Capitalism may well be stuck in its end of days but it remains dangerously tractable and capable of fucking us up. In the third decade of this century most of us certainly feel like the world is an enormous mess. We've got despots in charge of some of the world’s largest ‘economies’ allegedly running things. We've got wars and violent conflicts on any number of scales....
Category: Politics
The strange attraction of ‘The End of Days’ mindset
Personally, I am attracted to the idea [yes it may just be a conspiracy theory] that the world is ruled by plutocrats who somehow believe they will – when the shit hits the fan – be able to retire to Planet B. Or at least an island they own, or a mountain top somewhere. And there they’ll retire to a bunker and await the rapture, or some such epiphany that miraculously fixes everything and lets them get back to business as usual.
A hopefully comic interlude interrogating one of Mr. Brandis’s opinion pieces
Photo by Nicholas Swatz on Pexels.com In a July 9 opinion piece in the Sydney morning Herald, we meet this shouty headline: Left’s identity crisis means Dutton can be a champion for equality. The piece is by the ex Liberal Senator George Brandis; he doesn't disappoint us with opinions we'd never expected from him. Let's … Continue reading A hopefully comic interlude interrogating one of Mr. Brandis’s opinion pieces
Les voix sont de la même
The omission in the 1901 formulation of the Australian Constitution of INDIGENOUS peoples, and the legacy of the otherness with which FIRST NATIONS people were treated, denied them a place. If they did not count, if they had no VOICE then – we need to fill the VOID. Give them a constitutional VOICE; it's an act of restitution.
Quotables 2
we are essentially a trusting and positive species; Rousseau’s noble savage somehow tricked by time, and civilisation, into something that is not really human – a distrust of our fellow creatures. Bregman would agree with Camus’s character in The Plague - one Dr. Rieux – ‘that there are more things to admire in men than to despise.’
Compulsory voting is a good thing
Do you vote in political elections? In Australia compulsory voting in federal state and local government elections is mandated. I think this is in general a good thing.
On reading ‘Strangers in their own land’ by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Trump spoke – falsely, I’ll say – to these people. That is why they voted for him. Why they would vote for him again in 2024, should he run.
Thoughts on reading ‘Strangers in their own land’ by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Neoliberalism and the self-harm faithful PART II - The Great Paradox What Arlie Russell Hochschild calls the "Great Paradox" might itself spring from our difficulty in determining exactly what POPULISM is [or of what political wing; right or left, it is]. Populism has been both of or at least partially of the ‘left’ – the … Continue reading Thoughts on reading ‘Strangers in their own land’ by Arlie Russell Hochschild
Commentary on ‘Strangers in Their Own Land’
Neoliberalism and the self-harm faithful An introduction I’ve been exercising what passes for my mind with THE GREAT DIVIDE that currently occupies much of the debate about the state of the [American] nation. Forgive my anything but slick allusion to that address given by the US president, but it’s almost incumbent on anyone with an … Continue reading Commentary on ‘Strangers in Their Own Land’
Regarding statistics, floods and the public nuisance that social media can be
The Guardian asks: "Are eastern Australia’s catastrophic floods really a one-in-1,000 year event? Describing a flood as a one-in-1,000-year event doesn’t mean we won’t see another one until the year 3000. Photograph: Bradley Richardson/Australian Defence Force/AFP/Getty Images Scientists say describing floods as ‘one-in-1,000-year’ events can mislead the public about the probability of such disasters recurring" On … Continue reading Regarding statistics, floods and the public nuisance that social media can be
Inkstained fingers 