And yes, of course it was stupid and pointless and damaging, and some arrests based on video identification would be well deserved.
But long time commenter CL, who has a paranoid streak a mile wide about how leftists are out to get Catholics, and gays are out to get the children, now thinks queer university students are out to kill conservative's wives, apparently:
I wouldn't advise taking CL at all seriously. He's a performance artist these days, albeit with the range of Nora the Piano Cat.
ReplyDeleteHeh. I think you are probably right, but the thing about acting (or pretending) all the time is that you eventually can start to believe it.
ReplyDeleteThe place has, to a large degree, become a haven for not just aging right wing eccentrics, but (for the most part) remarkably unpleasant aging right wing eccentrics who I would edge away from if I heard them talking at a bar. The only "up" side over the last 6 months or so has been the disappearance of that obnoxious ex navy twit MarkII, or whatever his name was. Tom has largely taken over his role, just without the guns and military talk. (I have a theory that he got sacked from a Fairfax job once, hence his interminable hatred of them.)
The fundamental problem with the Right, both libertarian and conservative wings, is that its policies are designed to benefit the most arseholiest arseholes in society. It's not surprising that it attracts arseholes, or that over time its supporters sound more and more like arseholes.
ReplyDeleteThe Cat has grown more conservative in the past year or two with a lot of Bolt rejects, they gang up on poor old Dot something chronic.
Well, you're sounding very university student Young Labor, there.
ReplyDeleteI prefer more nuance - along the lines of my oft repeated theme that the Right in the US has gone completely nuts and that has infected the Right here. As I have said before, I don't know that anyone has really explained this completely - in the US it seems a combination of rich libertarian money and power broking, Fox News, the internet, and the inherent malleability of the study of economics that permits the ideologically motivated to convince others that they have proved something when they haven't.
I feel that the Right will pull back from the edge, eventually: a loss on the small government ideologues almost defining belief that the planet is not seriously warming must count for something, surely?
But it is taking a long time.
In The Guardian today an interesting article by Lenore Taylor. Her argument is that the coalition is trapped in a 1980's mindset and that is their greatest weakness. I would go further than that. Recently I read "Rethinking Money"Bernard Lietaer and Jacqui Dunne, which calls for a fundamental re-evaluation of the concept of money. In Europe there is increasing pressure to change the economic landscape while here in Aus both parties are trapped in the frozen representation of economics that has been dominant since the 80's. Ironically libertarian economists have long articulated differing ways of mediums of exchange but at the Cat they have virtually abandoned any libertarian ideas and are also stuck in the 80's mindset. Which is a shame, the Cat used to be a lively forum where different ideas could be explored. Now it is just a forum for bashing people.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/18/a-shift-in-political-thinking-is-giving-labor-a-sense-of-purpose