I say this in response:
a. I agree that dogged ideological Left wingers have always tended to complain this way, and it used to bother me a lot that it showed ill will and intellectual snobbery to those who do not share their views.
b. However, let's be honest about what has happened to the Right over the last few decades - a significant section has itself become more ideological and abandoned evidence on matters both economic and scientific. This has led to pretty much exactly the same condescension by many of the prominent commenters of the Right towards those who do not agree with them - you only have to read the bitchiness of Judith Sloan towards other economists; the "any company director who believes in climate change is an idiot" commentary of Maurice Newman and Andrew Bolt; and (at a lower level) the catastrophism of someone like Steve Kates, who sees a "the public just doesn't understand" global catastrophe to Western Civilisation around every corner; as well as the rest of those who comment in threads at Catallaxy with their extreme views about what a disaster it would be if Labor won, as well as their disdain of Labor or Green voters.
c. The short point: ideological driven political catastrophism (and "the other side are two dumb to understand" finger pointing) has pretty much spread just as much into what passes for mainstream Right wing commentary (if you can call The Australian that!) as it exists (and has always existed) on the Left wing.
d. For this reason, it's more than a tad hypocritical of Right wingers to be finger pointing at the Left and ignoring the same thing that happens on their side.
e. Besides, come on: you have to be a culture war, ideological twit to think populism is always right. No - it's a reaction to perceptions, and perceptions are more easily led astray by deliberate mischief and misinformation campaigns when you have less education.
Update: or, as Jason Wilson puts it:
Of course the anti-right snobbery is not specifically anti-Liberal or anti-National - consider the comments that have come to light, stuff like: "I hate Queensland!" "Let's declare war on Queensland!" "Let's exclude Queensland from Australia!" "Australia is the stupid country", blah blah blah. The blame is specifically extended to entire demographics, states, or even the entire country.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's utterly ignorant of the left to indulge in this, too: let's be honest, none of the Twitter commentariat would have any idea of the local issues that would have been active in many of the electorates - the crushing need for a local hospital, underemployed youth, etc. The general assumption the left makes seems to be that if someone doesn't vote for their big symbolic issue - climate change, say - then people are stupid. That is utterly idiotic.
there's also some ridiculous tweet by Yasmin whatever saying the vote means people on the street want to deport her or something. uh no you twit, they're probably voting on negative gearing or imputation credits
ReplyDeleteactually Soony your thoughts are as silly as hers.
ReplyDeleteWe do not know know now and we can't be sure we shall ever know properly.
The quantitative polling was stuffed. Thus we can't be sure about the qualitative polling.
Take the imputation credits. Apparently they were significant in electorates where there were buggerall self funded retirees. They essentially were living in safe Liberal electorates!
Tim, I resemble those remarks that Queenslanders are stupid!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but with the State that went along with the pretty obvious corruption of the Bjelke Peterson government for a ridiculously long time, voted huge numbers of One Nation State MPs in at one election with shambolic results, and yet still find Hanson and her nutjob candidates relatively attractive, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is not a "special" State in some respects.
(Current Labor State government notwithstanding.)
In any case, you've ignored my point that Catallaxy illustrates the vehemence with which the ideological Right hates Greens and a lot of the Left now - have you read the way some of them call those they perceive as culture war opponents the "bugmen class"?
If you're going to ignore that, then you should ignore the sweeping claims of those on the Left too.
You also forget - the Left is on the right side of science and is rightly dismayed that a great disinformation campaign has convinced people that it can still be ignored.
The point of the last comment - the dismay on the matter of climate issue leads to "lashing out", sometimes on a misplaced target. But, gee, it's hard sometimes to credit the smarts of people who find Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts credible enough to vote for.
ReplyDeleteI should just add that we simply will not know for sure what turned the election.
ReplyDeleteParties try to get a representative sample for focus groups and hope it works. If you cannot be sure of the sample you certainly cannot be sure of what is said in focus groups.
I am betting people's mobile phone numbers will be made available so the parties get the right information.
Yes, that is true, Homer. You could guess that Labor underperformance in Victoria and NSW (at least in urban seats) would likely be due to the tax scare and negative gearing changes; underperformance in rural seats (especially the ridiculous swings in Queensland - where they obviously don't care if their fat ass member conducts his electoral office from the Philippines for half of the year) would likely be due to Adani; and in all locations, Bill Shorten's personality was seen by most as a negative: but when you run a "big target" campaign, the relative importance of each issue in each particular location is obviously going to be hard to decipher with complete accuracy.
ReplyDelete