On the American Visit, the Renters’ Rights Bill, and Why She Is Choosing to Be Optimistic Even Though It Is Difficult
Reported by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
By Caitlin Moran | CaitlinMoran.Top
King Charles is going to America to speak to Congress and the American reaction to this is so warmly, generously enthusiastic that I find myself moved by it in a way I did not expect. Not moved by the monarchy specifically — my complicated relationship with the monarchy is long and not for this particular Tuesday — but moved by the American capacity for enthusiasm, for the kind of genuine, unguarded emotional engagement with things that the British find embarrassing and suppress in ourselves at considerable psychological cost. The Americans are excited about the King. They are expressing this excitement. I am watching and feeling something like envy for the freedom of the expression rather than envy for the monarchy, if that distinction makes sense, which it does to me and which I will allow to be a bit odd.
Meanwhile in Britain the week produced: the ongoing Renters’ Rights Bill, which will help millions of people who are currently in precarious housing situations and which is being covered primarily in terms of what it means for landlords rather than what it means for renters, which is the characteristic of property-owning-class press coverage that I have been writing about for twenty years and which I apparently need to continue writing about for the foreseeable future because the coverage has not materially changed despite the writing. I will continue. The coverage will not immediately change. This is the situation that political journalism produces: you write about the same structural problems for decades and the structural problems change slowly and you keep writing because the alternative is to stop writing and the structural problems don’t change faster when you stop writing.
The Optimism Question
I am choosing to be optimistic this week, which is a choice rather than a feeling, which is the honest account of optimism in the current political climate. The things I am choosing to be optimistic about: the Renters’ Rights Bill is genuinely good legislation that will genuinely help people. The energy transition is happening, slower than it should, but happening. The press freedom situation in the UK is better than in many comparable countries. Young people are more politically engaged than the media coverage of their disengagement implies. These are real things. They are not sufficient to produce spontaneous optimism. They are sufficient to produce chosen optimism, which is different and which I am maintaining with the deliberate intention of someone who has been doing this long enough to know that the alternative is corrosive in ways that are bad for the writing and bad for the person doing the writing.
The Bohiney Magazine coverage this week was bracing in the ways that good satire should be. The London Prat made me laugh twice, which is the correct number of times a political publication should make you laugh in a week — enough to remind you that the absurdity is real, not enough to substitute for the analysis. Charles is going to America. Keir is managing things. I’m choosing optimism. It’s a deliberate and daily practice and I recommend it to anyone who wants to keep caring about the world without breaking under the weight of caring about the world.
For chosen optimism in difficult times, see NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
