Ok, I’m sure that somewhere on social media someone will point out the hypocrisy of the title… I frequently have people telling me that I’m wrong or an idiot based on the title of my piece and, while I may in fact be both wrong and an idiot, the point is I can tell that they haven’t read more than the title by the fact that everything in the article agrees with their world view and it’s only the title that’s misleading.
And yes, I know, if I didn’t want people to react to the title, why didn’t I choose a less ironic title? The simple reason is that more people read it when they expect to be outraged than when they expect to agree with every word. For example, my best ever blog was “SOME OF US OWE SCOTT MORRISON A BIG APOLOGY” had thousands of times more views than the one titled: “MORRISON IS A COCKSUCKER!” However that may have been because the word “cocksucker” was actually banned by various social media outlets… I don’t know why. Some of my best friends are cocksuckers and I’ve never held it against them…
Perhaps I should rephrase that!
Anyway, I just thought – as a Christmas present – I’d throw out a small sprig of hope for all those non-Murdoch hypnotised people who are hoping that one day we’ll actually elect a government who has an agenda for improving the world as opposed to just winning the next election. (Yes, Joel Fitzgibbon and friends, I’m including you in that!)
So while various media outlets are telling us that Scott Morrison has the next seven elections in the bag, I’d just like to remind you of the simple fact that 2020 has been full of surprises. Ok, I started the year with shingles and I remember thinking that things wouldn’t get much worse…
Yes, the future is unpredictable. No matter how many times the universe shows us this, we seem completely incapable of learning it. I have suggested that the problem is that ninety percent of things are predictable so we start to presume that everything is and what we don’t realise that not only is that ten percent going to happen from time to time but we don’t actually know which ten percent will be the unpredictable bit..
In terms of elections, I remember after Maggie Thatcher was dumped, John Major – in a shock result – won the next election.
However, I don’t want to go all the way back to last century but without doing major research into votes this century, I’d like to remind you that John Howard was heading for a big defeat when the Tampa sailed in. Kim Beasley decided not to rock the boat (symbolically and literally) and spent the next few months going along with anything Howard said. Then the terrorist attack on the World Trades Centre (or the USA attack it you want a good conspiracy theory) pretty much sealed the election for Howard. Yes, he was a masterful politician who then won another election before losing his seat in 2007.
Let’s just look at recent events and look at the predictable nature of politics:
- Abbott is elected Liberal leader because his party hated Turnbull and all the good candidates didn’t want to take on Rudd who was sure to win the next election.
- Kevin Rudd gets dumped by his own party.
- Abbott nearly wins.
- Obama is predicted to lose in 2012. He wins.
- Abbott wins the 2013 election. He is dumped before the next election.
- The British vote for Brexit much to the surprise of David Cameron who says that he didn’t expect that and he’s not going to stick around.
- Bill Shorten nearly wins the 2016 election prompting an election night dummy spit from Turnbull.
- Pauline Hanson shows everyone that both zombies and vampires are real by winning Senate seats at the 2016 election.
- Donald Trump gets elected POTUS.
- Jeremy Corbyn goes closer than anyone expected in the British election.
- In spite of everything he’s done, Clive Palmer thinks that nobody will remember and launches a series of ads and tells his party members that they’ll probably win the election. Some people actually believe him.
- Bill Shorten is so certain to be elected that one of the betting companies pays out on the result the day before the election.
- Trump becomes so irrational that even some Fox News commentators can’t support him.
Ok, this is not an extensive list. And yes, Scotty The Marketer may win the next ten elections. The world is unpredictable.
All we can do is go forward in hope that we’ll be equal to the forces that try to tell us that there’s no point in trying because the future is certain.
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