Pratchett and Politics

I'm rereading "Guards! Guards!" right now, and I just came across this quote:

But incompetents with possibilities, nevertheless. Let the other societies take the skilled, the hopefuls, the ambitious, the self-confident. He'd take the whining resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the one who knew they could make it big if only they'd been given the chance. Give him the ones in which floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and low-grade paranoia.

Is it just me, or is this a good description for a large chunk of a current minority political party?

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it's not just you. I find he is one of the most perspicacious describers of the human being.

and if you recall the result of their disastrous short term policy initiatives...

Have you read 1984 by George Orwell?

By Shadow Caster (not verified) on 31 Jan 2009 #permalink

At the moment I'm half-way into Making Money. It was published before the current economic mess, but it's still spot on about trading trust. Pratchett must have a crystal ball somewhere...

By Lassi Hippeläinen (not verified) on 31 Jan 2009 #permalink

I didn't much go for "Making Money", but I though "Going Postal" was a brilliant commentary on the way skilled,talented workers get screwed over by money-grubbing con-artists on the lookout for a quick profit at any price. (He was describing the Discworld's nascent communications industry, although I thought it was pretty obvious that the undertext was the disgraceful breakup and sell-off of the British railway industry.)