I don't take the political world as "worse." Instead, I think that we have to realize that politics is the dimension of our social lives in which people get together to cooperate. They cooperate (we hope) to change things for the better. Sometimes that means that some dumb things have to happen as well...why? because there are always going to be some dumb or selfish people sitting at the bargaining table. Locke's optimism that all people were reasonable and able to see their long term self-interests is a little overly optimistic. Sometimes you have to sit down and work out a problem with a real jerk.

But if at least some of the problem is resolved, we're in a better situation than we were before.

And maybe that is all we can be content with...

In Swedish one can quite easily do away with most pronouns in a sentence, replacing the subject with the impersonal pronoun 'one', which is quite commonly in use. The object can often just be dropped or replaced in one way or another, so we end up with something where the 'I' is quite simply gone and displaced to people in general, and the object is just assumed. This can be done, it is done, but one does have other options, it is not the only way to speak. It seems to me that Persson does this a lot. More than 'normal'. I was trying to render it in English with somewhat idiosyncratic translations. Like this one, where we start with 'he' and 'I', and then quickly proceeds to depersonalised statements:

Göran Person: I noticed that he was uncertain, going up to the podium. And this is not unimportant as a signal, to me. That one notices quickly when one has socialised. It becomes a bit loose, and a bit unnecessarily stressed voice, and things like that.

Is this in any way strange, or is this actually how people speak? Is this how politicians speak? Is this an intentional effect to make us feel more like Persson is allowing us in on some dirty secrets? Does he end up doing this because he is gossiping about his colleagues and would like to distance himself (and them!) a bit from it?