Translate the following six paragraphs into Chinese
After David Amess’s death, MPs will feel the cold shiver
of vulnerability
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/15/david-amesss-death-assault-democracy-mps
One of the most common accusations to be levelled at MPs is that they are
“out of touch”. It is sometimes true, but not as often as people may think. The
charge is frequently a device to portray ideological difference as cultural
alienation. We disagree with a politician’s opinions, and want that to indicate
some moral detachment from the ordinary people they are elected to represent.
In reality, most MPs are more closely connected, more palpably in touch with the
electorate than their many critics appreciate. David Amess was making contact
with his constituents – physically present, personally attentive, intimately
available – when he was killed in his Essex constituency on Friday afternoon.
Whatever the identity and motives of the killer – facts that will emerge in due
course – the act is felt as an assault on democracy, as well as a cruel human
tragedy. The MPs’ constituency surgery is one of the least examined institutions
of British politics partly because so much of what happens there is
confidential. Anyone who has had the privilege of sitting in on a session will
know how intensely private and often harrowing the stories can be of vulnerable
people, anxious, adrift in chaotic lives or hostages to dysfunctional
bureaucracy, turning to their elected representative for advice – or sanctuary.
There are often time-wasters, too, cranks and vexatious complainants. But
variety and unpredictability is a function of the open door. A wide spectrum of
characters, opinions and temperaments are found in every constituency, and each
is entitled to be heard. But the MP is entitled to hear them without fear of
violence. Democracy shrinks when every new figure in the doorway might cast a
murderous shadow.
In 2010, Stephen Timms, Labour MP for East Ham, survived a knife attack in his
constituency office. Once recovered from life-threatening injuries, he went
straight back to holding face-to-face constituency surgeries, considering it an
essential fulfilment of the duty to which he was elected.
In June 2016, Jo Cox was shot and stabbed outside the library she was due to
visit in her West Yorkshire constituency. She had been an MP for less than a
year, which was long enough to make one of the most memorable interventions in
the House of Commons for a generation. It was her maiden speech, celebrating the
social and cultural diversity of the area she represented. The peroration became
her epitaph: “What surprises me, time and time again, as I travel around the
constituency is that we are far more united and have far more in common than
that which divides us.”
It is a radiant truth too often submerged in the brackish foam of partisan rage.
The shine on Cox’s words needs regular protection from the tarnish of corrosive
cynicism. That which divides us has a nasty habit of shouting over the top of
what we have in common.
MPs from all factions in all parties will be united in shock and grief at the
death of David Amess. They will also feel the cold shiver of vulnerability,
since many of them will have received abuse and threats online and in person.
And it is not just the MPs who are affected. Their families and staff are
targeted. Many will have installed extra security precautions, not just in their
constituency offices but in their homes, on the advice of police, when the
threats are deemed to be not idle. Most will have been accosted at some point in
the street, in the supermarket, at a local fete, and been told of their
worthlessness, of their greed and corruption, of their complicity in all manner
of foul policies and far-fetched conspiracies.
MPs will have borne those verbal assaults with dignity and patience because it
is part of the job. Or, rather, it has become part of the job and no one has yet
worked out a way to restore boundaries of basic civility. If it is a choice
between security and accessibility, British politicians have collectively stuck
with the latter, which is the courageous path, but it is not a dilemma that they
should face in a civilised democracy.
For all the ferocity of a hyper-partisan political culture and the febrile,
intemperate mood that seems to have become the permanent condition of
Westminster, an immutable quality of parliament is its purpose as a house of
representation. It may seem culturally remote, even out-of-touch. But an MP was
killed today, in the act of getting in touch. David Amess was making the human
connection between the institutions of democracy and the people who are
represented there. On a day like this, we forget them-and-us. We are reminded:
they are us.