Is politics dead?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had all number of disturbed people totter up to me, grab my forearm, and say, concernedly, “Dominic, it can’t be true, can it?”

“Of course it bloody can!” I reply. “What?”

Their eyes fill with terror as they struggle to get the word out. “Politics.”

I immediately start to lose interest. “Oh, that.”

“Is it really dead?” they whimper.

I type “politics” into my mental search engine and get 31, 100, 001 results. The whole exercise takes about 0.24 seconds.

With a sympathetic smile, I pat the panicking loon on the head, and ask if they’d care to assayez-vous. They always say, “Why, I’d be honoured!” – clearly shocked that I’d give a millisecond of my precious time to such a dried-up basket case. But as soon as they bend their knees and aim their buttocks towards the seat, I leg it, screaming, “Get a life, you fruit loop!”

It may sound cruel, but you’ll have to blame my mother. “Never tolerate a loser,” she told me. “He’ll only end up marrying you, emptying your bank account and absconding to the Canary Islands with an 18-year old tart.”

You see, just because I’m the world’s sharpest political columnist (and Lord knows I am), it doesn’t mean I cherish the company of politics nuts.

The truth is I can’t think of any collective social stereotype I abhor more than politicos. In my vast experience, an evening with an insurance salesman is infinitely preferable to five-minutes in the company of someone who likes to “talk politics”.

I’m not kidding: If they’re not a tedious lefty, droning on about “American war crimes”, you can bet your ample derrière they’re a pompous con, identifying the latest threats to “our glorious national interest”.

Unfortunately, lesser mortals look to a person like me for answers (and pray to me for guidance). One of the downsides of my job is being relentlessly bombarded by the whims of mindless numbskulls (otherwise known as concerned readers).

For those of you still out of the fruit loop, the present rumpus ignited last month after I wrote an award-winning column under the title “Daddy, what is politics? ”

In that “mould-shattering über-feuilleton” (Bombay Daily Enema), I travelled to India, hoping to catch a glimpse of the future. Instead, I caught myself in my own zipper.

In one of history’s most grotesque misjudgments, I quoted Jugdish Ganguly, a leading Indian outsourcer and overtly westernised tycoon. I asked him if politics was dead. He said “as Mahatma Gandhi.” (I checked. This Gandhi guy croaked it in 1948.)

Call me naïve, but I hadn’t expected such an innocent exchange to trigger a global uproar.

What do I know?

It turns out the world is littered with the kind of trash who rely on politics to get them through the day. If life were just an endless round of business, religion and Pepsi, as Ganguly had suggested, bridges in every nation would be lined with leaping politicos, unable to stand the meaningless emptiness of it all.

Not me. I’d be making tons of money, indulging in some outrageously outmoded ritual, or guzzling gallons of the world’s second-best cola. Life would be great without politics. No discussion.

It was as I was warming to the idea of a politics-free existence, that India went and had a general election. My credibility was instantly shattered. I was left standing with my politic in the wind.

Democracy in action, they called it. If this wasn’t politics – alive, well, doing a mesmerising belly-dance – then what the hell was?

“The worst commentator the industry has ever known”, was how one website described me (www.hiltonsucks.com). My ulcer-ridden editors – whose faces only days before had turned green with envy as I humbly collected yet another enormous trophy – gleefully seized their opportunity. The knives came out. “Et tu what’s-your-name?” I said as the last blade slid into my back.

Now I’m trying to redeem myself, to drop “The guy who proclaimed the death of politics” tag. I thought it was my Fukuyama moment. Change the “y” for an “m” and you’re closer to the truth.

Unfortunately, politics is not dead. I can’t say the same for Jugdish Ganguly. That’s the last time I rely on a single unsubstantiated source.

It’s as my old friend Max E. Mise of the Beltway Bulletin once told me: “A good journalist covers everything in sources. Hot sources. Thick sources. Favourite sources. All kinds of sources.”

I’m taking him at his word.