An Elephant of One's Own

"So the Swedes are at it again," said a man with straw hair and a parallelogram for a nose, "voting for a number of different political parties, including one that the Guardian doesn't like. There have been articles, comments, pundits and Punditssons, all stalking around this obscure tragedy, peering into the flames, trying to understand. I know no Swedish, yet happen to understand perfectly, free of charge, because like the Swedes, I am a yes man." "A yes man," he went on, lighting his moustache and waving away the proffered crumpet, "is a man who says yes while miserably dreaming the alluring no. A man for whom 'free choice' is an alibi rather than a motive, something you just invoke to get out of the fix of explaining. A man whose choices - because actually unfree, constrained to binary by a maritime git's bony legs round his neck - lead to diminished and dismal outcomes, the sort that garner distracted smirks, and the odd Irish ...