful ways.
I did watch Strictly last night – whilst dual tasking – and agree.
Chris McCausland, who won, said something apposite. His comment was it is amazing what people can do given opportunity and support. As a blind man he had no idea he could dance. But think what would happen is we gave everyone a chance? We could, of course. We choose not to do so.
Another aspect to winning for the sake of it, is never to admit the adversary has a valid point. Lots of people in America know their health system is bad but they resist any constructive change as it is identified with , or advocated by, the left (it can work the other way, as well). Same applies with climate change. And, of course, is not just American-it is just more extreme there.
It is a sort of quest for ideological purity. What we need to serious engagement with problems and a willingness to work with people of other points of view. Pragmatism. Co-operation. Putting one’s ego on one side for the greater good.
We used to do it.
SORTITION works well for juries, so why not for legislators and executives?
It’s too radical an idea for most people of a liberal or leftist persuasion to grasp easily, but FWIW “interesting times’ call for interesting ideas.
This thought-piece got me thinking unlikely thoughts – even though I realise that even ‘representative democracy’ is despised, manipulated and curtailed by neoliberalism, Iain Davis’ “real democracy” would be just too much for it to allow. Ever.
https://iaindavis.substack.com/p/voluntary-democracy-part-1
I am totally opposed to neoliberalism
And to sortition
Who poses the question in sortition?
Who decides who gives evidence?
Who decides how to act after the event.
Let’s have proper accountability, not a veneer.
What you describe is a symptom, not the cause. I think a big part of the problem is the process by which we select our MPs: it favours people who care more about winning than about policy, because it’s bloody hard work to win an election. If what you care most about is policy, you’re far better off becoming an activist. This is why I am an advocate of sortition — pick our Parliament by random selection, as we do for juries.
I will never agree.
That would wholly inappropriate burdens on most selected.
99% of people are not activists.
And they do not want this responsibility which is why it will never happen.
A valid objection (though the same could be said of jury duty). Perhaps a modified version or sortition could be employed, where people opt in to the selection pool? Or do you have a better suggestion for how we choose good people to populate Westminster?
Jury duty is very focussed, short tern in most cases (rarely more than two weeks) and the question eventually asked is quite simple, with doubt being allowed.
If you’ve read a psychologist’s book like Daniel Goleman’s book “Social Intelligence” you’d be inclined to argue that politicians who are in politics for the dopamine and serotonin hits never got sufficient of them as a baby and child from their primary carer/s. It was a case one day a lot and then for some inexplicable reason very little or none creating a junkie outlook. In the case of Angela Rayner she very neatly resolved the problem as the following suggests:-
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1986808/angela-rayner-photographer-taxpayer
The big problem of course is if you’re in politics for the “feel good” its then you’ll tend not to worry about well-worked out theory in regard to the policies you push and support but simply latch on to conjectures that are based on insufficient information. This seems so true of many politicians in Britain’s governments for over half a century. Governments that have badly failed its citizens in many areas. We ought to really call them “Kamikaze Konjecturists”!
Although I have never supported, or indeed voted for any Labour politician, there were two in Glasgow, in the 1960/70s, whom I much admired. They were Sir Peter Meldrum, a Lord Provost, and the Rev. Geoff Shaw. Both these men almost literally killed themselves with the work they did in trying to improve matters in the city, and both died at a relatively young age. No matter their party allegiance, they worked for all of Glasgow, and that I could admire.
You get what I am talking about
No, it is because political parties are the centre of political action in all the democracies you recount; because Party forms governments, and government is where power and money reside. There are therefore inevitably and invariably only two categories of those people and institutions who attracted to political parties, to lead them, guide them of manipulate them, who matter.
1) Powerful vested interests with money.
2) The worst people that you do not want in charge, those with one or more characteristics of the Dark Triad: those with sub-clinical traits of Machiavellism, narcissism and psychopathy.
!) is more important than 2), because vested interests establish the framework for the dark triad to prosper. They use the over-ambitious, the self-absorbed, the sub-clinically psychopathic if they have any talent for leadership, or public speaking, writing. 2) is always more important than people who participate to make a difference, or represent the public in any real way. Because such people have scruples, and are at a serious disadvantage in the rough house of politics. The unscrupulous usually do not just win, they end fighting it out for power among each other. The vested interests can rarely lose.
I do not think your thesis in any way inconsistent with mine, John.
Many has ensured politics is meaningless. So, the only people involved are those in ot for the dopamine hit, which eventually includes money for themselves.
Either way – we badly need a solution.
That is the idea I am exploring, tentatively.
What I suggest we do need it to expect people standing for office to have worked outside politics and achieved some level of responsibility or recognition in that work.
It is possible that our politicians brains are wired the same way as bankers – existing on the high of the risk in search of the reward – power – either political or money-power by making ‘deals’.
My view is that most politicians are now idealists. This is the dirty little secret of Neo-liberalism right? Neo-liberals know that you cannot leave markets to ‘self regulate’ (note the oxymoron), that monopolists will always try it on, that money talks, that short-termism is the modern human race’s biggest problem etc.
This why Neo-liberalism is always so quick – and why it rides with Fascism – to get its refutation and defamation of the ‘other’ – the Left or progressives – in as quickly as possible and maintained.
So, the result is that political ideals like equality or fairness, proper free/fair trade between nations, social security, MMT, peace for all men, non-exploitative health care etc are treated as if they were ‘cloud cuckoo land’ – despite the fact that Christianity fundamentally supports all this stuff. The opportunity to create heaven on earth is prevented and then we can mythologise about the after life and concepts about heaven without realising that we are actually advocating death. And no one in our time has come back from the dead that I know of.
So my view is that our politicians the world over – or in the global North /West etc., at least are Neo-liberal idealists who see it as their job to realise the REAL cloud cuckoo land of von Hayek, Friedman, the ‘efficient market hypothesis’, misquote Adam Smith and other such masturbation about economic life.
These idealists always want to tinker or do more of the wrong thing because they are driven by their idealism. The failure feedback loop is also hugely constrained by the refutation and defamation heaped on any alternatives by their credo. So with no where to go, the tinkering and repetition goes on. It is the logic of Tim Snyder’s idea of ‘no new ideas’ (2018).
And as you note, there is even a religious fervor to it all. But there has to be – because facing up to to reality would quite frankly destroy these people. It would destroy them because ‘believing’ is self preservation; they’ve banked their future on it. ‘Believing’ is easier than ‘knowing’; because knowing is difficult and scary and actually far beyond the capacity of those who believe. ‘Believing’ is easy – as Thomas Hobbes noted – you just have to open your gob and say anything – use words – and ‘it is’, however absurd! And thus we unthinkingly abuse words like ‘freedom’, independence’, ‘choice’ ‘rational’ and ‘democracy’or even leave them out lie von Hayek left out altruism when describing how human beings maximised their own self interest (being kind to others is a survival tactic and proof also of a wish for a return in kind based on empathy, it is also a form of non-money debt – not just some woolly notion created by Neo-liberals).
Irrationality has always been part of human life – but the market idealism we live under now turbocharges that idealism to ever more dangerous levels in its pursuit of simply gathering up money. And results in that which is rational being portrayed as irrational. And thus, thousands of years of humanity is re-written in a generation. It’s effects in history will ape the fall of bullshit corporations like Enron; one minute at the top of the heap; the next, unwound in a matter of days. That is what we are facing but on a much bigger scale all brought about because of idealistic capitalism based on accruing money.
I have no doubt that modern politicians get a buzz about being at the centre of things – I see a lot of managers with that disease these days. But more than anything many of our politicians seem to be nothing more than idealist members of a death cult.
Thanks
I’m fascinated by your comments about religious fervour/dogmatism/inflexibility in politics. It’s a valuable observation. What puzzles me is their continued neoliberal dogmatism/inflexibility in the face of so much contrary economic evidence.
I AM a person of faith, I have beliefs that I hold after rational thought and hopefully can defend with intellectual rigour. My convictions have influenced major life choices, including career, and lifestyle and have lasted me for over 50 testing & rewarding adult years
But I have never, (perhaps because of my scientific, rather than my theological education), felt the need to go further than, “I find it reasonable to believe that the ‘religious’ explanation for these events is as, or more, reasonable than the alternatives, and therefore, I am prepared to make decisions based on them being true”.
But just as I can’t “prove” any scientific theory, only test it and note that so far, it isn’t DISproved, so I treat my religious convictions the same way, I can’t PROVE them, and of course, I might be wrong. But even if I am, I don’t regret my life choices
Yet neoliberal economists and politicians seem terrified of even that limited level of agnosticism, even when their chief article of faith – or maybe just their chief excuse – (that governments have no power to create money) has perished under the burden of hard evidence as certainly as belief in the flat or a 6,000yr young earth.
I suppose I am hoping for their eyes to be opened, or, perhaps, for their hearts to be changed by a “road to Damascus experience”, or for a political apostle Barnabas to take them aside, so that they, like Apollos, can be taught the way of the economy/Lord more accurately?
Thanks
I like your argument
I was somewhat surprised to see Starmer was in Cyprus earlier this week – I think it was Tuesday. He was giving a speech to a load of soldiers, posed in front of a huge RAF plane and a small RAF jet (looked like a Hawk to me). The squadies did give him a bit of applause, but I thought it sounded rather forced and short. I missed PMQs this week since our younger daughter visited, but I think he was back to take part in it. Why does he feel the need to go off at the drop of a pin to exotic destinations to speechify? He doesn’t seem to spend much time in UK at all. Or am I mistaken and he’s here nearly all the time but is so un-newsworthy that nobody bothers to report it?
I think Starmer went to Cyprus to support the “surveillance” work the RAF is doing over Gaza in association with the ongoing Israeli genocide mission in the (70yr long) occuption of Palestine.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/24794524.british-involvement-gaza-much-deeper-media-acknowledge/
This of course, is in flagrant breach of our obligations under the ICJ rulings requiring signatory nations to do all they can to PREVENT genocide in Palestine rather than facilitate & perpetuate it.
Presumably, Starmer, as a “self-confessed 100% unqualified Zionist”, sees no problem with this.
I, on the other hand, see it as UK complicity in war crimes and am deeply ashamed to be part of it.
While many people join the armed services for the fun, the challenge etc, a good number will want to help their country to right wrongs, or to support a weak nation invaded by a strong.
Might some of our forces based in Cyprus be appalled by helping to bomb the hell out of the confined population of Gaza – already driven from homes by the Nakba and now suffering what most of the world considers genocide by an apartheid regime. Seeing the murder of unarmed women and children, witnessing their homes, schools, hospitals and universities destroyed is not the sort of mission that principled members of our forces would have expected.
Was Starmer trying to quell mutiny?
That thought had occurred to me. I was brought up on RAF stations and had a sibling in RAF too.
I once found myself at an event where David Miliband was present , it was one of those times in your life when you go along for the ride to accompany someone else who’d been let down by another .
It was at the time when both himself and his brother Ed were on the rise in the Labour Party and were seen as shining lights .
I got a good look at David Miliband just by observing him from a distance and it was fascinating .
A number of people went up to him throughout the night as you’d imagine but I was struck by how he conducted himself , whilst people were talking to him he was constantly looking around the room as though he was only half listening , I suspected he was looking for more important people to engage with in the room and couldn’t really be bothered with those he didn’t consider important enough .
It led me to think why he was in politics at all because it seemed to me if was just using politics and events such as the one I attended to network , the event was important to many that attended it but David saw it another way I thought .
Only a small sample admittedly but it definitely left a lasting impression on me , I wasn’t too disappointed when he didn’t win the Labour leadership I have to say although many people were as things turned out .
I noticed he quickly disappeared from politics when he didn’t win that leadership contest , maybe my instincts that particular night weren’t far off the mark .
It is a phenomenon I have observed.
I know his time is past however as a counterpoint:
I once attended a regional labour party event with Jeremy Corbyn. Place was packed to the rafters. After his speech he gave time to everyone who approached him and the only time his attention wandered was when our virulelently anti Corbyn MP came over. He made a beeline for her and had the biggest smile of the night on his face as he asked and was allowed to hold her newborn baby.
JC connected with people in a way most machine politicians from the Professional Managerial Caste are just not able to. It is yet one more reason he had to be destroyed, politics on a human level as opposed to politics as a dessicated calculating machine practiced by clueless cretins whose only experience is university / SPaD / Think tank / safe parliamentary seat
I saw Jeremy in action.
He was like that.
I travelled across Bristol to Filton to hear Jeremy Corbyn prior to the 2019 election. It wasn’t skilful oratory, but he directly connected with his audience, and there was so much content there. Actual policy proposals, things he was committed to doing, and how.
I also went to the Bristol 2020 Leadership/Dep leadership hustings & saw Starmer making his carefully calculated lying pitch to the left of the party, to be a “Corbyn continuity” candidate. I came away feeling slightly soiled at having witnessed such blatant hypocritical mendacious duplicity. You could sense him manouevering for his multiple U Turns almost as soon as the ballot closed, lining up his ten pledges to be ditched one after the other. I also could never understand how the Board of Deputies of British Jews were allowed to impose pre-conditions on who could stand in that leadership contest, but they were and they did. Only Dawn Butler & Richard Burgon (both for dep leader) resisted their most improper pressure.
The rot was well under way by then.
I remember his response to the Grenfell disaster (if that is the right word to describe a catastrophe caused by public, official and corporate neglect of the welfare of those most vulnerable in society – still continuing). There straight away and offering personal support to the victims. Which did not stop the constant disgraceful sniping, much of it from supposedly his own side.
It is a universal phenomenon; critical in business. What that phenomenon really tells us is that knowledge is not very important; but connections are seen, ‘de facto’ as vital, and primary. The sub-clinically psychopathic, and those best able to deceive, especially about themselves have a major advantage. It is all the same merry-go-round. The world we have created favours the most adept and skilful of the worst.
But like all such phenomena, unchecked, and given long enough success; and they destroy the system on which they depend. Then the chancers are the first to disappear; or grab the first lifeboat, or the last plane out.
My sister met his brother, and was very struck by his courtesy and the attention he gave each and very lowly union representative (of whom she was one) at the event.
Question – what is a political junkie? My dictionary says a junkie is a drug addict, but adds than when a modifier (like ‘political’) is used it means ‘ a person with a compulsive habit or obsessive dependency on something’.
Mmmm, I wonder if it has any bearing on what the ONS reports on Trust in Government UK where 46% have low or no trust in local government, 68% have low or no trust in political parties and 66% have low or no trust in the news media.
Only 24% have high or moderately high trust in Parliament.
Collated in 2023, the level of low or no trust in the UK Government was 57%. Will Sir Keir and his Chancellor and Health Sec and Foreign Minister (and his aide, Ben Judah) have restored this to better levels than 27% having high or moderately high levels of trust in the UK Government?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/bulletins/trustingovernmentuk/2023
Thank you for an article on an important submerged truth.
Might other relevant factors include:
A wish/driver to please big donors, the main stream media and the”deep state” plus attitudes and skills which facilitate becoming “top canine” in an organisation?
“Thé attributes which get a person to the top of an organisation do not always result in the good management of that organisation (From J. Barclay Gillies)
P. S. Might the post 1988 Education Reform Act havé resulted in an increasingly supine citizenry who are largely unaware of critical and lateral thinking and so are more tolerant of political leaders lacking in attitudes and skills needed to improve and develop society?
I’ll muse on that
This video was me thinking out loud – nit a definitive answer
Thanks to Baker prescribing both curriculum and some teaching, going much further than even Thatcher intended, plus of course the removal of catchment to promote competition. The hinge on which all turned, I suspect.
Agree with both the dopamine hypothesis and the Dark Triad idea, to which I’d point to the centrality of control, whether keeping the integrity of self in narcissism, or the manipulation of others in sociopathy. Once upon a time, dying out I suspect with those who experienced WW2, public service was the end in itself. There are very few now who ascend in the polity who do so without cronyism, fealty, corruption or pathological self interest. Those who do largely walk away ere long in my experience.
Ian Dunt’s book How Westminster Works and Why It Doesn’t is excellent in explaining how the political system works in practice and why. Including why MPs end up behaving as they do – cannon fodder for the Whips. Ive seen enough of it close to, including inside Westminster, to conclude that that there are MPs that are there for good reasons, because they want to do their best for their constituents and the country. You might not agree with their particular politics but chances are that they are not one of the ideologues. They have probably had experience of life outside politics as well.
Then there are those who are dedicated politicians, probably came into politics straight from university to work for an MP, hoping to become a SPAD or maybe work for a political think tank. The ones who are always looking over your shoulder to talk to someone who will do more for their career as described above. Changing their politics to suit the party zeitgeist. They want the power and will do whatever necessary to climb up the greasy pole.
Finally those who are in it for the money. I had a close up view of the expenses scandal which was massively overstated. Personally I think it was a deliberate strategy by the Telegraph to undermine our Parliamentary system – which they don’t really believe in. The expenses system was a mess but was a substitute for pay levels that were very low by international standards. There are undoubtedly some abusing the political system for their own financial benefit, probably too many, as there were at the time of the expenses scandal. Johnson and his Tories had their snouts deep in the trough. It’s certainly getting worse which is why we need tough legislation to restrict the money coming into politics. Both at personal and party levels.
For those who still think that MPs are overpaid, would you really want to be an MP? It’s a 365 day a week job, with a lot of abuse and very little thanks. 80% of it dealing with the muck and bullets of constituency work. Destroys your personal life and you can lose your job in an instant. So recognise the good ones and support them. Dismissing them as all the same helps no-one.
Robin
I wish I could identify many good ones.
How may are there? Really?
Richard
There is something rotten in the state of …. major Western democracies, if I may steal a line from Shakespeare.
And what the Western democracies have in common (whether Republican or Monarchy); is they are governed by Party.
You refer to “politicians now serving their countries”. Was that a slip of the tongue? The politicians you describe are not serving their countries at all. They may be self-serving, or serving the interests of big business or investors, but that’s different.
Those who are regarded as “good constituency MPs” may well be serving their constituents, of course.
And where do the shadowy “advisers” fit into the picture?
You fairly call me out.
and for this urge to have a dopamine hit, we pay them. Unfortunately when I now think of our PM, I revert to Hugh Grant –
One aspect that doesn’t get enought attention is that being an MP is increasingly seen as a relatively short-term career move, maybe ten to fifteen years. Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott are now unusual in having been MPs since 1983 and 1987 respectively. Contrast that with the current PM and his predecessor who were elected in 2014 and 2015 and became party leaders after six years in Starmer’s case and seven years in Sunak’s. Johnson resigned as an MP a year after being replaced as PM by Truss. Cameron resigned as an MP within three months of resigning as PM after losing the Brexit referendum.
Contrast that with the PMs of the late 20th century. Wilson was elected an MP in 1945 and became PM nineteen years later. Thatcher was elected an MP in 1959 and became PM 20 years later.
I’m sure there a number of reasons for this change, but one is definitely to do with money and the 21st century opportunities to cash in on a parliamentary / ministerial career, however brief and undistinguished. If you manage to get to the top of the greasy pole, the rewards in the form of “consultancy”, non-executive directorships and the speaking circuit are in the tens of millions. Blair, Cameron and Johnson have already made these sums and it will be a surprise if Sunak and Starmer don’t follow that path of gold. Sunak has said that he will serve as MP for Richmond until the next general election. Yeah right.
yes, even failure opens many doors.
Yes, and as with all addictions the focus becomes the fix. Resulting in diminished empathy, the tendency to see people as a means to an end and finally, callous and cruel leadership. As displayed in the extreme by Boris Johnson and Trump, but also by most politicians as they ‘feel the power’.
David Byrne says:
The likelihood is that the majority of our ‘esteemed’ politicians belong to one of those groups of psychological misfits who have personality disorders.
Do they just crave.the love and recognition that was denied them in childhood?
[…] video I published yesterday, in which I suggested that almost all politicians are engaged in that occupation for the dopamine […]
The proposition that MP candidates are in for the win, the dopamine hit as you described it in the video has one slight flaw in the argument.
That is once elected the vast majority are content to languishing on the back bench, how does that fit you ‘junkie’ tag, basically it makes them ‘one hit wonders’.
The only drug metaphor I can conjure from that is the idea of a Victorian opium den where the addicts just lay about in a stupor obvious to the world around them.
Next time I tune into today at Parliament will I now see a hazy room filled with disembodied mindless addicts, and misfits trying to figure out their next fix.
I promise you, they still get the hit, even if it is only from local media.
An American friend of mine once commented “The fact that someone wants to be President is a very good reason why he shouldn’t be” (different country, different office)
The reason for wanting an office is to be able to achieve what holding it enables – and in too many cases that is extracting money, or have the kudos. Neither of them good reasons.