Why A Punch In The Face May Be Good For Civil Discourse!
Now I’m not one who believes in violence as a solution to problems. Generally it only makes things worse, whether we’re talking on a personal or on a global scale.
When I once suggested that a better way of conducting wars would be to have each country bomb its own areas, people looked at me as though I was insane, but it’s not only cheaper, it would be good for the climate because we’d reduce all those greenhouse gases involved in sending planes to another country. Simply, Country X who’s at war with Country Y would send a message saying that Country Y should bomb such and such an area, which Country Y would do, but in retaliation it would send a message back to Country X saying that it had to bomb an area of its own. After Country Y has bombed its own munitions factory, Country X bombs its own museum. Or whatever. Similarly, troops could vote on which of their comrades were shot by their own army after the other country asks for a number of soldiers to be shot. The public could be involved in a Big Brother type vote where they vote on which innocent civilians would need to be at the proposed site when it was bombed.
Someone told me that it was a ridiculous and insane idea, to which I replied that it made a lot more sense than all the time and effort and logistics involved in moving your defence forces all the way to another country. I mean how much did it cost the USA to move all those troops and equipment to Iraq? How much cheaper would it be if countries just agreed to bomb themselves?
Anyway, I do accept that the idea won’t be universally accepted and I do accept that most of my brilliant ideas are misunderstood… I guess I’m like the early years of the Abbott government where they told us that it wasn’t their policies that were making them unpopular, it was the fact that they weren’t communicating them well enough for the stupid public to understand how good they were!
Like when I suggest that the trouble with social media is that nobody gets punched in the face.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I like violence.
To explain what I mean, let’s consider the football. If I’m at the MCG, I can scream at the opposition ruckman a variety of insults and, even if he hears them and gets offended, he’s not likely to work out where they’re coming from, much less jump the fence and grab me by the collar for insulting his parentage. On the other hand, if I see him later that night at the pub, I’m unlikely to go up and say the same thing to him. Even if I was silly enough to do so, I would get the sense that I’d made a big mistake when he towered over me and asked me to repeat myself.
On social media, however, there are few consequences for abuse, particularly if one isn’t using one’s real name…
I was rather amused by some calling themselves “Stable Genius” who complained that someone else was a coward because they’d turned off comments on their post… mainly because all the Stable Geniuses were writing misogynist insults. I considered pointing out that it was easy to be brave when using a pseudonym but I was worried that they’d write back that they weren’t – they were using their iPhone…
Anyway, in real life, most people – even stable geniuses – get concerned when they see that someone is getting angry. It doesn’t always mean that they back off, but generally, people work out that there’s no point in continuing to argue if you’re no longer listening to each other or if someone looks like they’re going to turn nasty. On social media there seem to be large numbers of people who actively try to upset people.
While this isn’t confined to RWNJs, I did have trouble with a post from someone who argued that Albanese and Labor were pursuing the Marxist agenda of taking money from the middle classes and giving it to the rich the way Marxists do… I mean, was the person really that lacking in understanding of Marxism or was he just trying to upset Labor voters… Without going into the whole history of political thought, I would just suggest that they’d be very few Marxists in the current Federal government, and there’d be even less Marxists who’d be voting for Labor at the moment.
Whatever, it does strike me as strange the many of the people who referred to Twitter (sorry X) as a sewer were often guilty of the sort of abuse that they were calling out. “It’s not safe for us on this platform because of the vitriol coming from those feral, layabout dole-bludging greenie socialist inbred scum who haven’t worked a day in their lives!”
Like I said, I don’t condone violence. However when I first heard the German word, “backpfeifengesicht” meaning a face that needs to be slapped, the face of several politicians and commentators came to mind.
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Return to home pageI can’t remember whether the actual text of the specific Commandment is “Violence begets Violence” or “He who throws the first punch should make it a good one”, but I have to agree, Rossleigh, violence is in general not good for social stability.
Abuse is obviously ok, as long as it’s not of the religious variety because there are Rools for that sort of thing.
Quiet, subversive, let’s-keep-the-Poor-in-their-place things like robodebt are quite ok. So is raising the parking rate for overnight stays at the local shopping centre. Ok I made that last bit up but I don’t do “socials” so no-one can get me and anyway, if enough of your gentle readers spread the goss it’ll be fact in no time. Madmonk playbook, P13, I believe.
Getting back to that Commandment stuff, if one intends to live by the sword, make sure that your first fell swoop is not like the Tsarist state adventure into their western neighbour, where what started as a spat over the location of the fence has descended into an “I’ll see your Capital in the dust, and raise your nuclear reactor” inter-neigbourhood barney. (Where is VCAT when a mediator is required ?) The first swing needs to be one that utilises all of the weaponry at your disposal and drives your foe, and their parents, grandparents, siblings, and all of the children just playing hide-and-seek amongst the bomb craters and UED’s in the park, into the Mediterranean. Not quite just another “backpfeifengesicht”, but close.
What is the word if one was to substitute face and slap with “testicle” and “steelcapped” ?
A more accurate translatation of ‘backpfeifengesicht’ is “a face in need of a fist”, not a slap. The faces of several polies, CEOs and radio announcers springs to mind!
I see your point that no country would want to do to its own people what they do to other countries in war, unless, of course, it’s a civil war. And I remember Tone the Botty making the puerile statement that he’d shirtfront Putin over MH17!
When I was a young fella I worked for a while on a thoroughbred horse stud; a large & well-known establishment at that time and a place much visited by folk in Mercs, Rollers, Bentleys, Jags, fat people dressed in expensive suits with large Cuban cigars poking out of their mouths and $100 bills stuffed in the hatband. All very impressive, sort of, for a kid from the sticks. I learned, eventually, that they were no different from us workers, just filthy richer.
At a certain point each year, we’d bring the foals into the stables and prepare them for the upcoming yearling sales. I spent a lot of time in the stables; cleaning up the horse poop, changing the straw, feeding the nags, halter-training and teaching to lead and so on. I was good at what I did… I liked animals much more than I did humans.
I guess I was a stable genius at that time…
And speaking of “backpfeifengesicht”, one of my colleagues on that stud was a dumber than dogshit idiot with huge anger issues; a hulking brute whose presence telegraphed menace and threat. He belted a colt across the face with a shovel one morning after the colt nipped him, as they sometimes did. A day or so later, I witnessed one of the stallions attack this guy, clearly intent on killing him. I rescued him from this attack, and he was hospitalised for a while, but he never thanked me for saving his life. Strange, the ways of people.
Coincidental image, the former PM, now Fox board member, ARC etc. and regular visitor and allegedly ‘researcher’ at the Budapest Danube Institute (his advisor too) partnered with the Heritage Foundation*, supported by government of PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban claims to support Ukraine?
He has said as much when asking a question of House Speaker Mike Johnson at a WSJ event late ’23 and in an ‘interview’ with ‘journalist’ and former ‘advisor’ Peta Credlin on Sky News early ’24 in ‘Tony Abbott ‘embarrassed’ Australia isn’t doing more to help Ukraine’
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/peta-credlin/tony-abbott-embarrassed-australia-isnt-doing-more-to-help-ukraine/video/1260759d2474325e2af237555875521c
In the US, in addition to the sacked Carlson, many Fox people oppose Ukraine, funding (why?) and mirror the Atlas Koch linked Heritage Foundation*, according to former GOP and never Trumper Bill, journalist Bill Kristol on X:
‘@BillKristol 10 Dec 2023
Heritage Foundation and Viktor Orbán are not simply against aid for Ukraine. They are against Ukraine. They hate Ukraine, because a) they’re pro-Putin, and b) they hate liberal democracy, especially one fighting to defend itself against a brutal dictator.’
On Fox, Media Matters’ Matt Gertz:
‘Fox pushed the indicted FBI informant’s story because it supported the right’s Ukraine disinformation campaign’ PUBLISHED 02/21/24 2:47 PM EST
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-pushed-indicted-fbi-informants-story-because-it-supported-rights-ukraine
In fact one knows a very Oz conservative type, of Hungarian heritage, who would be tempted to support the headline when it comes to RWNJs in the orbit of Fox, Koch and GOP indirect support for Putin’s Russia.
They get away with it via glib talking points and one liners to low info people and peers; as do many on the faux anti-imperialist left who also take an empathy bypass…..
Good job, Rossleigh, only the heading is incorrect.
The Rabbott is one of the lucky WASCs who are pure and cannot lie because they are protected by their long term work of god so whatever they say has god as the end so is not a lie.
Muslims all have the same protection but only if they lie to non-muslims.
The rest of us, as seen on sky and FB, can lie when, where and why we wish.
Denis Bright on West Ipswich 18 March 2024 (approx date)
I meant to make this comment before this.
The article by Denis obviously was well researched and more importantly factual. It is a very erudite presentation which no matter which side of the coin you are on provides material for proper discussion. This is refreshing because the discussion it promotes does away with the worst element of wokeism as it is understood today; the worst element of woke being degeneration into the labelling ( identity politics)or cancel culture and so on.
I look forward to seeing more articles from Mr. Bright.
The mad monk strikes again!
““relatively mild pandemic””? The thing that is Moany Crackpot is a raving nutcase. He doesn’t need a punch in the face he needs to be clobbered with a very large wrecking ball.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/11/tony-abbott-scott-morrison-covid-19-pandemic-response-overreaction-vaccination
Watched the Club Grubbery podcast featuring Tony Abbott.
Funny how the status of being an ex-PM seems to clear a lot of political debris out of the thought process.
He walked a tightrope though, careful not to drop the LNP too deep in the sh*t, an impossible task really.
Probably too late for a run a diplomatic post, although who knows, Rudd’s days may be numbered.
Wonder who he votes for these days, Greens?
Not that I care, all the majors are junk.