Opinion Editorial September, 2026: The Price of Dancing Queens
Opinion based on selected news stories from August 2026.
ABBA's Dancing Queen has been having the time of her life for fifty years. Thousands of years before her, Buddhist and Hindu mythology imagined apsaras (beautiful women elevated to the status of divine nymphs) having the time of their lives by dancing for their gods. Last month, some of the world's politicians and diplomats also "danced." The consequences were not as entertaining.
I was in the Tonle Sap region of Cambodia recently when I took this month's photo. These ladies are portraying apsaras. Cultural apsara performances like this can be seen across many parts of Asia.
A record 34 candidates danced their way to the small town of Clacton-on-Sea on the east coast of England. Ostensibly there for a by-election, instead they treated the world to a farce. Some of them were there only for satire. Yet, one of those satirical candidates, Count Binface, received 43% as many votes as the eventual winner, Nigel Farage.
The real winner in that by-election was political theater. With Binface's large voter share and only a 44% turnout, we should consider the possibility that some were protesting against UK politics transitioning from serious business to pantomime. Just six days later, the UK government appeared to confirm that politics in that country is a pantomime.
Societies spent millennia establishing acceptable social behavior. After the invention of writing, centuries of philosophical treatises, legal and religious texts on law and morality fill entire bookshelves. Yet the UK government's best and brightest found a way to condense much of that history into a nine-page booklet: "Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers."
When I wrote about the need for education around cultural integration, a booklet is not what I had in mind. By trivializing the complexity of cultural integration, the UK government is dancing around the issue.
High-stakes diplomacy was choreographed across the Middle East. American, Pakistani and Qatari diplomats tried to address some of the conflicts affecting that region. But as this article goes to press, their efforts have produced no immediate resolutions and the humanitarian fallout continues to spread.
The Associated Press published a report titled "The ripple effects of the Iran war could threaten education for millions of kids around the world." It documents the effects of fuel-price inflation on some of the world's most vulnerable people.
The report was filed from the same region of Cambodia where I took this month's photo. It mentions a thirteen-year-old girl who routinely misses school to help her family make a living. But it also highlights the plight of economically strained families in many parts of the world who now have to choose between basic survival and the "luxury" of education for their children.
Societies once imagined apsaras dancing for the gods. They would not have imagined that, thousands of years later, politicians and diplomats would dance on the world stage and impact the lives of so many people. ABBA's Dancing Queen may still be having the time of her life. But until some of last month's dancers start taking their responsibility and the consequences of their choreography more seriously, the rest of us will not be having the time of ours.
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