And just like that we're into the final week before we go to vote. After all the weeks of misrepresentative argumentation and assigning prior blame to people that can't be held accountable, after mischaracterising the policies of governments past and the contexts in which they were formed, we're going to head to the polls next Saturday none the wiser and less informed than we need to be. This must be the most confused, stupid, irrational election in a very long time; I can't recall one as irrational and idiotic in my lifetime of voting. We are reaching peak stupid when it comes to the political discourse in this nation.
As such, one would think the incumbents are going to win. Which is a real tragedy that will have a deep impact on our polity for years to come.
Part of the problem is that you really can't trust these people at all. Especially after the 2013 election where by Tony Abbott spectacularly promised not to make cuts to specific things like health and education and then promptly went back on all his promises the moment he got into power. The Liberal Party has not really explained itself why they had to so flagrantly break their election promises, nor have they acquitted themselves particularly well For having done so. Worse still they haven't changed course from Tony Abbott's disastrous direction-setting as Malcolm Turnbull has steadfastly stuck to the same stupid policies.
The ALP aren't exactly mounting a great challenge. It's competent - but it's going to need to be a bit more than competent to get that 4.5% uniform swing. The fear is that Bill Shorten is trying to get close but not necessarily to win, and ask the party for another shot after a narrow loss. It's a wonder that they just don't go for the jugular with facts given just how incompetent and awful the incumbents have been.
When you look at the Brexit vote and the rise of Trump in the USA, it appears that the victory of slogan-over-substance delivered by Tony Abbott was in fact an early salvo in the rancorous kinds of elections where radical rhetoric muscles into the middle of the political discourse. The self-defeating protest vote that installed Tony Abbott over the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP government is the very same kind of self-defeating protest vote that delivered Donald Trump as the nominee of the Republicans as well as voted the UK right out of the EU.
The best news about this election is that at the very least we're not about to do something drastic because we've already done that in 2013 and hopefully have the hindsight to know that was crap. But you never know. These candidates are ordinary enough to fuck up even that sad silver lining.
How Bad Is It Really?
Skarp sent me a link from The Economist today, probably to alert me to the fact that Brexit really is alarming - not merely disquieting of disturbing, or perhaps eyebrow-raising. It is the full skid, brown an stinky.
People are trying to put a smiley face on the utterly untenable Brexit situation. By people I mean journalists and politicians and spokespeople for the finance sector. The reality is that the ructions caused by the Brexit vote re already besting the kinds of records set in August 2008 when the US congress decided not to hand over the TARP payments to bail out the banks at the height of the liquidity crisis. For all this talk about scaremongering, one would like to ask just exactly were people expecting when they advocated Brexit?
Here's a quick look at what the British leadership looks like right now:
Sixty hours have gone by since a puffy-eyed David Cameron appeared outside 10 Downing Street and announced his resignation. The pound has tumbled. Investment decisions have been suspended; already firms talk of moving operations overseas. Britain’s EU commissioner has resigned. Sensitive political acts—the Chilcot report’s publication, decisions on a new London airport runway and the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent—are looming. European leaders are shuttling about the continent meeting and discussing what to do next. Those more sympathetic to Britain are looking for signs from London of how they can usefully influence discussions. At home mounting evidence suggests a spike in racist and xenophobic attacks on immigrants. Scotland is heading for another independence referendum. Northern Ireland’s peace settlement may hang by a thread.
But at the top of British politics, a vacuum yawns wide. The phones are ringing, but no one is picking up.
Mr Cameron has said nothing since Friday morning. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, has been silent. (This afternoon I texted several of his advisers to ask whether he would make a statement before the markets open tomorrow. As I write this I have received no replies.) The prime minister’s loyalist allies in Westminster and in the media are largely mute.
Apart from ashen-faced, mumbled statements from the Vote Leave headquarters on Friday, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have also ducked the limelight; Mr Johnson is meeting friends and allies today, June 26th, at his house near Oxford in what are believed to be talks about his impending leadership bid. Neither seems to have the foggiest as to what should happen next. Today Mr Gove’s wife committed to Facebook the hope that “clever people” might offer to “lend their advice and expertise.” And Mr Johnson’s sister, Rachel, tweeted: “Everyone keeps saying ‘we are where we are’ but nobody seems to have the slightest clue where that is.”I thought that alone would fill you with joy. If that's not whacky-disheartening enough, there's a report that a British nuclear sub has made port at Gibraltar to exert pressure on the Spanish not to attack. Like, hullo! Brexit surely doesn't mean the UK goes on war footing with the EU. Who the hell is running the show?
This whole process of Brexit clearly wasn't thought through let alone war-gamed or tested. You know I've been talking to reasonable people explaining to me why they thought the UK should leave the EU and why they voted that way, but truth be known they probably thought about the whole thing a whole lot more than the idiotic advocates Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. It's rapidly becoming clear these idiots have no plan (never even saw the point of one), and as such Britain is more rudderless and adrift rather than proudly sailing forth out of the EU.
The people who have been explaining to me the rationale for voting Brexit are actually rationalising a bad decision with great skill and imagination. It's crap. It's the full load of shit that's hit the biggest fan in the world and the shit is flying all over the planet as we speak.
As politics goes, this is a well-thrusted custard.
Bravo Stupid.
The Dinosaurs Scream At The Incoming Asteroid...
Michael Moore had an interview with Owen Jones in the lead up to the Brexit vote in which he likened the British desire to leave the Eu as being like a Premier League football club wanting to leave the Premier League, relegating itself out. In the same interview he likened the people voting for a Brexit to the sorts of people voting for Donald Trump and said that most of the time the demagogues represented the dying wails of the reign of the straight white man. That it was like dinosaurs screaming at the Incoming asteroid, "build a wall!"
The fact is that the demographic change is happening and with it will come a new generation of thinkers, writers, and most importantly voters. They will think and enact things that this current set of status quo politicians cannot imagine let alone enact. And if you fear the future, you just might put your foot down and scream with Michael Moore's dinosaurs, "build a wall!"
That got me to thinking about the demographic divide on many issues which, in usual discussion starts off with the difference on things like gay marriage, but more importantly cover things like education and health. The segment of people voting for the likes of Bernie Sanders are young. The segment of population in Australia that supports gay marriage is young.
These issues might be contested heavily in the future if they were divided along ideological lines but It turns out they are not. That means these issues will inevitably go the way the young people want it in the future. The urge to leave the EU because one is a Euro-sceptic and make as the urge to vote for Trump who promises to make "America Great Again" (which has been lampooned as "make America White Again"), and even to the extent that Australians can be persuaded that locking up asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru is a good idea. In the not too distant future when there are more of the young than the old again, it will flip.
In the mean time the current regime of dinosaurs will try and stack things in their favour as much as possible, trying to build barricades - heck, build walls. These are all rearguard actions of an older mindset. There are still enough dinosaurs fighting the rearguard action, staving off the future in, say, the DNC as there are in-reconstructed racists and crackpots on the right who pushed Trump into the limelight. Equally they are in the Tories in the UK and LNP here in Australia. The LNP are so anti-progressive they are determined to be absolutely regressive - but they just can't get the youth vote doing that.
To that extent I am more optimistic than pessimistic About the future. It's a real shame Bernie Sanders won't get up this year as the Democratic Nominee, for instance - but something is going to come from the enormous movement he has built. Something like climate change denial is a sport for the intellectually dishonest, but the phenomenon itself is advancing inexorably. At some point in the future, the young voters of today will have the numbers to get their politicians in who will not only institute proper policies but maybe even find the means to reverse decades of carbon emissions.
I have to admit, I am secretly hoping this is the election where it changes over and the Australian dinosaurs are consigned to history.
Speaking Of The Great Wall Of Trump...
I had the funny insight given to me this month:
The Chinese built their Great Wall to keep the barbarians out. But they sure didn't try to charge the cost of building that wall onto the barbarians.
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