Save time at elections: be disappointed now

>> The replacement of diaries by vapid social media posts – inevitable, but no less insidious for that – has the unintended consequence of making it harder to remember even recent events, and thus to know when politicians are lying to you. Painting by Janez Šubic, 1850-1889

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“HOPE’ is the thing with feathers”, wrote the American poet Emily Dickinson.

She was comparing hope to a bird (I think; being poetry, it's hard to tell) but a more apt simile might be a shuttlecock, likewise fledged but, unlike a bird, lacking free will. Instead, its existence consists of being pointlessly batted back and forth, with frequent plunges on to the unfriendly earth, until it ends up stuck on top of a heating duct, for ever out of reach unless you have a really long ladder. Since the first US badminton club only opened in 1878, by which time Dickinson was already living in seclusion in Amherst, New Jersey, perhaps we can excuse this lapse.