Rude Britannia & Australian Values

Dec 31, 2020 | Australian Values, Capital Punishment, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values

Rude Britannia & Australian Values

How Very Dare You!

 

Yes, we know, the British are the world leaders in “la politesse”  and “cortesia” (ironically*). They will never be impolite to anyone. They would never call a black person a “nig-nog”. Not to their face.

They would never call an Australian a “colonial” or a ” convict”. Not these days at least. Except in private huddles amongst friends, or if they are frustrated that their inferiors refuse to do as they’re told.

To be fair, this is no longer the case in general. Only in the upper echelons of the well-bred, entitled and deluded.

One is required only to refrain from impoliteness. One is required to refrain from the appearance of disrespect, but not at all to actually respect those beneath one. The more politeness you can fake, the more superiority you display.

Politeness is so central to British authority that its absence in a social setting—seemingly, although anything but, an oversight—has become, as a diplomatic tool, a floating signifier. The story goes that if a foreign country was doing the wrong thing and the British were furious about it, MI5 would call in a representative of the offending country. To indicate the level of anger, the foreign official would not be offered a cup of tea.

Politeness as a mark of superiority is not limited to the increasingly Dis-United Kingdom of course [see, “No Longer Great Britain”  1,2,3 ]. The French are masters of a cold politeness.

Democrats in the US are politically hobbled and strangled by it.

Spain and Portugal are home (and motherland) to some of the most generous and polite people, their languages very courteous, por favor.  

The Dutch are not so much polite as “pleasant”. At least these days.

Not unrelatedly, the Italians long ago invented the concept of “Sprezzatura“.  The inventor of the term, Baldassare Castiglione, Count of Casatico, wrote his most famous book, Il Cortegiano, The Book of the Courtier. , in which he described Sprezzatura as:

“a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”. 

According to Wikipedia,

“It is the ability of the courtier to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them”. Sprezzatura has also been described “as a form of defensive irony: the ability to disguise what one really desires, feels, thinks, and means or intends behind a mask of apparent reticence and nonchalance”   

. . . .

Wescott states that Sprezzatura was, in a way, “the art of acting deviously“

So for centuries the royal courts and their dominions have been suffused with the studied nonchalance of Sprezzatura. To put this another way, most western countries remain suffused with a culture of social deception. Hiding, disguising, masking the truth.

  • An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country. (Henry Wotton)
  • All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. (Zhou Enlai)
  • DIPLOMACY:  The patriotic art of lying for one’s country. [Ambrose Bierce]

You might think that the rude, impolite, professional liar, Trump, is worse than this dishonest politeness but, despite the ugliness and the stench, his malignancy, poisonousness, narcissism and subnormality, his mendacity and fraud, are palpable. Not hidden, not masked. There’s never been any pretence of politeness. (He doesn’t know how.) At least his vulgarity is honest in a way because it’s utterly transparent. At least as transparent, unapologetic and foul as a Giuliani fart.   

In Australia, we are still clutching at the last fine thread of spider’s silk blowing out of Mother’s spinneret. . .

. . . the last sticky piece of the (once Great) British web to leave her arse.   

You see . . .

There is a thing that is pretending that what is so is not so—that the fortune; the titles; the servants and land; the privilege and status you enjoy, were not stolen by you or your murderous, barbarian ancestors—and that what is not so is so—that the world is cucumber sandwiches for tea; silk dresses; that the forelock tugging minions admire and respect you; and the divine right of robber barons). 

The British don’t like you to disturb these pretensions. They will say you are “uncouth”. Uncouth literally means “unknown”, or unfamiliar, unfriendly, unkind, or to put that another way, ‘you do not, as we do, hide your malignity behind a mask of stinking courtesy, refinement and elegance’. 

The sons of the British landed nobility have a necessary limit to their ambitions. They must join the military (as an officer of course), parliament, the clergy, the bureaucracy, or the diplomatic corps. These are perfect vocations where politeness is required.

Yes, even the military.

“I say, you there. You. Fellow, How d’you do? Pleased to meet you. We have been admiring your very pleasant country. You and your peasants have done an wonderful job of looking after it, don’t you know. It’s very beautiful and very large and you’re to be congratulated on the hard work you’ve done. However, we note that you have not made the most use you could of all the oil and ores that sit below your magnificent cities and gardens. In fact. it’s so beautiful and full of financial opportunities that we’re going to relieve you of it. So if you would be so kind as to hand it over immediately. . .  I understand that this will have come as somewhat of a surprise. Unfortunately, if you choose to decline this generous offer we will have no alternative but to destroy it all. You are an intelligent fellow and I think you’ll agree that this is the last thing either of us wants. I don’t know if you can see those large machines over there. They’re very powerful, ah, thingamawhatsits that blow up things and will wipe your towns and gardens completely away. I’m sure you will agree that this would be a very sad ending for your people after all of their hard work. But before you decide . . .  cup of tea?”

The most polite countries are also, under the skin, the most violent, brutal, murderous, barbarous, merciless, savage and, frankly, rude cultures. They are historically empire builders, looters, sackers, pillagers and thieves. Their roots go back to the warmongering Picts, Romans, Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Etc., etc. 

The Spanish and Portuguese shredded and annihilated rich Central and Southern American cultures for gold and glory. 

The Romans came, saw and conquered England, as did the French, and as the English did to the French. 

Christian—and therefore of course loving, as Jesus commanded—Europe for centuries ran numerous religious crusades against the Islamic tribes of the Eastern Mediterranean with varied (to put it, you know, politely) success. For example, In the Fourth Crusade the western Christian countries, rather than defeating Islamic Egypt as per plan and as advertised, decided to sack the Greek Christian city of Constantinople instead. For which they were excommunicated by Pope Innocent III. Spectacular own goal.

Italy in the un-distant past summarily made a ruthless grab on Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935. It was Mussolini’s idea and you would surmise that he had, nonchalantly, made the decision with full-on sprezzatura. So what was the extent of this Italian politeness, this cortegia, raffinatezza, eleganza? 

“The war was full of cruelty. Italian troops used mustard gas in aerial bombardments (in violation of the Geneva Conventions) against combatants and civilians in an attempt to discourage the Ethiopian people from supporting the resistance. Deliberate Italian attacks against ambulances and hospitals of the Red Cross were reported. By all estimates, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians died as a result of the Italian invasion, including during the reprisal Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa, in which as many as 30,000 civilians were killed.[    

 Not particularly polite, courteous, refined, or elegant then. 

In the US only the Democrats are truly “polite”. Only Democrats would rather lose an election than be rude. In the most recent election they have had to rely on the “uncouth” anti-Trump, disillusioned ‘Lincoln’ Republicans to do their dirty work. 

No Democratic First Lady would ever say, “Who gives a fuck about Christmas?” A Republican FLOTUS did.

But Democratic as much as Republican administrations have done horrific damage in the world and to indigenous and black Americans. They have razed countries on spurious grounds; Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. With a polite, have a nice day, botox smile they continue to deny all Americans the decency of universal healthcare which all other “civilised” countries have take for granted for decades.  

To the extent that Americans are polite it is astonishing how much they hate themselves.

The rate at which they kill each other is bewildering both in the streets and by judicial murders. 60% of states still have the Death Penalty. Americans have long loved to kill Americans by lynching, stabbing, shooting, dragging them behind a truck, and even more entertaining ways. They have basked in the joy of legally killing people by firing squad, hanging, electrocution and lethal injection.

As Texas Governor, George W. Bush executed a record 153 people. His successor (2000-2015), Rick Perry, was not to be beaten. He executed 279 people. In Texas (12% of its population black) 70% of the executions were of black people. 

Americans are masked barbarians, who smile the polite smile of moral certitude and white supremacy. 

The rate at which Americans imprison each other is, if anything, even more bewildering. With 4.3% of the world’s population it has almost 20% of the world’s prisoners at any time. About 5%, one in 20, of all Americans but 33%, one in three, of black Americans can expect to spend time in prison in their lifetime.     

Israel? [Note: this is not about any religion but about the State of Israel. Note 2: Sir Roger’s Great Great Grandmother was a French Jewess and he can trace this ancestry down through the maternal line to his mother, which makes him Jewish if he chooses to be (even if secular) so . . . ]
Not sure if Israelis are polite, although the ones Sir Roger has met have been both pleasant and interesting. Many Israelis are very refined and their social culture goes back centuries, millennia, steeped in the arts, science and humanities. However, despite many being interesting and pleasant some Israelis have been as cruel and inhumane as any. Several Israeli Prime Ministers and politicians—including Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon—honed their skills in “militant” groups like Haganah, Lehi (the ‘Stern Gang’), Irgun, and the IDF, which grew through the 20th Century in the period up to and after the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948. 
So despite our understanding of the horrific conditions faced by Israelis and their forebears throughout their history, we might have thought that with their intellect and humanity they would be more, you know, humane when it came to the plight of those who also for millennia had called Palestine home and who now were, and are, themselves systematically displaced. But Israel has not hidden the single, central tenet that drives the Israeli state:

NEVER AGAIN
WHATEVER IT TAKES     

So really there’s no subterfuge here. They are ruthless like everyone else and they don’t pretend otherwise.

 

 

The great British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian, Russian, German and Dutch empires were all created through brutal invasion. 

At the height of European civilisation, civility and enlightenment the wealth of many western countries was built on African slavery.

The polite British did their best to wipe out the Australian indigenous peoples and the polite Australians themselves tried to finish the job in the 20th Century under the disguise of “Aboriginal Protection”. Unsuccessfully.

The courteous Dutch and English fought the Boer War to win ownership of the South African people, their land and their resources.

The ‘Dutch’-speaking white supremacist (baasskap) Afrikaners held the non-white South African people down through ruthless and inhumane segregation and through Apartheid from 1948 to 1991. (We did say the Dutch were pleasant rather than polite.)   

 

Ah, France! Douce France, land of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen, country of surely the most refined, most elegant, most cultured. most diplomatically polite (well, if you pronounce French correctly). Chère France, sentimental home of the Guillotine, although the “display of severed heads had long been one of the most common ways European sovereigns exhibited their power to their subjects.” Cultured. Refined. Awfully polite sovereigns. 

But this was long ago. In fact the last beheading by guillotine in France was as long ago as 10 September 1977.

Nevertheless the French have worked hard to maintain their reputation for barbarism obscured by refinement.

Mon Bleu! Paris, city of Romance, as recently as 17 October 1961 hosted the intentional massacre of up to 300 peacefully demonstrating Algerians under orders from the head of the Parisian police, Maurice Papon, formerly a Vichy Gestapo collaborator in WWII.  Many were murdered by brutal police beatings. Others died in mass drownings, when police threw demonstrators, who sometimes had been knocked unconscious, into the river Seine.

And Australia?

British patricians brought their politeness to Australia along with the convicts and free settlers. We wanted so much to be like the “real British”. 5th generation Australians used to call a trip to England on a P&O boat “going home“. We copied the British. We learnt how to pretend to be polite, even when we were angered when the Aborigines refused to understand that they no longer owned ‘their’ land, and that we couldn’t care less about their savage “culture”. We still offered them a cup of tea. 

But in the fullness of time Australians got sick of the English bullshit and dissimulation. On the upside it was useful to know that language at the same time we were becoming more and more pragmatic about language. We were busy working, creating a nation. That took all our effort. We didn’t have time for bullshit. The British thought we were uncouth because they didn’t understand this unfamiliar idea of truth. With all this we developed as a culture of openness, straightforwardness and a remarkable talent for bullshit detection. We have the British to thank for that.

Not that we don’t still have many polite liars in our midst but they are mostly limited to politics and religion (now worryingly closing in on each other), the law and bureaucracy, banks and finance, real estate and advertising, and other scams.  

It’s not that politeness is not one of Australians’ endearing qualities along with friendliness and openness.

It’s just that when we’re polite it’s because we’re actually polite. And when we’re polite it’s real.     

. . .

Post Script: 
Sir Roger has asked me to point out that he does know Australian values and culture are slightly more complex than your interlocutor has suggested above  

 

* (go for it)

Porter Loo Too

Nov 27, 2020 | Australian Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Religious Values, Values

Porter Loo Too

Drip Drip Drip

Update 

Well. How spot-on is Sir Roger?
He’s yet again demonstrated how appropriate it is that he was granted the OGPC (Order of the Grater Praesagium Conspiciens) as the World’s First and Only Genuine Political Clairvoyant. 

In the previous post he noted that ‘Christian’ Porter was less the Minister for Industrial Relations and more the Minister for Industrialists .

“WorkPac” sounds like an American right wing Political Action Committee, doesn’t it, and frankly that wouldn’t appear to be far from the reality (except for the american bit).

WorkPac, (CIMIC Group trading as WorkPac) which was previously Leighton Holdings (there’s a story there) is helmed by CEO Hamish Griffin. It’s one of Australia’s largest labour hire companies.

WorkPac was upset that the unions won a case in the Federal Court [WorkPac v Rossato ] about the rights of casual labourers—mostly in the mining industry which is WorkPac’s main territory—to things like sick leave. They’d already been upset before, in 2018 [WorkPac Pty Ltd v Skene ]. 

So now to their delight they’ve been granted special leave by the High Court to appeal WorkPac v Rossato.

And guess who is supporting them? As Sir Roger (OGPC)  foretold.

Both the Attorney General and the Minister for Industrial Relations: ‘Christian’ Porter.

Truly the actual Minister for Industrialists.

Porter cries that the cost of decency and fairness is too many billion dollars. Which seems to suggest that for the rich, important and self-congratulatory to stay rich someone has to be poor.

WorkPac cries that the children will be worried by the uncertainty in a strange and unknown new future.

If this pandemic has done anything it’s shown that as a country we can definitely handle uncertainty, strangeness and an unknown future.

 

 

Nothing is what it seems.

 

Here’s the thing.

McDonalds is not a restaurant chain. It is in the real estate business. It leases out space to restaurateurs.

Coles and Woollies are not retailers. They are in the real estate business. They sell shelf space.

Your phone company is not a telecommunication company. They are a billing system.

When you use your smart phone or your PC you are not the customer. You are the product.

When you rent a house or a unit from a real estate agent you are not their customer. Their customer is the landlord. You are the product and you produce your money.

 

And when you are a casual worker who got your job through WorkPac your employer is not the mining company.

It’s WorkPac. You are not WorkPac’s customer. WorkPac’s customer is the mining company.

You are WorkPac’s product. You and your work are sold to the employer. 

When another company is the customer that’s where a supplier’s responsibility, and interest, is focused.

The lower the cost to a customer, the happier the customer will be, the more customers will be attracted and the more customers will be retained. 

And, of course, not to forget that the real customers, and the real bosses of a company’s board, are the shareholders who will tend to be either massive superannuation companies or the already very rich. And they have no responsibility for the actual employees. 

So the system is skewed towards industry and away from the workers.

How do we know this? Just a guess? Maybe because CEO salaries and politicians’ salaries keep going (as Tony Abbott liked to say “arpa-narpa-narp, prizes a rarp“), higher and juicily higher, while middle class incomes have been stagnant for years.

According to the ABS (via ABC, 12 July 2019):

” It’s official: the rich are getting richer.

Well-off Australians are pulling away from the rest of the nation, with inequality of wealth rising in recent years, new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show. . . .

The figures show income growth has been virtually non-existent for many — average household incomes have stagnated, with virtually no growth since 2013,  

So it’s good to be able to see real commercial Australian values in operation, to see the ancient engines working, to look behind the painted curtains, to shatter the hall of mirrors and realise they’re taking the piss.

Porter Loo

Nov 24, 2020 | Australian Values, Citizenship, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, OzPol Values, Values

Porter Loo

The Guardian

When Christian Is a Dirty Word

 

This won’t take long.
The Department of Home Affairs (“the Potatocracy”)  stirringly asserts that people love to come to Australia because: 

” ​​​​​​​​Australian values are based on freedom, respect, fairness and equality of opportunity are central to our community remaining a secure, prosperous and peaceful place to live . . .

Australian values include:

  • equality of opportunity . . .
  • a ‘fair go’ for all . . .

And that’s all good. We like that.

If only these were actual values held and supported and practised by actual politicians.

You might hope that a guy with a “christian” name like Christian might have been infected by nominative determinism, that ‘Christian’ had been an aptonym that suited Christian Porter, because he might have felt at least some moral pressure to consider the needs of the meek and struggling.

But sadly, it seems it is an inaptonym.

 ____________________

Do you know what casuals dread the most?

Christmas.

Because most don’t work at Christmas/New Year and they can’t afford a proper Christmas, or gifts for their children or whoever. Or a holiday. And they still have to pay the rent. It’s demeaning and embarrassing. 

 

A Third of Workers in Australia Don’t Get Sick Leave

 

Victoria is looking at a scheme which would provide five days of paid sick leave and carers’ pay to some casual workers and people with insecure employment.

Five days a year.

Without holiday pay.

You would think this was the very least they could do, except that throughout Australia the standard government support for such people is:

the very least they can get away with. 

Aside:

In our social system all people are of equal value.  

In our political system all voters are of equal power.

The power is in the people, not in the politicians.

The power IS the People.

All the people.

Importantly:

Power does not emanate from the politicians. 

The People’s power does not go to the politicians.

The People’s power goes through the politicians.

  Keeping this in mind 

when a politician is managing the needs of all of the electors of whatever status. . . 

Christian Porter is, apart from Attorney General, the minister for Industrial Relations.

This apparently means that he is effectively the minister for industrialists.

We know this is who he is because he sees a tiny attempt to help people who need help as “a massive tax”, as “killing business”.

Casual work is inherently insecure.

Casual work tends to be poorly paid, without penalty rates and sometimes they’re not eligible for a trickle of Super.

If they’re Job Seekers any income reduces their Centrelink payments. Sometimes casual work is the only work they can get. Yes, they get paid more to ‘compensate’ for the uncertainty and the lack of benefits, but on the pay grade of most it’s an insult and not enough to assure against the unforeseen. They can be easily trashed when they’re not needed.  

And yet the economy depends on them and the low cost of their work. 

But forget about their problems. They’ve only got themselves to blame, They’re a nuisance and they can’t complain because they could lose their shitty job.

And let’s be blunt; they’re the peons of industry. They’re not nearly as valuable as the rich and powerful. If casuals cost a little bit more, business owners might have to spend hours less on the ski slopes.

Businesses would collapse—Collapse!—if casual workers were treated fairly.

And, according to ‘Christian’ Porter, employment would collapse—Collapse!—if workers were treated fairly and with equality as Australians (a core Australian value).

And yet business depends on casual workers and the low cost of their work. 

Christian Porter’s base salary is $357,247.50. His superannuation rate is 15.4% (while everyone else gets 9.5%), or a minimum of roughly $55,000 per year.

What is it about the far right (and the Christians) that they fight against help for those who struggle while supporting, and courting the favour of, those who need no help at all?

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 . . .

 

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)

 

 

The Real Anarchist

Sep 10, 2020 | Arts, Australian Values, Corruption, Cultural Values, Democracy, Economic Values, Legal, Lifestyle & Life, Media Values, Racism, USPol, Values

The Real Anarchist

“I’m a Leninist” *

 

Trump has branded democrats and protestors as terrorists and also as anarchists. And because he likes the wacko Q narrative  – or likes to use it to manipulate his stupid base –  he sees the dark agents of doom in every corner.

But anarchists? The perfect patsy, a “useful, biddable idiot”, a deeply ignorant, psychopathic, personality-disordered, narcissistic buffoon he was scraped up, groomed and dragged into his “presidency” by a self-described . . . wait for it . . . anarchist.

That real anarchist is the unutterably awful, extreme-right, woman-hating, anti-democratic, supposedly communist-loving, power-mad, fake-news propagandist, pus-brained Steve Bannon.

What is this if not hot-lead anarchism:

“I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

And he’s willing to destroy not only the establishment but the people.

“Darkness is good. Dick Cheney. Darth Vader. Satan. That’s power.”

Good grief! Cheney? Cheney taught Satan everything he knows, and is so deep in the Establishment you’d have to pry him out of the magma chamber where he and his heart machine ‘live’.

As you know, Bannon was arrested and charged on 20 August with mail fraud allegedly involving the misuse of multi-million-dollar funds — donated to build the notorious “Wall” — for personal expenses. So much for destroying the Establishment.

Why should we care?

Because the US is important to global stability. Yes it could do with some political cleansing.

For any other actually democratic country the supposed “leftist/socialist” party, the Democrats, would be considered hard right. The conservatives are beyond alt-right, being absent any sense, or understanding of ethics and bereft of any ‘moral compass’ and are more or less irreparably the party of robber barons and their weak thoroughly bribed and compromised political tools.

But the people of America are for the most part fine people, generous people, fun-loving people, wildly creative people, enthusiastic energetic people, incredibly clever people.

They don’t deserve this.

Nor do we.

 

If Trump gets another go the whole world will be left in turmoil.

 

*  Sir Roger, by contrast, is a Lennonist