“John had become a national figure by the time he was forty. This was because he was in certain positions and places: not becuase he was more than ordinarily competent, or had more than the usual grasp of public affairs …”
“He was not respected in ways that matter, and he knew it. He was only another among the hundreds, the thousands, of the politicians of the globe of whom nothing much was to be expected …”
“In fact, most of the politicians of that time needed psychiatric support, because of hte natur eof their preoccupations: an unreality at the very heart of their everyday decision-making, thinking, functioning.”
from Doris Lessing, Shikasta (p103-5)
