How Australian Values Are Changing

Nov 20, 2020 | Australian Values, Corruption, Democracy, Economic Values, Education, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, USPol, Values

How Australian Values Are Changing

Are Australian Values moving left or right?

 

The answer is YES – both. And, more worryingly, also a trajectory outside the known political universe towards the delusional realms of a poltical and social Fantasia. And even more upsettingly, otherwise ordinary-seeming people at the highest levels of government, commerce and public influence have become fierce advocates of “theories” that are palpably bullshit. 

Australians have had, for a long, long time, an enviable reputation for their crisp, fast and accurate bullshit detection. This skill seems to be fading away, particularly—and bizarrely—amongst white, middle class, middle-aged men.

Of course the majority of Australians have been taught from birth to believe in what is not true. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy. Gods of whatever cloth or desert origin. They learn early to believe the lies and reassurances of those they most trust: parents, sunday school teachers and priests of any skyhook religion. They get over Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. 

Now we have a Prime Minister who speaks in tongues of a Sunday and on weekdays believes that to torture children in the name of right-wing political power is a show of compassion. And he is a close family friend of a grown, presumably otherwise intelligent, man who follows bizarre conspiracy theories; a man whose wife works, or has worked, in the PM’s office.

Why? Why do we allow ourselves to be fooled by preposterous, unsubstantiated claims?

Because in school we were never taught logic, logical fallacies, or critical thinking (unless we were lucky).

Most of us were never taught what science really is, or how it is actually done, or the importance of scepticism (no, not cynicism).

And hardly any of us have been taught (or wanted to learn about) statistics and what they do and don’t tell us.

And because those who want to sell to us have learnt how to convince us that we need their product, and if we don’t buy it our lives will be a misery. Those who want to sell to us include politicians, priests and other con artists. Of course.

Anyway

Apart from the boom in conspiratorial, Dark State, UFO, election-stealing bullshit, the left is edging further to the left and the right has dragged itself inexorably towards the far, neo-nazi, authoritarian right.

 

Law and Justice

Australians—according to the Potatocracy of Home Affairs—value the rule of law.

We should not confuse the Law with Justice.

You don’t go to the court to get justice. That is not what the court provides. It provides a legal finding.

The court provides a procedure based on legislation written by lawyers at the request of politicians and agreed to by a majority of parliamentarians. Justice is never, or only rarely, a consideration in the legislation. Judges and magistrates cannot make ‘just’ findings but only ‘legal’ findings. If the two happen to occur simultaneously it’s a coincidence.

Laws have a lot of words. Lots of numbers and letters, lots of sections and subsections and notes. Only lawyers understand these things and lawyers cost money.

Joe Bloggs is not really equipped to deal with all this to get a ‘just’ outcome. And most Joe Bloggses usually can’t afford the fancy lawyers. It’s true some Joe Bloggses in certain specific circumstances can be helped by less fancy, or less experienced, lawyers. So justice, when it is even possible, is often denied. So we may be equal in the law but not before the law in our access to it.

Which brings us to another phony claim about Australian Values:

 

Equal Opportunity

As if.

We love to say it. We love to believe it.

It’s just not true.

There’s a job going in a stockbroking firm. It’s entry level. The starting salary is pretty shit but the opportunities to climb the ladder are attractive. HSC is required.

Out of these three candidates which do you think is most likely to score the job?

1. David is mixed race of Aboriginal descent from La Perouse. He worked really hard and did well in his HSC at a state high school, especially in maths, English and IT. His family is well-known and highly respected in the community. They’re a fairly standard suburban family but aren’t well off and they don’t know anyone in the financial sector. David has wanted a job like this since he started high school.

2. Sarah is the daughter of refugees from Sudan, now Australian citizens. She was born in Australia. She topped her year and got excellent results in the HSC. Her family lives in a predominantly Muslim suburb. Her father knows the local bank manager. She wears a hijab outside the home.

3. Sebastian is the son of a senior executive at the Sydney CBD office of one of the major international audit companies. They live in a mansion at Palm Beach in northern Sydney. Andrew’s dad went to school with the CEO of the broking firm that has opened the job. Andrew scraped through the HSC. He doesn’t know much about money besides how to spend it. He doesn’t really know what he wants to do. He’d rather just sail and party but his mum insists he get a job and start doing something useful.

So who should get the job? Who do you think is most likely to get the job? And how long will he last?

 

Australians are Larrikins? Really?

This claim has been made since about forever. We love it. We love to believe it. It’s a legendary Australian value.

We like to think of ourselves as being larrikin-ish. And we would be, too.

It’s just that right now we’re a bit busy.

Stuffed into a stinking train on our way to another unutterably boring 9 to 5 day at our stupefying job where we do as we’re told because we’re afraid of losing our stupefying job because we need to pay the rent/mortgage.

And when we get home smelling of other passengers’ sweat we’re just a little too tired for larrikin-ising.

But, you know, sometimes we wear odd socks to work or a jokey tie. Will that do?

In any case larrikinism died with Henry Lawson in 1922.

 

The Split

It’s all pretty upsetting that the fissure between left and right (whatever they actually are) is growing. Both ends are informed by batshit conspiracy theories.

The Labor party is easing itself towards the hard right position being vacated by the now increasingly far right/alt-right Nationalist ‘Liberal’ Party.

The evangelical, rapture expecting, theocracy loving, democracy hating sand people built their temples there long ago.

The Greens still don’t really know what they’re doing, or how to do it, but lots of people are moving to conspiratorial fantasies to the left of them.

To be fair, the majority of Australian voters sit around almost exactly in the Centre and just vote for whatever party they and their parents always have.

The words that strike the most fear are Socialism and Fascism. We don’t have either in Australia. We do have authoritarianism and that’s where the LNP is going, especially with failed coup leader, The Racist Potato. But there are many further to the right than him.

We don’t have socialism. We’re don’t do Democratic Socialism. We find that scary and almost communist. But we are a Social Democracy, if not to the extent of the Scandinavian countries. Social Democracy is a policy system that includes:

“economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest and social-welfare provisions.”

That’s why we are consistently amongst the top five of the world’s best countries.

This year, 2020, Australia is rated the third best country to live in after Norway and Switzerland.

Social democracy is why we have, for example, Medicare that means being sick won’t bankrupt us (unlike the US).

Social democracy is what’s at stake if Australia goes sincerely to the far right or the far left.

And if you want to see what a corrupt, authoritarian/oligarchical theft of democracy might look like, there’s one being attempted right now.

In the USA.

By their ‘President’.

If you want to see a historic major political party collapse like the explosive demolition of a skyscraper, that’s also happening right now.

Keep your eye on the Republicans . . .

. . . if you don’t want that to be the future of Australia and Australian Values . . .

 

B’Bye

Nov 10, 2020 | Australian Values, Corruption, Democracy, Global Warming, Legal, Racism, Religious Values, Science Values, USPol

B’Bye

EXEAT – The Planet’s Narrow Escape

Knock! Knock!
Who’s there?
B’bye!

When I was a young lad in an English-style boarding school (of course!) we were permitted, once a term, to leave our prison to spend a day with our parents. In order to do so we had to complete a small, desperate ticket imploring permission. This was known as the “Exeat” which we understood—as Latin was compulsory for the intelligent—to mean “he may go out”.

I never thought I would ever want to use this word again and yet today Exeat brings me unbridled joy. 


HE CAN GO! 

He’s been fired.

It’s a relief and laughing at him is fun in a way and the world needed to be able to take a long deep breath, and dance, for a moment at least.

We have after all, as a planet, escaped the worst imaginable scenario.

The outlook for the climate, for democracy, for international harmony and stability, for global health, for escape from poverty and even for simple decency, all and more were, as they say in the US, ‘on the ballot’.

All and more were at stake worldwide if the Orange Genius had been allowed another four years.

The USA and Australia do share many values, like the idea of democracy, freedom, free speech, the rule of law, government “of the people, for the people, by the people”, the value of science. All these, as we’ve seen have been, to at least an alarming extent, debased, debauched, defiled, depraved and desecrated by Trump and his enablers. If Trump had succeeded—assuming he doesn’t succeed—in gaining another term other people in countries like Australia would have seen it as permission and opportunity and the delicate fabric of global politics would have begun to crumble.

It was, in fact, really scary; really close. And the people who enabled him? The people who couldn’t see through the most transparent con-artist in American history? The people who bought his poisonous snake-oil? The charlatans who used him? They’re still around, still busy, still fighting for this toxic  but useful idiot.

 


The USA’s problem is, at its heart, religion. And at the historic heart of American religion is Calvinist protestantism brought to the east coast by the Puritans. The Puritans came to America to escape religious oppression, seeking religious freedom. But freedom only for themselves. Freedom to tell others what to believe. But others liked the simple idea of freedom. And so America has long had an anomalous culture in which puritanism and hedonism have grated against each other. This friction has caused sparks to fly but full of colour and noise like never-ending New Years fireworks. The astonishing creativity that results is staggering, and not only in the arts and science but also in the art of scamming, especially scamming religion.

But. Of course there’s a “but”. The power of religion in the US has never waned. In fact it has ballooned.

“The fact that stares one in the face is that people of the greatest sincerity and of all levels of intelligence differ and have always differed in their religious beliefs. Since at most one faith can be true, it follows that human beings are extremely liable to believe firmly and honestly in something untrue in the field of revealed religion. One would have expected this obvious fact to lead to some humility, to some thought that however deep one’s faith, one may conceivably be mistaken. Nothing is further from the believer, any believer, than this elementary humility.”
— Hermann Bondi

 

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

— Bertrand Russell

The incongruity between the freewheeling willingness of Americans to believe absolutely anything with total certainty without evidence or logic and the strict (almost puritan!) scientific method of American scientists of sceptical, careful gathering of and testing of evidence to arrive at an acceptable level of “confidence” in the result, this is mind bending.

So Americans are better trained to believe falsehoods and fantasies—like “angels”—than almost anyone else. They are probably the world leaders in believing things that are not true, and falling for conspiracy theories.  Certainly they are leaders in generating religious scams. Like Paula White who frankly commands “god” what to do:—

 

I have just watched this video and I am now magically converted to the wrath of god. Strike and strike and strike and strike. This woman, this saint, is the real deal. She is not a massive huxster, hoaxster, grifter, con woman like people say. She can talk in tongues so – Here is my creed:

I believe that Paula White is a bona fide living saint who of all the billions of those who have ever lived on earth has private meetings with god. I believe her when she says that god spoke to her, saying he was making Trump win. I believe her when she says angels are coming from Africa and South America to help Trump win the election. I believe she is right that Trump has been sent by god. I believe that the White House is Holy Ground because wherever Paula White goes is holy ground and wherever is holy ground god rules.

I do not believe that Trump has ever been sexist, has never had sex with underage girls, has never met Jeffrey Epstein, that he has never grabbed pussy, or wanted to have sex with his daughter. I don’t believe that Trump’s business model was to systematically stiff his contractors. I do not believe that Trump is a grandiose narcissistic sociopathic. I believe he has improved the unemployment numbers, returned workers to the coal seams and factories and that the farmers who are suffering from the trade war with China should stop blaming Trump.

I believe that Trump has never lied, that wherever he goes he is the least racist person in that gathering. I believe he doesn’t know what the KKK is or who David Duke is. I believe that some white supremacists are good people , that there is not a fascist bone in his body, and that all community-minded compassionate people are evil, anarchistic terrorists.
I believe that he did have bone spurs (which are now, thank the lord, miraculously healed) and if not for that he would have been a great General and would have won the Vietnam War. I believe that Trump is the best negotiator there ever has been and that he would have actually written The Art of the Deal by himself if he had had time. I believe that Trump is admired and loved by all leaders in the world. I believe it has never been his fault and that he has never been responsible. I believe that he always pays millions in taxes every year.
I believe that he is a stable genius, that he has the best memory ever, I believe he knows more about everything than anyone ever, including the scientists and the generals.

I believe that he has all the words, the best words.

I believe that Trump’s handling of the coronavirus has been better than any other country has achieved, that drinking Clorox can kill the virus, that testing increases the number of infections, that 100,000 new cases and 1,600 deaths per day “is what it is”, and that all of this is evidence of his superior leadership and that America doesn’t appreciate and love him enough for all his genius and unequalled skills.

And I believe that he is a loving, compassionate man golfing tirelessly to improve the lives of every single American billionaire.

Australian Value #1

Oct 27, 2020 | Australian Values, Border Security, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Humour, Immigration, Legal, Media Values, OzPol Values, PedoPriests, Religious Values, Values

Australian Value #1

Values Australia’s Aussie Values T-Shirt on display and immortalised in Museums Victoria

Ellen Sludge Breaks the Cardinal Law

Many moons ago, Sir Roger wrote the First Law of Australian Values. 

Australian Value #1:

 

Politicians do NOT own Australian Values

 

The fact that John Hunt, the Coward, and “Slim” Beazley had engaged in a battle to hijack Australian Values was the reason that Sir Roger had himself taken up arms against this anti-social piracy and became a global celebrity. 

The least qualified human beings to be aware of, to understand, or to protect Australian Values are, of course, bloody politicians. Politicians have continually attempted to kidnap our values and debauch them into the authoritarian beliefs of the alt-right, the international catholic paedophilia ring and the born-again theocratists. 

Values are not created by fiat, by law, by act, charter, legislation or decree.

Real values are organic, historic, and always evolving. Values are created by the mass of free, individual humans. (Unless they’re members of the Hillsaralive Church of the Sound of Music, in which case they’re just the brainwashed living dead.)  

This said, Sir Roger was delighted to see a delightful piece of work by the Grauniad’s Frant which asked all the right questions and provided some excellent answers:

So the latest dickhead in charge of controlling Australian Citizens and what they are required to believe is Ellen Smudge, Acting Mincer for Denizens, Immitation, Migraine Surfaces and Multicuntural Affairs, including responsibility for O’Pears.   

What are Ellen’s qualifications for nurturing Australian Values? Well, mostly fudging: 

“In June 2017  Smudge, and Liberal Party colleagues Greer Kunt and Michelle Sucker, faced the possibility of being prosecuted for contempt of court after they made public statements criticising the sentencing decisions of two senior judges while the government was awaiting their ruling on a related appeal. They avoided prosecution by, eventually, making an unconditional apology to the Victorious Court of Appeal. Conviction could have resulted in their expulsion from the parliament under Constitution s 44(ii) and, as a result, the government losing its one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. 

 And of course more recently there was this: 

“In March 2020, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ordered that an Afghan asylum seeker who had previously been a part of the Afghan National Army be granted a temporary protection visa. Smudge, who was Acting Immitation Minister at the time, instantly appealed the judgement of the AAT to federal court, which failed. However during the 6-day appeal process, the asylum seeker had been kept in the detention centre. Six months later, the Federal Court found that Grudge, “engaged in conduct which can only be described as criminal,” and that Drudge had deprived the asylum seeker of his liberty, which has prompted calls for his resignation. 

As you will be unsurprised to learn, Ms Nudge (full name Nudge-Nudge-Wink-Wink-Saynomore)  is an old hand at dog whistling and, as Joe Biden said of the Trump, “This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn.” She doesn’t really like anyone who is not a white christian who speaks English. The Western Suburbs love it.  

Miss Judge wants it to be very clear that her government deeply believes in and supports Australians’ Freedom of Speech.  This is presumably why there is no actual statement in the Australian Constitution permitting or mandating Freedom of Speech, and why no government has ever proposed any referendum to establish this right, and why freedom of speech is a thinly technical presumption devised by a few narrow majorities of High Court Judges, and only with respect to political speech. You might say that all speech is in a sense political and you would be right but you might not wish to be the one to fork out the cash to run a case in the matter in the High Court. All citizens are equal under the law and have equal rights of access to justice as long as they have the funds to afford a decent lawyer.  

The Australian government’s tolerance and its attitude to free speech are demonstrated by its amendments to Wikipedia, and its action to kindly inform Values Australia in March 2007 that if it didn’t pull the site down it would send it to gaol on the basis of a variety of laws. This was in addition to its actually closing down a parody site of the Prime Minister. So aspirational immigrants need to understand that by “free speech” the government means you can say anything you like, anything at all, that agrees with the government and does not hurt its feelings.

Mateship of course is the value most often and most fiercely promoted as the essence of being Australian . . . because no other country has such a value. Australia is so mateship-oriented that we even celebrate it as a black grease called VEGEMATE.

You might think that Mateship is just a kind of friendship and other countries have friendship so what’s so special. But no. Mateship is something far more deep and complex.

Here’s what Sir Roger says about Mateship:

1) Mateship is the one and the only Central Pillar of Australian values;

2) Only men are permitted to have mates;

3) Women are banned from having mates because women have actual meaningful interpersonal relationships with actual friends. which is against the Rules of Mateship.

4) Mateship is not the same as Shipmate, which suggests a different kind of relationship.

5) Mates do not touch each other.

5a) unless they are pissed, when a mate might use the term “Matey” and profess an unseemly level of affection. This transgression is only tolerated because the mates are so pissed they won’t remember it in the morning. This is the evolutionary function of the hangover. 

So what is mateship?

Mateship is pretending to be friends with someone who doesn’t want your job.

A mate is someone who won’t sleep with your mistress without asking you first.

A great mate is a rugby league footballer who invites you to a gang bang with the other members of his team.

 

Ruby Murdocraci will be your TRUE Mate if you are a biddable politician and you stroke him just the way he likes it, at least for as long as you are useful.

A mate is what men have who are incapable of attracting actual friends (see “Politician”), or of forming any kind of vaguely intimate relationships, particularly in their own families (ibid).

As Sir Roger says, the only strange thing about mateship is that the people who have promoted this value most loudly over the last several decades—and now, as we see, Minister Bludge—have never had a real mate in their lives because they are such dorks and bogans. (Minister Sludge is a certified Bogan, being from rural Victorious.) The people who call them mates only do it because they have useful stuff they can give them, like TV stations, or Australia (they gave that away to their “mate” Ruby Murdocraci). 

TAKE THE VALUES AUSTRALIA MATESHIP TEST

Values Australia has prepared a special alternative Mateship Test which we guarantee no Australian politician or fat-arsed bureaucrat would pass, particularly the Minister for DIC and his silly pen-pushers.

Take it yourself. Use it for trivia nights. 

There is more about Australian Values here.

 

Trump – Can He Lose?

Oct 11, 2020 | Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Global Warming, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Racism, Science Values, USPol, Values

Trump – Can He Lose?

Snake Oil & Fury

 

T here’s no argument amongst Trump’s enemies, his grovelling enablers, and even among millions of his supporters, that Trump is a professional liar, and that“liar”  defines almost the entirety of Trump’s persona. It is not possible to listen to Trump speak or tweet and not be more or less certain that what he says is not the truth. Because he said it. Unless you are the dregs of the Trump base and need to believe him. Others of his base will be well aware of the lies but they are vested in their fantasy outcome. We see this in the desperate illogic of their rebuttals of Trumps dishonesty and incompetence, on twitter and elsewhere.

Trump lies for preference. He will not tell the truth if he can manufacture a useful falsehood. He doesn’t control the truth but he does have control of the lies he tells which he can disown and deny at will. He is also a professional gaslighter and lying, and the confusion of whether he is lying or telling the truth is central to his technique.  

This is not unique to Trump. And, strangely enough, he isn’t very good at it. The Jesuits were — and are — masters of the noble lie. 

 Jesuitical casuistry can be described as “destroying by distinctions and exceptions, all morality, and effacing the essential difference between right and wrong”. 

The story goes that in the Middle Ages catholic priests were barred from entering England.
So when Jesuit priests arrived from the Continent and were asked “Are you a priest,” they would reply, “No.”
Of course to tell a lie was a sin. But they had an excellent work-around, the casuistic argument called “Mental Reservation”, or “mental equivocation”, the lie of necessity.
So when they said they were not a priest, they were thinking, “the questioner might have a particular priest in mind, but I am not that particular priest, so I am not “a” priest he is thinking of.”
Or he might think, “I am not a priest of Zeus,” so when he says “No,” he is, with mental reservation, telling a kind of convenient truth.
But when an argument comes down to the definition of the word “a”  then it’s really just blatant dishonesty.

This casuistry has of course migrated from the church throughout the upper echelons of power and is now the benchmark and basic tool in law, corporations, government bureaucracies, politics at every level (note that habitual liar Tony Abbott was trained by Jesuits) and of course in advertising and public relations.

Basically we’re being lied to for most of every day by everyone who has any sort of use for us and access to us.

And we know it. And we don’t really trust anyone who’s trying to ‘sell’ us something of any kind.

At least most of us don’t really trust them. But some do, and they’re the people who have always fallen for the flimflammers, the con-artists, the snake-oil salesmen, swindlers, grifters – in other words, people like Trump, whose  shills are his children, his donors and almost every Congressional Republican.

That people with brains really can’t see, at least after the first time or second time, how they’re being fooled is, as Fanny D. Bergen wrote in 1888, incredible.

” I t seems almost incredible, whatever their origin, that remedies of so offensive a character as many of those above given can still retain a place . . . but there seems to be in the uneducated human mind a sort of reverence for or faith in that which is in itself disagreeable or repulsive. This idea apparently rules instead of rational judgment

You can certainly say that Trump meets the requirements for both ‘disagreeable’ and ‘repulsive’.

The original Snake Oil salesman was Clark Stanley. He was in his way a showman. Among his tricks was a grotesque and highly dramatic performance. With real, live rattlesnakes.

” C lark Stanley reached into a sack, plucked out a snake, slit it open and plunged it into boiling water. When the fat rose to the top, he skimmed it off and used it on the spot to create ‘Stanley’s Snake Oil,’ a liniment that was immediately snapped up by the throng that had gathered to watch the spectacle. Little wonder. After all, Stanley had proclaimed that the liniment would cure rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lumbago, sore throat, frostbite and even toothache.
Dr. Joe Schwarcz in: Science, Sense & Nonsense

You can see – and unhappily smell – the surely not coincidental similarities in structure and style. So, again, a fairly clear progenitor and influencer for Trump.  

As recently as 24 years ago, Congressman Martin R. Hoke said in a speech: 

“M r. Speaker, there is an old trick to hawking snake oil. First raise the fear. Then sell to it. That is exactly what [they] are trying to do with their latest advertising campaign of fear and blatant disinformation.

 This also matches Trump but, as you know only too well, it is now standard throughout politics and has been at least since Joseph Goebbels.  

Trump is a con-man. There was a saying amongst con men: “There’s a mark born every minute”. Suckers are everywhere and Trump has learnt – probably to his surprise – that the suckers he cons amount to almost 50% of Americans. 

Trump is a professional liar and has been since he was bounced off his father’s knee, since the first time his father promised to catch him but lied and let him crash to the floor.

He learnt to trust no-one.

He learnt that love was a hoax (and that he could use that against others and to control others).

And he learnt to steal from anyone anything that he wanted. 

He practised his frauds and polished his scamming skills on his own family. 

Trump is clearly psychologically impaired and emotionally dead, except towards himself.

All of this is obvious. 

Here is the “grandiosity” section of the Diagnostic Interview for Narcissism (DIN): 

  • The person exaggerates talents, capacity, and achievements in an unrealistic way.
  • The person believes their invulnerability or do not recognize their limitations.
  • The person has grandiose fantasies.
  • The person believes that they do not need other people.
  • The person overexamines and downgrades other people, projects, statements, or dreams in an unrealistic manner.
  • The person regards themselves as unique or special when compared to other people.
  • The person regards themselves as generally superior to other people.
  • The person behaves self-centeredly and/or self-referentially.
  • The person behaves in a boastful or pretentious way.

This fits like a glove at every single point. It’s just one of several diagnoses that Trump fits.

 

So Can Trump Win?

 

Can he win the popular vote? Or the Electoral College vote, as he did last time?

Biden seems to be going well but, as so many of us are thinking, we thought Clinton had it in the bag four years ago too. Is there going to be another disastrous surprise?

Comparing the polling for 2016 and 2020, it’s clear there’s no room for complacency. Clinton was consistently ahead of Trump and had the two major states, Pennsylvania and Florida, in her grasp, as Biden does now. But . . .  below are the comparative projections for 2016 and 2020 produced by fivethirtyeight.com

Clinton’s road was bumpy and volatile while Biden’s has been more or less straight and stable.    

Biden’s chance of winning (81%) is 10% higher than Clinton’s was (71%). 

Biden is ahead in the same two important swing states – Florida and Pennsylvania – that Clinton was forecast to win but lost. So this might be cause for concern. However, Biden is one or two percent ahead of Clinton’s polling in Pennsylvania that Trump won by less than 1%. In Florida Clinton was ahead by about 2% while Biden is 4.3% ahead. Trump won Florida by 1.2%. So it’s Biden’s to lose.     

The simulations for Biden are slightly better than Clinton’s were but there’s not a lot in it.  

 

Unfortunately . . .

there is another predictive model, Helmut Norpoth’s Primary Model. This is based on the Primary races in the Spring. Only twice has it been wrong and then it was very close. What it measures basically is the winning margin in the primaries of the party’s winning candidate. This reflects the enthusiasm of people to get out and vote. That’s fair enough because the outcome is not based on polling around who people would prefer to win but how many people actually vote for their candidate.

In the case of this election the Primary Model, published on 2 March, 2020 predicted that the probability of Trump winning was 91%.

That’s frankly upsetting and the only antidote is for Democrats to get out and vote in huge numbers, larger than what’s predicted in the primaries.

  

Three things about this Primary Model prediction:

1.  If the Norpoth Primary Model is valid and conclusive then there would be no need to bother about an actual election. They could go directly from the primaries to the inauguration. It would save billions of dollars. Also what it suggests is that universal suffrage is pointless and that most voters are powerless except for the ones who vote in the primaries.

2.  When the Norpoth prediction was published only four of the 57 primaries had been completed:  Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Biden only won two, but he eventually won 47 overall, ultimately by very strong margins;

3.  This election year is, as people keep saying, “unprecedented”. The Primary Model’s prediction was published on 2 March when the pandemic that has so shaken and globally embarrassed the United States was hardly getting started and the people were being promised that everything was under control and it would quickly, magically disappear.

On 2 March there were just 16 cases and only 3 deaths. Today (10/10/20) there has been a world-beating total of 7,945,505 cases and 219,282 deaths. And rising.

On 2 March the unemployment rate was under 4%; within days it had spiked to over 14% and it remains at about 8%. Many millions are out of work. In mid-September, 8.3 million reported being behind on rent and 3.8 million reported that they were likely to be evicted.

Breonna Taylor was shot six times by the police on 13 March. George Floyd was killed by police on 25 May and the Black Lives Matter movement activated millions of protesters in the US and around the world.

Groups of influential, life-long, baked-on, career Republicans, such as the Lincoln Project and MeidasTouch, infuriated and disgusted by Trump’s dishonesty, his mismanagement of the pandemic (and everything else), and his increasingly corrupt enablers, have turned their considerable and frankly ruthless political skills and experience against him in the Presidential campaign.

The political landscape, and the political issues, were utterly disrupted after the Norpoth prediction was released. So it seems unlikely that data on the number of people who were voting for a candidate—or, importantly, who didn’t bother to vote—in the primaries before 2 March would have been able to give a realistic indication of voting intentions and political engagement eight months later. Americans are now voting in a very different world and there is much , much more at stake.

Again, there is no room whatever for complacency.

If Norpoth is right we should be preparing for an influx of Americans to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Europe (including, for the moment, if we can, Britain).

As Trump would say, “We’ll see how it turns out.”

 

The October Surprise

Trump gave us an early October Surprise which tanked in the worst way, by dropping three percentage points . Still, he wasn’t letting the facts (such as he was being treated for CoVid19) stand in the way of a performance opportunity, and so he decided to pretend to be the President and stage a motorcade, waving to his adoring minions – who are few in the District of Columbia which is the bluest place in the USA. The fact this was potentially a death drive for those also in the car with him is of no consequence to someone who believes it’s the least they can do to sacrifice their lives for someone so much more important than them. Or frankly anyone.

There was also an earlier alleged attempted September Surprise. Trump was almost certainly infected with the coronavirus when he debated Joe Biden on 29 September, and knew he was infected. So the surprise may have been his attempted assassination by virus of his adversary. What’s the evidence? His campaign and the White House both refuse to confirm or deny his coronavirus status on that day or earlier. His doctors lie. They also refuse to confirm or deny.

 

The Base
and the unwillingness to understand

The greatest failure of the Clinton campaign and possibly the most crucial lesson unlearnt by the Biden campaign is why Trump succeeded against all odds in the 2016 election.

Everyone knows Trump is a con-man and a pathological liar, a sexual predator, a racist and intellectually stupid (but natively and intuitively brilliant at gaslighting people, as sociopaths are).

But Trump got how badly the people were hurting in blue collar, economically declining areas; how uncomfortable, or even afraid, they were of societal changes and cultural forces that were threatening the world they knew and understood and the values that mattered to them. He used this to generate his base by promising what he wouldn’t and couldn’t deliver (because he deeply lacks the intellect required).

His base believed him because they needed to. It was their only hope. They still do and they think it still is.

The last thing a Presidential candidate should call people who are hurting, who are afraid, who are confused, who are afraid of losing what dignity they have left, the last thing is to call them “deplorables”. When Clinton did that she showed lack of compassion, lack of understanding, lack of interest in those people and it was a massive own goal, the results of which still haunt the Democrats.

The one thing Biden should have done, has not specifically done, and which, if he doesn’t do it could lose him the election, is to directly address those people who are hurting and say he gets it, gets their anger, pain and upset, and tell them how he is going to help them.

The Gentility
& the Lincoln Project

The problem with the Democrats is that they are so polite. You wouldn’t be rude, not even to an enemy.

A senior MI6 bureaucrat explained to a journalist that he was always polite to representatives of hostile nations. “Yes, but when they’ve done something really bad, how do you show them you’re angry?” “We don’t offer them a cup of tea.”

Or as Veronica Roth wrote: “Politeness is deception in pretty packaging.” Although it has been designed to enable social intercourse without violence, it actually isn’t nice at all. It’s intentional inauthenticity. And it has a more than a tinge of superiority and entitlement. The violence is hidden but still there.

The Democrats need to hide less behind social sophistication and start speaking more authentically.

That is what the Lincoln Project and MeidasTouch do, because they’re not Democrats but Republicans. They know how toxic Trump is and how to talk to Republicans and swing voters. They are ruthless and that’s a lesson the Democrats could learn from, because the stakes are so high.

Losing politely is not an option.

 

The Anger

Sir Roger is furious with Trump, not for the reasons you might imagine but because when Trump (reportedly) contracted COVID-19 Sir Roger in his darkest heart for a moment hoped Trump would die and save the US from any more of his horrors. This is not the sort of person Sir Roger believes himself to be or ever wants to be and Sir Roger is angry that Trump moved him to this feeling if only for a nanosecond. Sir Roger now feels that justice would be better served if Trump survived the virus, lost the election, and was subsequently indicted and found guilty of all of the corruption that he has progressed, during his term in office and before. And so he would pay for the damage he has done to the US and its people. But Sir Roger stops well short of politely wishing him well (like a Democrat).

  

The Shame & the Laughing Stock

Donald Trump for four years has shamed his country. Americans are aware, surely, of how poorly he has ‘led’ the country, how he has failed it, how it has fallen in the estimation of people from almost every other country except, of course those other countries who find Trump a Useful Idiot; countries like Russia and Saudi Arabia. People in the rest of the world feel genuinely sorry for Americans who have to suffer the political and cultural fiasco that Trump has visited on them.

At the same time they are laughing their heads off at the incompetence and obvious con artistry of Trump and at the people who are stupid enough to believe he is their saviour and that he has been doing a valuable job.

 

The Reality Mafia Show

One of the most interesting things about the criminal ‘Presidency’ has been, despite all the lies and obfuscations, the fact that the interminable, torrential, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling lies have provided an extraordinary, absolutely transparent view, through the White House Reality Show of how the Mafia operates. Starring The Don, a bankruptcy-prone con-man. It’s thrill-a-minute, complete with shadowy international accomplices, thugs, threats, bribes, blackmail, corrupt officials, and mass-murder. And all there, laid luminously bare.

 

How is any of this about Australian Values?

 

Global stability

Compassion

Decency

Climate Change/ Global Warming

The future of the planet and life on Earth including the lives of our children and their children and theirs etc. etc. etc.

Freedom

Democracy.

And the more time Trump has, the more permission he gives to others like the Australian Right to become more and more authoritarian.

And so much more.

Never forget what Trump’s main advisor in the 2016 campaign, Steve Bannon, said:

“I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment. . . Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.”

 

If only there were a god to rid us of this turbulent prick, Trump.

 

The Real Showman 

” But however mysterious is nature, however ignorant the doctor, however imperfect the present state of physical science, the patronage and the success of quacks and quackeries are infinitely more wonderful than those of honest and laborious men of science and their careful experiments.

Phineas Taylor (PT) Barnum, The Humbugs of the World (1865)

 

 

Jefferson Says – Reboot

Sep 28, 2020 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Legal, OzPol Values, USPol, Values

Jefferson Says – Reboot

President Kennedy told a gathering of Nobel Prize winners at the White House,

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

This post was first published ten years ago. Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States, was writing 200 or more years ago. His words were wise and prophetic. Especially today, particularly at this time when tyranny seems more than ever before to be threatening the democracy of the United States.

 

We the People

 

Thomas Jefferson was the third President of the United States, a man of the Enlightenment, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most influential Founding Fathers, who envisioned America as the force behind a great “Empire of Liberty”.

Sir Roger knows that his loyal readers are impatient to hear what the great Jefferson, Father of the American experiment and of whom all Americans are so rightly proud [except Glenn Beck] would have said about the Wikileaks matter.

Here is what he did say:

“ Information is the currency of democracy.

[ … ]

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves.

[ … ]

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

[ … ]

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

[ … ]

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Just so.

Sir Roger also notes that the Constitution of the United States begins with the words:

“We the People … do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America”.

Not 'we the politicians', or 'we the Executive Branch', or 'we the diplomats', or 'we the oil companies', or 'we the bureaucrats', or 'we the bankers', or even 'we the military'.

“We the People…ordain”.

Nothing could make clearer the source of all authority in the United States — as it is in every other democracy in the world —  and any authority arrogated otherwise is illegitimate.

 

Big Bang Time Free Willy

Sep 24, 2020 | Australian Values, Education, Religious Values, Science Values, Values

Big Bang Time Free Willy

Watch Time Disappear

 

When Sir Roger was a young man (yes), his university offered a soft course for the scientifically inquisitive but mathematically challenged called The History and Philosophy of Science.

Naturally this was universally and derogatorily referred to as “HissPiss”.

Sir Roger, therefore, as a Big Man On Campus, did not participate in this program but listened to his friends who did and has been fascinated by the discipline ever since.

And so he regularly shouts at the screen or the radio when philosophers tell him that there is no such thing as Free Will. Not because they are wrong but because their science is wrong.

They argue that everything in and about the Universe is predestined and that therefore nothing we think or do can change that. So much about this is wrong. Scientifically.

Their understanding of the universe is Newtonian with a scattering of late 19th century particle physics. Such as, for example that electrons are solid objects. Tiny, but solid. And that as solid objects they must behave as solid objects do. Those philosophers do please need to catch up.

Fundamental particles are not just objects. They’re energy which can manifest as either waves or particles but only when “collapsed” by an ‘observer’. Fundamental particles are not anywhere in particular (until observed) otherwise they are probabilities.

Until they are observed their range of probability is ‘anywhere in the universe’ regardless of the speed of light. 

Also, it is not possible to know simultaneously both the position and momentum of the particle.

All of this is about the uncertainty principle.

So how could you predict, say from today, how the universe was going to evolve? You would have to know where every fundamental particle in the entire universe was and where it was going and you would have to know that for all particles at the same precise instant. Which is not possible. And even if it was possible to gather, store and then compute the entire universe, you would need a computer that was many times the size of the actual universe itself.

And not only that but

  1. if your computer could assemble all of the data of the universe (impossible as that is) at a specific time, it would have to organise those data and then run them, and by the time that was done your computer would be seriously lagging behind what was actually happening
  2.  your computer cannot possibly catch up. It can’t run faster than the universe itself because the universe is running as fast as it’s possible to go
  3.  if you wanted to use a different universe with a significantly faster speed of light to help your computer catch up with this universe, you would have to take that universe into account since it’s now interacting with this one, which makes it even more difficult
  4. and in any case time is relative and is not the same in any two places.  

And we haven’t even talked about field energy and quantum vacuums where stuff materialises out of literally nothing. Or black holes which hide and effectively destroy information which it’s impossible to retrieve, which will screw up your total data collection exercise a bit.

So what’s left of this predetermination theory?

If they were right that everything that ever happens in the universe is inevitable and necessarily taking into account every single item in the universe:

  • down to the very tiniest size possible—the Plank Length: 1.616255(18)×10−35 metres
  • and the shortest possible time—Plank Time: 5.391247(60)×10−44 seconds
  • and without taking into account the question of whether fundamental constants, such as the speed of light, or the gravitational constant, might change over time, or vary across the universe,
  • and not taking into account, at all, Heisenberg‘s uncertainty principle which “implies that it is in general not possible to predict the value of a quantity with arbitrary certainty, even if all initial conditions are specified”
  • or considering that there are an estimated 10 80 electrons in the observable universe to be included in the data sweep

 then the entire actual presumably-infinite (and therefore obviously impossible to calculate) future of the universe must be encapsulated in Moment Zero of the Big Bang.

And if that is the case it has already happened at the beginning.

And if that’s the case there is no need for Time at all.

And if there is no time then there is no Space-Time.

And if that’s the case there is therefore no Universe.

But there is a Universe. 

QED

So . . . 

The Universe is probabilistic but not predictable because the uncertainties multiply exponentially.

Therefore nothing is predetermined except . . .

. . . except that an event is determined only and precisely at the exact Plank moment that it occurs and no earlier. 

You might want to say that an event was inevitable, but its inevitability is only manifested precisely at the exact moment after it occurred and no earlier. 

None of this is an argument for Free Will. Or to free Willy. It is only a rebuttal of the HissPiss argument.  

It is also a rebuttal of the dreadful, hateful, ignorant, particularly – but not exclusively – Calvinist doctrine of ‘predestination’ which has royally screwed and crippled (not only) western culture for 500 years. That psychotic, murderous bastard has a lot to answer for. He is probably undergoing eternal therapy with his therapist, Dr Lucifer. Hope so. 

Briefly, then, despite what Darth Vader said, Luke Skywalker did not have, and you do not have, any “destiny” apart from the one you choose, and cause, for yourself.  

 

And we haven’t even discussed Consciousness.

Another day.