Surely *this* scoundrel will be better?

[jducoeur]

I'm continuing my occasional progress through the Discworld novels; currently, I'm about halfway through #8, Guards! Guards! And I have to say, the reactions of the crowd of Ankh-Morpork to the idea of a King are sounding distressingly familiar. The sheer belief that A King will do no wrong; that he will Right All Wrongs (no matter how trivial); and most importantly, how he will Overthrow the Oppressors -- well, it all sounds an awful lot like the campaign ads I'm seeing fifty times a day from various candidates, especially of the Tea Party pursuasion. (Which are mostly even more vacuous than usual, full of vague promises to fix all the hard problems without the slightest hint of *how*.)

Of course, this isn't surprising: the nature of good satire is that it makes real life look even more depressingly ludicrous than it already was...