Who is popular today?

By his every act, one of the leading architects of Brexit gives good cause for us to mistrust him
How can I encapsulate the decline of the west? Libraries of books have been written on populism. Learned men and women have agonised over the eagerness to believe lies are true and the truth an elitist conspiracy. Surely a paltry newspaper column cannot begin to compete. Fortunately for journalists, if not for this luckless country, self-harming mendacity, institutionalised deceit and manufactured paranoia can be condensed down to the pimple-shaped figure of Michael Gove.
To further his career, he has made a nonsense of the ideas he pretends to believe in, and projects the vices he cannot admit to possessing on to those who challenge him. Writing of the pornographic tradition in western art, John Berger described the projection of artists who “painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure”. Continue reading...