Let me be quite clear here. I suspect that Anthony Albanese has been a useful idiot to many in the media over the past dozen or so years…

I probably should define “useful idiot” so that you don’t automatically think that I think that I’m somehow brighter than Albo who, after all, did actually make it the office of PM.

Then again I could just use the definition from Wikipedia which is a useful tool for tools who want to do their own research but can’t be bothered to find more than one or two things on the Internet…

Here we go:

“A useful idiot or useful fool is a pejorative description of a person, suggesting that the person thinks they are fighting for a cause without fully comprehending the consequences of their actions, and who does not realize they are being manipulated by the cause’s leaders or by other political players.”

Now, I’m not as hostile as this may sound. Normally, I actually will give credit where credit is due, but I don’t have time for that now because I’ve already “personsplained” useful idiot… I would have said “mansplained” but I’m not the sort of person who uses sexist language where I can help it…

Anyway, I suspect that Albo had the odd catch-up with the odd journalist and gave them the odd titbit and they were thankful and he thought that they were on his side and when they wrote the odd story about the odd thing or two that was hostile to his government, he thought that they were just doing their job and deep down they still liked him and they were still going to basically support him because, well, he’s not Scottnofriends Morrison…

And yes, well, we did run that story about you buying a house and how dare you buy a house when people like Peter Dutton are struggling to buy another one for their investment portfolio and… any tips for a journalist like me? But we’re still friends, aren’t we?

So when it was leaked that he told the Cabinet that he thought that News Corp was out to get Labor, we can only consider three possible scenarios:

It was a shot across the bows and a warning to his mates in the media that this would be the last leak they’d get from him.

Someone else leaked it in the hope that it would make him sound out of touch and he’d be guaranteed to lose the next election, leaving the Deputy to take over the task of leaking to the media.

It was a surprise to him which means that he is no longer a useful idiot because anyone that stupid couldn’t be relied upon to be useful.

Whichever, that’s not all that important. The basic problem is that no matter which of those scenarios is true, we’re still at the point where we need to stop reacting emotionally and start thinking about what we want to happen…

All of which brings me to the bleedin’ obvious…

Now there’s a lot of stuff out there on what’s wrong and what’s right and who’s independent and who’s doing stuff for free because that just shows how independent one is and how government bodies can’t be considered independent and my modelling is better than you’re modelling and…

I’m just going to put this out there and ask a couple of simple questions…

If I were going to go to an election and try to establish nuclear in this country, I’d try to stick with something simple. I mean, the Liberals have said that they’re “agnostic” when it comes to energy, but I guess that’s a religion and it means we can’t protest when they go to pray at the shrine of Gina…

Notwithstanding that, I think I’d say that I think that nuclear is a great option and what I’ll do – if elected – is repeal the ban and let the market take over… If it seems a little too risky for them, then I’ll underwrite any sensible proposals as I’d do for any sensible proposal and we need to look at everything…

Question 1: Why not do this instead of committing to a proposal that is so controversial?

Question 2: Why are Labor trying to argue against such a proposal instead of simply saying this seems reasonable in the long term, but in the short term we need to do what we’re doing because nothing that P.Duddy is going to bring down prices before 2035 even if we accept all they’re most optimistic scenarios and presume that it’ll be built sooner than the carpark in Josh’s electorate…

Of course, when I say “Josh’s electorate” I mean that one that he used to own before it was stolen and for some reason, the police couldn’t press charges, even though the thief was flaunting her ill-gotten gain in Parliament…

>sigh<

Of course it’s hard to stay consistent to the values of society because as Saint Margaret of Thatcher said slightly before she lost all reason – or slightly after depending on your politics – “There’s no such thing as society!”

And of course, even Maggie wasn’t prepared to tell people that they didn’t need to pay their taxes because of this…

But I’m not here to speak ill of the dead. I’m just trying to get my ideas straight before we head into the next federal election.

To be clear here – as I’ve pointed out many, many times – I fit into a particular category of older, white Australian male and as such I may come across as sounding privileged and not understanding the problems faced by certain people. So when I say that Andrew Bolt should have lost the accent by now, particularly as he was allegedly born in the country, I may sound like I’m less welcoming than I should be, but let me be clear: I’m sure that Bolt was born here and I’m more than happy to give him a “Welcome To Country” even if I’m not Indigenous, but he should have no problem with that because – according to one of his columns, he is…

Yes, yes, I know… never mention that university dropout because he thrives on controversy and it’s his way of making sure that people read him… even if his show on Sky has less viewers than a replay of the 1997 Mooroopna darts championship.

Anyway, this is all about how we’ve come to rely on welfare…

Mm, interesting that I called it welfare. That’s an American term, isn’t it? We used to call it something else but once upon a time in Australia it just referred to the mental and physical happiness of a person…

Moving on, given certain polls are giving Dutton a chance of being the PM, we need to take a look into the possible future…

Let me make it clear, this is not a prediction. I never make predictions and I never will, but notwithstanding that we need to stop and consider what Australia will be like when at long, long last we ask those who need help to help themselves…

Of course, when I say help themselves I don’t mean to help themselves to things they have no entitlement to because we decide who’s entitled to what and the circumstances in which they’re entitled to it. If certain people help themselves to money that they’re not entitled to then they better hope that they’re public servants who are trying to extort money via robodebt on behalf of ministers who are ambitious for the other guy. If they were someone else they’d be in serious trouble.

Take the unions. They’re always trying to get workers a bigger slice of the pie when they should be just happy that people have a job and can afford a roof over their head and to eat… And if the wages being paid don’t enable them to do that, how can they afford to be a member of the union? No, they should just be grateful because look what happened to Oliver Twist when he asked for more…

Actually, Oliver ended up pretty well but that was because it was written by that notorious lefty, Dickens, who should definitely be banned from schools for his anti-capitalist agenda, where he argued that five year olds didn’t have the mutual obligation of going down chimneys in order to thank the society that didn’t exist for the soot in their lungs… (On a side note, it’s rather perverse to think that a popular children’s puppet show in Britain during the 60s had two puppets named Sooty and Sweep!)

No, we should stop giving taxes to people in need and give the taxes back to the people who didn’t pay them in the first place.

If someone needs extra help then they should get off their spotty backsides and look after themselves. I mean, take that great series “Breaking Bad”! When Walter White got diagnosed with cancer he didn’t rely on the state to help – mainly because he was in the United States… Mm, can we still call it that any more?

Whatever!

Walter White didn’t expect any help from his health insurance so he started making crystal meth and he made a fortune and…

All right, maybe it’s the wrong example.

So the possible future under Dutton…

Now he’s proposing a nuclear future and he’s promising that they can be built even sooner than the time it took for his party to release the cost.

He’s also promising a student cap… no, not the student cap that Labor put forward, a much better cap.

And he’s going to cut immigration, but not by what he said he would, but he’s definitely going to cut it by something more than Labor and something less than going too far.

England is a strange concept but the idea of a United Kingdom is perhaps even stranger…

While people were rather surprised that the Brexit referendum voted for leave, it’s no real surprise that the people of that tiny island were sick of people from Europe coming into their country.

Let’s take a brief look at the history of England and ignore Scotland, Wales and Ireland because that’s the right thing to do if one is English.

We begin by not talking about the Britons. It would be a waste of time to spend much time on the tribes roaming around before the Romans because not many histories do, so I’m going straight to first major European invasion which is, of course, the Romans. At this point I’ll resist the temptation to ask what the Romans ever did for England because I know that someone will be sure to add the long list from “The Life Of Brian” in the comments. Suffice to say, “Veni vedi, vici”, which loosely translated means, “The Romans came, they saw, they conquered and then wondered why and fucked off back to what we now call Italy. Ok, it wasn’t quite the actual translation and they did stick around for a few hundred years but once they realised that all the best shops and cafes were going to be on the continent they saw no reason to stay.

Rome’s exit meant that the people left were at the mercy of anyone who was a bigger bully than those who were left, which was pretty much anyone because those who had put up a fight like Boadicea had been suppressed by Roman rule and the rest were pretty used to being second class citizens in the own homeland.

When the Picts (from Scotland) and the Scots (from Ireland) – yes I know it doesn’t make sense but that will become a feature of British history from this point on – started moving in, the Britons decided to encourage someone with a bit more fighting power to come and help, so they turned to the Saxons who not only quelled the Picts and Scots but decided that England was such a nice place that they’d set up there and begin the great British tradition of being ruled by someone from Germany. This period led to the term Anglo-Saxon.

Of course, being such a small island it was possible to defend, but most people thought, why bother? After all the Romans were an improvement and the Saxons certainly had a much greater sense of order than the Picts or the Scots, so what harm could a few more invaders do?

Then along come the Vikings who did the first version of “Winner Takes It All” which was much less popular than when their descendants did it as “ABBA” many centuries later.

Eventually, we had the Normans who, as the name suggested came from France.

All this explains could explain why English spelling is so full of rules that only make sense when they’re followed and can be largely ignored because, when they’re not followed, it’s because they follow a different set of rules thanks to them being derived from neither of the two main languages that made up English.

At this point, it could be appropriate to mention that an American decided that he could make the whole thing simpler by leaving out letters here and there. This would have worked a treat had not it been for the fact that the USA decided to spread their literature throughout the globe, leading to yet another complication for English spelling, which is why you need to explain to spellchuck whether you want to use English (UK) version or English (US) version or English (who gives a fuck about spelling these days it’s the vibe, man)…

All of which brings me to the obvious point of the problem with multicultural Britain is that Kebbab needs two b’s to follow the rules of English and that leads to the eternal question posed by Hamlet…

2bs or not 2bs?

Anyway, when you put all this together you suddenly see that all the English wanted was to keep out anyone else who’d just make their language more confusing and that Brexit wasn’t racist, it was just a load of people who find spelling hard enough and a group of billionaires who didn’t want to pay tax and who were worried about Europe actually working out a way of making them.

This also explains why the English love the Royal Family even though, thanks to the intermarriage over generations of royal families throughout Europe, every single one of them has less actual English blood than your average homeless vagrant sleeping on the streets.

Mm, does this mean that one day they’ll realise this simple fact and revolt, placing some homeless person on the throne owing to the purity of their blood? Or are they just used to being taken over by foreigners and are happy to have as their King someone whose father was Greek and who’s mother was of such mixed race that Ancestor.com would think it was a joke?

Perhaps they should ask Rupert Murdoch what he thinks because he, after all, is Australian who became an American…

“To make matters worse, the more we see someone, the more familiar they become, and this makes them appear to be more trustworthy. A liar can become an ‘expert’; a lone voice begins to sound like a chorus, just through repeated exposure. These strategies have long been known to professional purveyors of misinformation. ‘The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention,’ Adolf Hitler noted in Mein Kampf. ‘It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over…’”

The Intelligence Trap by Dave Robson

There’s a very interesting book called “The Intelligence Trap” by Dave Robson where he puts forward the idea that intelligent people often suffer from the fact that, because they often find themselves as one of the smartest people in the room, they may have a tendency to overestimate their actual understanding of what’s going on.

It’s a bit more complicated than that but, as psychologists have argued, rather than looking at all the evidence and coming to a sound conclusion based on a careful weighing of the pros and cons, humans have a tendency to rush to an emotive judgement and THEN USING THEIR INTELLIGENCE TO JUSTIFY THEIR POSITION.

Personally, I never do this. Just as I’m free from any biases, I also like to consider things from all angles before deciding that my gut feeling was right after all.

A recent example of this was when Greens leader, Adam Bandt, posted on X and used the phrase, “heatwaves like this”. As can be expected, his post attracted a large number of comments including several people who expressed the view that it’s summer so what do you expect? This would be a great example of people using their intellect and not responding emotionally where it not for the simple fact that Summer starts on December 1st, so it’s late Spring.

Do I have a legitimate point? Or is this me using my cognitive powers to justify my position to an emotional response to the knuckle-draggers who seem to want to deny climate change? And is the insult “knuckle-draggers” emotive when it would be more accurate to call them “mouth-breathers”? And will any of the people I’ve insulted respond with a reasoned thesis on why I’m wrong, or will they just resort to the sort of name-calling and abuse I’ve come to expect from anyone who disagrees with me…

Err, sorry, I seem to have been channelling Andrew Bolt there for a moment.

Moving on…

One of the problems with the modern world is that powerful people have realised that emotion is more powerful than reason and they keep their power by engaging people’s emotions rather than appealing to their intellect…

Ok, ok, I know what some of you are going to say: “How can you appeal to the intellect of someone who voted for Trump or Pauline Hanson?”, but there’s something that you’ve possibly overlooked here: It’s too late because they’ve most likely gone down the emotional path and when you try to appeal to facts and reason, they’ll accuse you of being one of those bookish types who has no experience of the real world. Trump, for example, had to deal with the difficulties of having bone spurs and finding ways to ensure that he wasted his father’s fortune on bad deals in order to make it back by good deals where he spruiked his ability as a businessman by ignoring the fact that if he’d just banked his inheritance he’d have ended up with more money thanks to compound interest.

So how do you counter someone who believes that illegal immigrants are both living off government benefits by being too lazy to work AND taking our jobs? Do you point out how lacking in skills the person must be if an immigrant who hasn’t bothered to learn English and has criminal tendencies is getting the job they want? This is likely to both engage the person arguing on both an intellectual and an emotional level, but I doubt that it will have a positive outcome for either of you.

How do you counter someone like Elon Musk who claims to be a free speech advocate while tweeting that anyone who posts certain things will have a permanent ban on X… On a side note, is the verb still “tweeting” or should it now be “ex-ing” or “Xing” or… oh, who cares, I’ll just go onto Bluesky where the verb can be “blueing” or “skying” or…

Perhaps the answer is to take Hitler’s advice on repetition. I mean, I know Hitler was one of the most evil men of the twentieth century but that doesn’t mean that he was wrong about everything. Both he and Jordan Peterson had views on making your bed, and both are prepared to lie in it. In Hitler’s case he was prepared to lie out of it, but I wouldn’t say that about Peterson because he’s still alive…

Anyway, the bit about repeating things until people accept them as true has certainly worked for a number of politicians over the years and the real danger is that nice people don’t want to spoil Christmas by disagreeing with Uncle Alf and so consequently he’s the one who gets to repeat over and over again his theory on exactly who is ruining the country… which, ironically, will never be him, even if he’s guilty of exactly the things he’s describing. “That’s the trouble with kids today… no respect for the law… in my day, if a kid did something wrong, the police would take him down to the station and beat the living daylights out of him and he’d be scared to do it again but these days, they don’t do that and look at how people have no respect for the law!!”

You could point out to Uncle Alf that it was illegal for police to “beat the living daylights” out of someone but it’ll just spoil Christmas… wait till Boxing Day!

In light of recent elections, it’s very tempting to look at the argument that was once put forward that, as half the population is below average in intelligence and/or political awareness, that democracy is a flawed model and that we’d be better off adopting the model where only the elite got to vote…

Ah, those bloody inner-city elites. Woke nonsense. Thank god we have a few people with their feet on the ground who can vote in a man of the people like Donald Trump, who’ll be taking advice from such down-to-earth people as Robert Kennedy Jnr and Elon Musk… (admittedly the latter is planning to establish a colony on Mars so that we don’t have to worry about staying “down-to-earth” or even saving it, but there ya go…)

I still have some faith that a system where we all get a say is a much better system than one where a few special people get to make all the decisions, however, the problem is that politics has rarely been an area where people put forward potential solutions and sensibly debate possible outcomes. Instead, it resembles a gladiatorial contest where the winner gets to make the decisions and the losers are left with just tossing rocks until the next election.

If we take the problem of wars, I have put forward a perfect solution which none of the politicians want to know about. In a time where we should be concerned about global emissions, instead of sending ships, planes and armies to another country at great expense, once war has been declared, Country A could simply say to Country B that it wanted to bomb a particular area of their country and Country B could bomb it much more cheaply because they already have troops and equipment there. In return, Country B could then say, “Well, now we’d like to retaliate and we’d like you to blow up your munitions factory with about fifty nearby civilian houses destroyed…” At this point, Country A could escalate and ask Country B to destroy an energy plant, leading to Country B retaliating by asking Country A to destroy some vital piece of infrastructure…

When I suggested this, someone said that it was absurd and wanted to know why any country would be prepared to blow up its own areas and kill its own citizens, I shrugged and said that it was pretty much what happens now, except that each country has to destroy the other one’s things and then wait for the country to retaliate; my way just saves on the shipping costs. “But,” the person objected, “what would happen if one country didn’t follow through? This might mean that the whole thing would stop and before you know it, you’d have peace breaking out!”

Anyway, back to democracy…

The fundamental problem is that we don’t have the various sides of politics saying that we have a big problem and we don’t know what to do about it; we have everyone arguing that they’re the only ones with the solution and the various other sides are just wrong.

If we take the recent cap on student numbers as a prime example, we have Peter Dutton telling us in his budget reply that we need to put a cap on student numbers. Now, whatever your position on this issue, I’d suggest that you’d believe that Mr Dutton is in favour of a cap. However, when Labor put forward their bill proposing a cap, the Coalition announced that they’ll oppose Labor’s bill because it’s not the cap that they want and it won’t solve the problem of housing or Mexicans or inflation or Labor’s inability to manage money. (Yes, Labor have produced two surpluses but they’re the ones who can’t manage money!)

Then, of course, there’s the misinformation bill. Of course, there are two sides to the banning of misinformation. The first is that there’s a danger if it’s the government deciding what is and isn’t misinformation, we could end up in the classic Orwellian nightmare of Newspeak. However, there is also the fact that there is a genuine problem with misinformation. I mean, we’re talking about something that’s misinformation by it’s very nature and surely – just as there are laws against slandering a person – it’s reasonable to expect that people should not be able to say whatever without consequences. Does free speech give you the right to shout “Fire” in a crowded theatre, etc? Well, obviously, yes if there is a fire, but surely you should have to explain yourself if you did it for some other reason. Rather than a mature debate about what we should do about actual misinformation, we end up with political point scoring.

Actually, I did find it refreshing during the Voice debate to hear so many Coalition MPs tell us that – not only did they oppose the Voice and Treaty – but they were dead against truth-telling as well. One of the few times we’ve had honesty from that bunch of liars!

While scepticism about what the media and the politicians tell us is a sign of a healthy democracy, this doesn’t mean that cynicism is the next logical step. And that’s the trouble with the whole fake news schtick of Donald Trump: anything that threatens our worldview can be dismissed as fake news, while we’re happy to believe the anecdote about some outrageous happening and generalise it to all schools, all politicians, all churches, all LGTBI groups, all inner city people, all Americans…

And this isn’t good for healthy debates about real problems that nobody has the complete answer for. It doesn’t help when people don’t know the difference between “communist” and “totalitarian” as in the comment about Jeff Bezos which I put at the top. It’s pretty hard to believe that the richest man in the world is running Amazon like a socialist collective in any way.

Perhaps Winston Churchill got it right when he said: “Democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the others.”

In case you haven’t guessed, I read a lot…

Of course, this probably disqualifies me from holding a cabinet post in the United States and various people will attack me as being one of those out of touch academics who has no experience in the real world… which would be fine if only I’d been more successful at school and didn’t waste so much time doing things in the real world in my final year of schooling… or when I did tertiary studies, come to think of it.

In fact, when I moved from secondary to tertiary studies, I couldn’t work out how I didn’t score as well as those “mature age” students who were seven or eight years older than me… It was in my final year that I realised it was partially because they went and did the recommended reading and didn’t try to whip something up based on a lecture and a couple of tutorials…

Anyway, one of the books I’ve started reading lately is Rick Morton’s “Mean Streak”, and I’d strongly advise you all to go out and buy a copy, even if you’re not a reader. I mean, Christmas is approaching and you could give it to that relative who spoils Christmas by telling everyone how Labor is ruining the country by spending billions on renewables but won’t accept that Peter Dutton should reveal the cost of nuclear and the whole argument gets sidetracked just as you were about to say something about the problem with the duopoly of Australian politics because pudding is served and Auntie Flo asks everyone not to spoil her last Christmas…

While I haven’t finished the book yet, it’s the sort of book that shouldn’t need to have been written. I mean that in the same way that we shouldn’t have books written on the rise of Hitler, Trump’s victory and any biography about Kim Kardashian and her importance. Basically, the fact that these and Robodebt were even a thing is part of the whole failure of the system…

As to whether it’s the Westminster System, the capitalist system, the public service or the whole idea of Karma, I’m not sure. However, one thing is certain, when you give some people a job to do, robodebt demonstrates that some people do the task at hand without looking at the bigger picture. And, by bigger picture I mean such things as ethics, morality and legality.

It’s a bit like the Reserve Bank at the moment where the subtext is: We can’t lower interest rates because not enough people have lost their houses and/or their jobs because if do and inflation goes up, we’ll have made a mistake and we’ll look sillier than our predictions about interest rates not going up until 2024 or the one where we said that inflation wouldn’t fall below 3% for a long time and Treasury’s Budget assumption is wrong...

At one point, Rick Morton compares the whole thing to the Milgram experiment. This is the famous experiment where subjects were instructed to give another person electric shocks by an authority figure and a surprisingly high number (a majority) were prepared to keep going even though it was supposed to cause the death of the person being shocked. Of course, in the Milgram experiment, the person being shocked was a confederate who was only pretending to be in pain. While the Milgram experiment is widely regarded as being unethical, robodebt hasn’t caused as much controversy because the people being shocked were actually given real pain by people who were more concerned with their own advancement than…

I should pause and consider something I read from “Humankind: A Hopeful History” by Rutger Bregman. At one point he pointed out that the problem with looking at Nazi Germany through contemporary eyes is that we overlook the fact that the people doing horrible things all believed that they were doing the right thing, the moral thing, so it’s not completely fair to judge them because if they did anything but what everyone around them thought was right then…

Mm, I may be sounding unfair to Rutger Brennan, because he actually raised some good points. It’s just that when I summarise them they sound like the sort of justification that went so badly at the Nuremberg trials… although it seems to have gone over a treat at the Royal Commission… Oh wait, no it didn’t. Apparently, there was a whole sealed section that was larger than the ones in Cleo which were all about effectively fucking people. While the whole robodebt fiasco was all about that very thing, the point of their sealed section – as I understand it – was to ensure that criminal prosecutions could take place and not to allow the NACC to ask certain people if they felt that S & M would be too painful for people who’d indulged in SM activities…

All of which brings me to Scott Morrison and his role…

From what I remember at the Royal Commission, Scotty was badly let down by his department and he threw them all under the bus… which is ironic because – as the man who didn’t hold a hose – that’s the most manual labour he’s done!

When I opened my computer I had a plan to do something important like pay a bill or check my emails or … Whatever, before I did that, I decided to check Facebook and I got a wee bit distracted. Post after post seemed appropriate to some of the things I’ve been thinking lately, and each one was equally brilliant. Posts of quotes from great authors from years gone by, posts of this; posts of that. They all said exactly what I’ve been thinking lately and there wasn’t a Ralph Babble quote in any of them.

I know. You don’t need to be the smartarse who tells me: It’s the algorithm…

Al Gore Rhythm…

Coincidence?

Yeah, probably… But once you’ve seen it, there’s evidence everywhere. Confirmation bias is a real thing… I know, everything I’ve seen proves it…

Confirmation bias is – just in case you haven’t come across the term, or have had it poorly defined – our tendency to see the evidence which backs our prevailing view while ignoring any contradictory information. For example, when a skateboarding teenager accidentally knocks you down, you spend the next few days complaining about the youth of today and ignore the fact that a group of teenagers helped you up, ensured that you weren’t seriously injured and walked you back to your car even though it was out of their way.

Or, imagining that Peter Dutton says something intelligent that you agree with, your confirmation bias would have you wondering for days what he was up to and who told him to say it and why he agreed to do it.

Actually, the fact that you just said that you couldn’t imagine Dutton saying anything like that is probably an even better example of confirmation bias, but I’d have trouble arguing that you didn’t have a point…

Anyway, the terrible danger of the internet is that it doesn’t allow for nuances in debate. You’ll tend to be directed down rabbit-holes of people with similar beliefs to yours because the algorithms are designed to keep you online.

You clicked on this story about how badly Meghan and Harry have been treated by the Royal Family? Well, how about we see if you’ll take the bait and read the one where Princess Di is really still alive and living happily with Michael Jackson but they live in fear because King Charlie has threatened them if the story ever leaks… No, well, what about the one where Camilla is really her twin sister? No? Mm, there’s a great story about how nobody believes anything they read on the internet anymore and… yes, that’s a great story and before you go, we have one on the gullibility epidemic and how a town in the US is introducing a law against it…

Don’t get me wrong. I think that there is still a lot that’s good about the internet and I don’t just mean the photos of cats and dogs. However, the way in which it’s being exploited by evil geniuses for money and power makes the typical Bond villain seem benevolent by comparison.

I don’t know what the solution is, apart from trying to listen to people’s stories and to show some empathy and to understand that it really doesn’t help to scream: “You voted for that psycho, you moron!” I mean, you may have a legitimate point, but stupidity is like a gaping wound; merely pointing out that a person is bleeding to death is unlikely to change the situation and it needs someone who is capable of attending to their wounds till they get better…

Of course, the problem with that analogy is that – politically speaking – some people just yell, “Look what the government has done! I’m voting for the opposition because they’ve promised to end these oppressive bandages and they’ll rip them off and let me bleed freely as God intended!”

Whatever, let’s end with some inspiring quotes:

“For every complex problem, there’s a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” H.L. Mencken

“Keep your faces towards the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind you.” Walt Whitman

“Most of the quotes attributed to me were made up after my death.” Albert Einstein

There was a famous saying about how people who live by the sword, die by the sword… which is ridiculous on so many levels apart from the fact that you have to infer so much meaning that the saying makes no literal sense…

I mean, if you said those who live by the river, die by the river, it might make sense because if you’re living by – or beside – a river then there’s every chance that you’d be swept away by a flood eventually. Surely even those who argue that climate change isn’t man-made because we’re too small to affect the weather, even if the Democrats caused those hurricanes with their weather controlling machines…

To cut to the chase and not be distracted by all sorts of proverbs, I’d just like to share something that I read today about how Elon Musk’s StarLink had some sort of link to the voting machines and this is why in states where the Democrats won all the other elections of the day, Trump held sway…

Now, I’ve never believed most conspiracy theories… although the one about how the rich and powerful have made up all sorts of structures to not only allow but also justify their oppression of the people who don’t seem to notice the structures that oppress them, does seem to have a certain authenticity about it in historic terms. These days, of course, the rich and powerful are all about draining the swamp and stopping oppression. Just ask Donald and Elon!

However, I say, in a voice that suggests I should be using capitals, if the Trump supporters believed that the last election was stolen just because he said so, and he convinced them that the voting machines were rigged so that we didn’t get a real result, then why should the non-Trump supporters not also believe that the whole thing was rigged?

No, no, no! I’m not saying that it was rigged. I’m not saying that there was something suspect… I’m just saying if you alert the people to stand down and stand by and convince them that the vote was rigged and then some of them – without encouragement from a leader of the free world – launch an insurrection all by themselves, why won’t at least some of the people who were told that the vote couldn’t be trusted last time, find it easy to convince the vote can’t be trusted this time?

The whole thing about any political system is that it relies on faith. Once people stop believing in it, the crumbling may be slow but it’ll be inevitable. Only the belief that the king is really the king makes the coins with his image worth their stamped value. Only the belief that you live in a democracy and that your vote is being counted makes it worth voting. Only the belief that the bank really has your money stops a run on the banks. Only the belief that the people running the show are actually smarter than us stops the revolution… Mind you, I should add that some of the people running some of the shows are obviously smarter; one only has to listen to the confused attempts to repeat what someone has told them from Vox Pop interviews with various people to conclude that!

There are two big fears about Trump 2.0. The first is that he doesn’t do most of the things that he promised and that’ll lead to some people saying, “See we told you that you had nothing to worry about!” and nobody will notice how insane he is until he does something really, really strange and dangerous. The second is that he does do the things he promised and that’ll lead to the destruction of the USA as we know it… Still, I guess it’s often better to face your fears.

Odds on the way Trump’s presidency ends:

• Trump standing down after four years 10-1
• Trump dying in office from heart attack while dancing at a rally 5-1
• Trump being pushed down some stairs by Melania 2-1
• Vance declaring him incompetent and taking over. 25-1
• Trump and Musk taking space flight together and rocket exploding after the earth rejects their return. 12-1
• Military Coup 2-1
• Trump choking on Big Mac after speaking while eating: Even money.

I guess all we can do in the mean time is have a good old fashioned sing along! (Lyrics below clip!)

… See a clinic full of cynics
Who want to twist the peoples’ wrist
They’re watching every move we make
We’re all included on the list

… The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum

… No nuclear the cowboy told us
And who am I to disagree
‘Cause when the madman flips the switch
The nuclear will go for me

… The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum

… I’ve seen the faces of starvation
But I just can not see the points
‘Cause there’s so much food here today
That no one wants to take away

… The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my right to choose
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my point of view
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my dignity
Take these things away from me
The lunatics have taken over the asylum
The lunatics have taken over the asylum, take away my family
Take away the right to speak
The lunatics have taken over the asylum take away my point of view
Take away my right to choose

Last election I voted for Monique Ryan but I certainly won’t be at the next federal election and I’ll explain the reason later but it would be remiss of me to ignore the obvious event that’s probably affecting the mood of so many people…

Trump won.

It’s really quite amazing on so many levels but, as I’ve been a glass half-full sort of guy most of my life, I’d like to remind everyone that this has certain positives which it’s tempting to overlook when the left were preparing to celebrate the election of the first female…

As I write that, I have to explain my assumption that it would only be the left who would celebrate the election of a female. It’s quite simple, the right are blind to things like gender… which is why they never see the woman raising her hand in the board meeting or the job application from the woman who didn’t go to the same same sex school that they did…

Same same sex school… mm, there’s a whole thesis for someone there but probably not from someone from the same same sex school that I went to…

Ok, the positives:

• Trump has shown that you don’t have to live by the narrow restrictions that the Religious Right demand because they’ll forgive you if you just pretend to like them.
• Once any accusation that you were in collusion with Russia would have been enough to destroy your political aspirations in the US. Now, that’s fine and it’s the Democratic Party who are communists in spite of their capitalist leanings. Forcing people to have health insurance so that a trip to the doctor doesn’t cost an arm and a leg is the sort of communism where they should be happy to sacrifice their arm or their leg by not going to the doctor and losing either or both…
• Trump has assured us that he’ll stop the wars and who can doubt the word of a man who’s been married so many times?
• This is a slap in the face to all those who say untrue allegations of sexual assault can destroy a man’s career… Of course, true allegations of sexual assault are a different matter and they may destroy a woman’s career which I can legally say owing to a recent defamation case in Australia…
• Trump may get sick of Elon Musk and have summarily sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Ok, there are a few negatives and these include the strong possibility that some of his policies may lead to economic problems and further inflation. Of course, this is only speculation and for all I know adding large tariffs on imported goods may actually lead to a severe drop in prices, followed by a complete collapse in trade which would reduce the emissions from goods being transported from one country to another.

Ok, ok, I get the fact that it’s a very depressing idea for some of you but I try to take the long view… if Keating hadn’t won in 1993, would we have had a decade of John Howard; if Obama had lost in 2012, would we have ever had Trump; if Germany had won WW1, would we have had Hitler; if I’d played for Collingwood in 1970 would we have been behind at half time so when I was taken off, would we have won?

So if we take the long view what is likely to happen?

I’m reluctant to make predictions on the grounds that they’ll probably be wrong, but even more worrying is the fact that some of the most ridiculous ones will turn out to be right. Anyway:

• Musk will convince Trump that his legacy can be – like JFK – winning the space race and with a mere commitment of several trillion, the USA can have a colony on Mars before the end of the decade.
• Robert Kennedy will attempt to ban all vaccinations on the grounds that they cause people to believe that fluoride in the water doesn’t lead to chemtrails. Malcolm Robert will invite him to speak in Australia, but the invitation will be refused on the grounds that Australia doesn’t exist and he’ll fall of the end of the world.
• Trump will say something that even JD Vance can’t explain but he’ll attempt to distract people by saying that he’s working on a prequel to “Hillbilly Elegy” where they show his conception and how it was done immaculately. Yes, Vance will tell us, there will be a role for the stars of the first movie because as they say, “Keep Glenn Close, but keep your enemies closer.” Of course, nobody will understand that but it will distract everyone from Trump’s comments about how he was responsible for winning Wordle War 3 and his refusal to admit that he actually meant World War 3 even though it hasn’t happened.

Notwithstanding all this, I promised to explain why I’m not voting for Monique Ryan this time… Well, they moved the electoral boundary. I’m no longer in Kooyong. Otherwise, I’d be voting for her because I’ve decided that we need more independents in parliament because the trouble with parties is that they end up doing the sort of things that lead to the sort of trouble that we now face where it’s not the person who actually stands for anything that ends up leading. Yes, more independents may make the governments more unstable but isn’t that what people want these days?

The old man laughed indulgently, holding in check a deeper, more explosive delight. His goading remained gentle. “Rome was destroyed, Greece was destroyed, Persia was destroyed, Spain was destroyed. All great countries are destroyed. Why not yours? How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.

Nately squirmed uncomfortably. “Well, forever is a long time, I guess.”

“A million years?” persisted the old man with keen, sadistic zest. “A half million? The frog is almost five hundred million years old. Could you really say with much certainty that America, with all its strength and prosperity, with it’s fighting man that is second to none, and with its standard of living that is the highest in the world, will last as long as the… frog?”

Joseph Heller ‘Catch-22’

There was a meme about whether Liz Truss could last as PM as long as the lettuce in the photo. There is no actual photo of the lettuce on the day that Liz resigned/was pushed/gave up, so we don’t have verification but the general consensus is that the lettuce lasted longer…

I hope it doesn’t sound sexist when I refer to that failure of Prime Minister as “Liz” when I don’t refer to other male leaders by their first names. For example, I don’t call Trump “Donald”… I usually just refer to him as that pathetic piece of shit…

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not because these people have conservative views that upsets me. I respect their right to hold whatever opinion they choose because isn’t that what freedom is all about? It’s their total inability to stick to anything that could be considered an opinion.

If I sound a little bit harsh it’s because I can’t understand the rhetoric from the media…

For example:

• Kamala Harris has to battle precedent because the US has never elected a female, let alone a black one… (I presume that PPOS will allow me to refer to her as black ever if she’s not allowed to call herself that!)
• On the other hand, nobody points out that Trump has to defy precedent because no convicted felon has ever been elected… no person of his age… no person who “allegedly” tried to mount an insurrection… no person who’s been caught on tape taking about sexually assaulting women (yes, it was just “locker talk” even though there wasn’t a locker in sight)…

I could go on, but I may find myself getting distracted from my original point about taking the long view.

There are many times when we get distracted about how events affect us personally. The result of the US election will undoubtedly cause a lot of grief for people, but will it be good for other people in the long run? After all, if Marie Antoinette had actually let the people eat cake, maybe the French would still be oppressed by unelected rulers and if the British hadn’t beheaded Charles the First then maybe Charles the Third (say that with an Irish accent) would still be in charge and they’d be doing more about climate change… We don’t know about the long term.

Whatever happens in this coming election, it’s pretty clear that the orderly transfer of power where everyone accepts the result because the United States isn’t one of those countries where dictators rig elections is now gone…and once you no longer believe in the idea that elections are free and fair, well, you don’t know what to believe and you’re victim of whichever demagogue can convince you to die for them so that they can rule you in a fairer way than the guy who didn’t care whether you lived or died, so die for me because I’m the one who will mourn you!

While I’m pretty sure that the USA won’t last longer than the frog, I suspect that it will last longer than a lettuce. However, Trump is possibly taking the proverbial lettuce out of the fridge and that means that it may not last as long as it could have.

Perhaps, I should have called this: “TRUMP AIN’T KISSING NO FROG BECAUSE HE DON’T NEED NO PRINCE”!

It’s interesting what constitutes a scandal these days compared with just a few years ago.

For example, sending people debt notices illegally for money they didn’t owe only got a passing mention. Paying ten times the price that land was valued at was ok. Giving millions to a firm whose office was a shack in Kangaroo Island received a raised eyebrow, but let’s congratulate them on not wasting money on plush offices.

Now… perhaps it’s because of the anti-corruption commission which is allegedly looking into things and deciding that most of them may not be worth investigating… but now, we have all sorts of scandals involving the PM.

For example, he bought a house and paid a lot more than the vast majority of Australians can afford. Admittedly, there’s no suggestion that he did anything corrupt, but it was what’s called “poor optics” and that’s far worse than simple corruption.

And just recently it’s emerged that Anthony Albanese received upgrades for flights from Qantas. We know this because he declared them in his register of interests. They are different from the upgrades that Peter Dutton received because, according to reports, the PM asked for them, whereas Dutton was upgraded due to concern for the poor people in economy seats who’d be forced to spend the flight near him.

This is much, much worse than when a certain Liberal minister forgot to pay for a family holiday from “Hello World” and they forgot to charge him. I guess that is what happens when you ask the head of the company for help with your booking. They’re not used to day-to-day things like charging for airfares.

There is a further allegation that Albo didn’t declare the upgrade for his ex-wife but because she was also a politician some have suggested that she would have/should have declared them on her own register of interests. This overlooks the fact that a man is responsible for all matters of business and a woman couldn’t possibly be considered an independent entity responsible for her own…

Ok, ok, there are obvious problems with our politicians receiving anything for free from any business because of the potential conflict of interest. Certainly, there’s a case that if Albanese was soliciting free upgrades in return for certain decisions he should be referred to the NACC and the whole thing looked at.

HOWEVER, we are talking about his time as Transport Minister so it was it a long time ago and – I suspect – that the Senate won’t want to examine it by questioning Alan Joyce because some bright spark might ask if any other Minister ever personally asked for an upgrade.

Whatever it does seem like there’s a definite campaign against Albanese and that it’s not just coming from the Labor side of politics.

If that sounds like I’m a rusted-on Labor supporter, that’s just not true. There’s a quote about how if you’re not a socialist at twenty there’s something wrong with your heart, but if you’re still a socialist at forty there’s something wrong with your head. While it’s true that many people become more conservative as they age, I am starting to think that it’s the Australian political scene that’s changed. When people call the Albanese government “socialist”, I am confused as to what they think socialism is.

As I see the parties these days when compared to the 1960s:

• The Labor Party is closer to what would have been a moderate Liberal government.
• The Greens are closer to what Labor once was. A lot of idealistic policies but they don’t think they’ll win government any time soon so they don’t have to worry about the practicalities.
• The current Liberal Party is now the DLP who were basically a combination of religious fundamentalists and people worried about China and communism.
• One Nation is closer to your average 60’s country football club committee without the committee’s ability to organise the weekly raffle for the meat tray.

The recent Queensland state election is going to cause a lot of frothing at the mouth from political commentators and we’re probably only a few days away from leadership speculation and a headline “HOW CAN ALBO HANG ON?” This will be followed by amazement that he’s still there when it’s been discovered that he has a habit of taking pens from the office and using them as though they’re his own and not the taxpayers’.

Of course, Peter Dutton will complain that – if only Labor weren’t so insistent that they had a right to make decisions because they’re the government – we could have a bipartisan policy on things like nuclear energy, harsher sentences for protesters, and war with China. This will be backed by an opinion poll indicating that Dutton is more popular than he was at some point when he wasn’t, and there’ll be another round of articles about Labor changing leaders.

The Greens will consistently repeat their line from the Queensland election which I found confusing in the extreme. According to Max Chandler-Mather, Labor lost because they keep “fighting with the Greens” while simultaneously the Miles government adopted a lot of Greens policies which is why they did so well, even though they lost. I have a lot of trouble with the concept that you are “fighting” someone while you are doing what they think is good policy.

Ah well, at least the election won’t cause the same sort of civil war likely to break out in the US after the elections next week… at least, I presume it won’t!

As with every state election there are no implications for the next federal election. I know this because everyone who doesn’t like a particular result will tell you this and those who like the result are too busy celebrating to tell you anything.

However, I can’t help but wonder about the rhetoric around the idea that federal Labor is in trouble in Queensland and this could have terrible consequences for the upcoming election. I mean if the swing in last night’s state election were repeated then it would mean that Labor would lose somewhere between zero and one seats to the LNP and they’d possibly pick up a seat or two off the Greens, so all up, it would make no difference.

Of course, I am only talking about Queensland because the various commentary has been treating it as a special case and suggesting that Labor really needs to do something to win over our northern cousins. Given that Labor has only one seat that the LNP could reasonably target federally, it seems like their efforts would be better spent winning over NSW by passing laws that allow State of Origin matches to be decided by popular vote.

If the swing were repeated nationally on a uniform basis, then Labor would be in trouble. In saying that, I’m not suggesting that it would be repeated because, well, swings are never uniform and there are always things that mean that various electorates may defy expectations. This can be caused by such things as a popular local member or the fact that one party has certain plans for it that the electorate don’t actually like. I’m not going to suggest that some electorates may not like having a nuclear plant built there without consultation because I may be accused of being an ABC journalist who has an agenda and there was plenty of consultation about where those nuclear plants were going… it just wasn’t with any of the local people until after the decision had been announced. Besides, there was no need for consultation because, as Mr Dutton said, how does anyone know that they’d be against it?

The other interesting thing from last night’s result was the performance of the Greens. As yet nobody has come out and said that there are no federal implications for the next federal election and the fact that Max Chandler-Mather lives in the seat they lost won’t mean that he’s under threat but I’m sure that it’s only a matter of time before someone from the Greens says that it was Labor’s refusal to negotiate with them that led to the change of government…

And speaking of no seats, Pauline Hanson’s One Notion Party seems to have recaptured its past irrelevance. Yes, one has to respect Pauline’s principles. While it was the Liberals that started the process which saw her spend time in jail, it’s Labor that she’s said she’d never support. She’s a forgiving soul. Anyway, again, no federal implications and I expect Pauline to be returned to the Senate where she can point out how much taxpayer money is being wasted because it doesn’t go to her.

So, what happens next? Which will be the first promise broken or will Crisafulli surprise everyone by keeping his promises? On what day will the new government say that the Budget’s a mess and we can’t keep those 50 cent fares. As for changes to abortion laws, we said that we had no plans to change them and we still don’t but the Katter Party wants a vote and it’s the sort of thing that needs a conscience vote and we still have no plans but, as Robbie Burns, wrote “the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley.”

And even though there are no federal implications, what will happen on Insiders when people start to speculate about the implications?

Whatever the future holds for the Albanese government, I’d suggest that this is a terrific result for them. At last they have a mainland state government that they can blame for what’s going wrong in that particular state without worrying about the terrible look of a party fighting amongst itself.

A few years ago I wrote about this elective class I taught called “Oral English”. It consisted of students making short speeches, having debates and discussing various issues.

Now when I say “discussing” what I actually mean is getting louder and louder until the various opposing forces were shouting at each other at which point I would stop them and remind them that they needed to discuss their differences at the sort of volume that wouldn’t have the principal concerned about the riot going on in my class. Eventually, I put forward a simple idea:

“Has anyone ever changed your mind by shouting at you?” I asked.

“No,” was the general consensus.

“Then why do you think you’ll change someone else’s mind by shouting at them?”

“We don’t,” said one girl at a slightly lower volume than was her usual want.

“Then why do you do it?”

“It feels good,” she replied. A response which got approving nods from most of the class.

I shrugged and told them to shout away, because who was I to stand in the way of progress. After all, this was before social media where it has become customary to insult, belittle and abuse anyone with a different viewpoint.

Which, of course, brings me to Lidia Thorpe and the various interperations of her… um, assertion… protest… assault…lack of understanding that wearing fur may attract a protest…

Anyway, her “Chuckie ain’t my King!” has a certain resonance with a lot of people.

Now before I show myself to be a representative of the colonial forces which have done so much damage, I’d like to say that my thoughts on the matter have a very limited perspective and I’ll certainly need to be educated on all the things that are wrong with my limited perspective.

Notwithstanding that, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Sam Newman’s statement that he was going to boycott the AFL grand final because of the “Welcome to Country”. Nobody cared…

Ok, some people cared. I mean the people who have the same views as Sam all agreed with him and…

Yeah, I suspect that people who agree with Lidia are all going, “Yeah, not my King. Great! Well done…”

And, as Lidia Thorpe said in an interview, “I don’t need votes…”

Which raises an interesting question about what she hoped to achieve because, well, I’ve given up the idea of a revolution so if you don’t hope to get votes how are you hoping to enact change?

Being old enough to remember the Republican debate I remember the argument Phil Cleary (and others) put forward, which I can simplify as if we reject this, then we can regroup and get the model we want… Mm, awesome Phil… who are you these days and why don’t the monarchists give you a forum any more?

Mm, not my king, except that he IS our king. I mean, I can say that accept the fact that as the Constitution stands he is the King of Australia and he can sack our governor-general and install himself… except for the precedent that British monarchs don’t do anything…

Ok, that’s a little unfair because they spend a lot of time shaking hands and opening things and it’s more work than some people have done… particularly those who only have to turn up to some Murdoch media outlet and pretend that they have something original to say about all the things that the others in the same outlet agree on…

I must say that I’ve found it difficult to write about Lidia because I agree with a lot of what she says but did she need to say it there and then because… and yes, once we start arguing about the most appropriate way to say it and the appropriate forum and where and when we can say that outrageous things are just not acceptable without spoiling the cucumber sandwiches, the battle for diplomacy has been lost and we might as well start ducking because those serving the cucumber sandwiches will always win…

It’s just that I can’t help but think of my time as teacher when I hear Senator Thorpe say that she only promised allegiance to the “hairs” and not the heirs.

It sounds clever and you can amuse your friends but – in the end – the people with the power don’t care and you haven’t exactly rocked their castle!