I've been spending some time lately wondering what I would do today if I was 20-25, or what advice I'd give to my kids if they were around that age. It hasn't been a positive experience, what with hostile climate change accelerating, neo-nazis increasingly poli-washing themselves into the mainstream, all the money accumulating at the top while the rest of us go broke, and so on.
In the end my conclusion was: train in a useful manual trade that would be difficult for robots to replace, learn some survival skills, cosy-up to a commune of some kind, and indulge your deepest desires on weekends when you have some spare cash, because the whole societal shebang could collapse at any moment.
The bit that really stings about our current predicament is that we're being brought down by ignorance promoted by liars. Apparently a lot of us can't do even the most basic critical thinking. For example, does our lives being tough right now have anything to do with migrants? Shouldn't take long to see that no, it doesn't, these things are almost completely divorced. Unemployment is low, they aren't tekin yer jerb, we actually need them to FILL ALL THE JERBS!
The actual reasons life is increasingly tough are complex, 30+ years of policy failure in a range of portfolios from housing to environmental and financial regulation by the political duopoly. But, no, it's convenient to blame the other so that's what's happening. It all just makes me very sad.
I think it's a truism that conservatives (including the FR) are about the past and progressives are about the future (it's in the name!), but the populist / fascist FR is about gathering around an *idea* of the past, not the past itself. And, per Umberto Eco, that idea of the past can't be interrogated too closely or it falls apart and stops being useful as a rallying cry. Actual history is suspect *because* it is intellectual and complex. And we can say the same about nostalgia itself—it doesn't refer to the past but to the feelings we remember having when we felt safe and familiar. That's why we see little kids as young as 4 or 10 sighing and saying 'when I was young'... nostalgia is a feeling, and it's available to anyone. I like your construction of 'aggrieved nostalgia', because it connects one rallying cry of a wistful feeling of 'times lost' (pure fantasy but what does that matter) with another rallying cry of 'it's not my fault it's that lot over there wot done it let's get em'.
If it's any consolation, most of your memories are false anyway. I wonder if the familiar patterns of generational voting have changed. I grew up in Inala [yes, we looked down on Ipswich] from the early 60's to the 80s. Dad was a boilermaker in a factory; Labor was the standard vote. His information on politics came from the ABC and the Courier Mail, before it went really feral. Nowadays every fool with an opinion can broadcast it and have it amplified; their is no test of truth on social media. The Red Headed Horror may be wilfully ignorant, but her string pullers are great are putting the ... ahem ... right words in her mouth, things that do cause resonance across all age groups. On examination, most of what she says is dog whistling gibberish and her "policies" right wing fantasies. I expect [hope] when we get close to an election and voters actually examine what she's offering and she is held in the spotlight the Onanists' vote will diminish.
PS Of course I grew up. leftie: Gough made my Uni study free!
Speaking as a full blown Gen X here, I can confidently say, hand on heart, that I absolutely DO have a memory and that's why I too would rather EAT My BALLOT PAPER than sully it by voting ONP...or LNP for that matter. It NEVER ceases to amaze me that people keep saying, "Yeah! Gimme more of that shit!" in the face of clear and horrible history. Is it because they, in fact DO NOT have memories? Or have they, like many Boomers now, suffered some kind of awful cognitive decline which means they no longer remember WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED the last time they voted the RWNJs into power? We're even seeing it right now with the current infestation in 1 William St...but do you think that will stop the punters voting for them again next time? Even if they personally have serious grievances with them? Honestly! It DOES MY HEAD IN!
I am also a full blown gen-x. I think the reason why some of our cohort are pining for the days of their youth is because they spent much of it pissed or stoned and genuinely can’t recall how bad it was.
Trauma also has a lot to answer for. I think the desire for a Trumpian figure. We grew up with authoritarian fathers who had the shit beaten out of them, who thought it was their god-given duty to beat the living shit out of us. This has lead to a generation where many, consciously or subconsciously, respect a “hard man”, and because of their trauma bonds are susceptible to grievance.
I'm sure much of what you've said is true. But it still doesn't explain why, in the face of actual hard evidence and history, they keep voting for the clown show. It was a smart man who once said who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
The difference really boils down to how simple is your worldview.
Is life is easily categorised into men/women, black/white, deserving/undeserving or are you able to comprehend the enormous range and variety of human beings and their experiences.
Being confronted with the sheer scale of complexity of the universe causes some to utterly reject it and desire a simpler time when they were more ignorant and happier because they cannot accept that there is more to the world than their simple understanding of it.
Much in the same vein that so many lost their grip when Covid came around and showed them that the universe is completely indifferent to the actual existence of the human race let alone their very small place in it.
Facing the fact that you exist in a finite window of the universe, in a very small near imperceptible part of it, while also being an important factor in the lives of all those around you and that can make a huge difference in their lives and anyone you meet is an inherent contradiction of the human condition they’d rather not think about, so they deny it completely.
They are the centre of everything, anything different is alien and any added complexity is some woke bullshit they didn’t have back in their day.
(Which of course ignores the true history of the human race they were never aware of and still don’t want to be)
Our continued existence is dependent on such a complex interplay of conditions (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation anyone?) that we take for granted everyday and these bozos don’t want to face anything more complex than saying he/she.
If it wasn’t so dangerous it’d just be sad and pathetic.
Into the mix, I have observed other multipliers that work within the confines of what you are saying: In general, you get a little more conservative, the more you have invested in securing yourself financially. In general, that takes time. You are older. The world contracts as a matter of practical personal protection and the energy goes out of social engagement and betterment and goes into "how the hell do I get the kids through uni and protect my real estate value" and that doesn't lead to open-hearted thinking and grand, forward looking gestures of progressive politics. Leave socialism and self-sacrifice to the young, Chantelle needs new ballet shoes.
What always surprises me though, is that we still have the problem in the first place. That 'conservative' politics retains a position in the modern fabric of society at all. It's kind of like stoically sticking to an earth-centric view of the cosmos. It doesn't survive inspection. Deeply conservative politics is always on the wrong side of history. It doesn't even work at a thermodynamic level. You simply cannot keep things the same, let alone make them go backwards.
What always startles me about the Reich-wing parties (yes I will continue to make that 'joke' because at least in 2026 there remains some semblance of Jungian collective unconscious in the world that the Third Reich, Hitler & Nazis are not something to be associated with) is for all of their calls to look back to a 'golden historical age' they are crap at knowing any actual history of this golden age or any other age.
If you get specific they forget all the other details of such a period like rates of income tax on the rich, or the origins of the racial laws (hint the Nazi's pinched most of them off the 'land of the Free') or what effect tariffs had on the economy, that even then the vast majority were still being exploited by rich arsehats just the could pretend that they were inherently better than women, minorities, queer people, the disabled or anyone else they could conveniently point at yell 'other'.
Oh so true! What they're great at is cherry-picking and re-writing history to suit their grievance and ideology. The truly fucked up thing is this is blindingly obvious to you and I, but 30% of the poulace seems oblivious to it.
As with conspiracists, I want to scream "your anger is justified, but you're angry at the wrong people for causing it!"
They are justifiably angry at how they have been treated at how the rich and powerful exploit them, so who do they choose to follow? Grifters like Hanson, and Frarage who are supported by the rich and powerful.
Exactly! It's so damn frustrating. They're giving their support to the Billionaires' puppets, direct proxies of the people who've exploited us all for decades. Unfortunately, the professional political class has also let them down (by taking donations from the very same people and lobbies). The only remaining hope is community-minded independents, but the Duopoly's corrupt electoral funding reforms before the last election made their job much tougher.
I should caveat this by saying this particular thought bubble is maybe a quarter formed, since it’s in response to your half formed thoughts, so it’s not even gotten out of bed yet, never mind found its slippers.
I think your theory of parties of the left trafficking in imagination, and parties of the right trafficking in memory is accurate, but only up to a point. It would make sense if our politics was still operating conventionally; the default two party system of the centre right Coalition trafficking in memory and the centre left Labor party trafficking in imagination. Fraser and Howard, and Whitlam, Hawke and Keating are all exemplars of this.
Where I think the theory gets mugged by reality is in the rise of Trump and then later Hanson, and the accompanying politics of rage and resentment. Trump and Hanson use nostalgia to stoke rage and resentment; the core of their message isn’t returning the US or Australia to some imagined golden age that never existed. It’s why they have no clear policy positions on how they’re going to return the country to that golden age. They just use that to highlight how fucked up everything is now and give permission for their audience to be pissed off and vengeful about it.
It plays out in the demographics – Boomers and elder Gen X who grew up in, and had children in, a time when the social contract still functioned and they believed the maxim that if you worked hard you’d succeed and have a good life, and most importantly secure your kids a head start on a good life, have now reached the end of the road and discovered that not all of them reached the success they were supposed to have, and worse, their kids are not only not going to be better off than them, that promised head start was actually a massive handicap in the form of unaffordable housing, high student debt, precarious working conditions and successive global crises exacerbating it all.
Which means their kids are also pissed off and vengeful, because they’re aware that while their parents got free uni, and cheap housing, and job security straight out of uni, not only have they got none of that, it’s getting worse. It explains that while, yes, the majority of Hanson’s base are Boomers/elder Gen X, there’s a not insignificant smattering of young people among her base too.
The young aren’t jonesing for a golden age they don’t recall; they are in nihilistic despair about the fucked up future they are being handed by the people who are nostalgic about the supposed golden age. It’s why the overriding sentiment in every focus group that’s tracking the mood of the electorate says that ON supporters just want to burn the system to the ground, because the status quo is not delivering. If you’re never going to be able to work hard enough to afford a house, or have more than one kid (if you even have kids), or see any more of the world than you increasingly xenophobic backyard, then making sure those elite fuckers who are not only benefitting from the shattered social contract, but are the architects of it, don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their particular labours is a far more attractive proposition than hoping the social contract might be restored if we just tax the gas companies properly.
Parties who traffic in hope of a better tomorrow are finding it difficult to compete with the parties that are trafficking in nihilistic revenge fantasies, and for good reason. The people who voted for Donald Trump TWICE, and those who might vote for Hanson, aren’t doing it because they actually think anything will change for the better. They do it knowing Trump and Hanson will probably be a governance disaster. While it’s a disaster that will impact them, it’s a disaster that will also impact everyone they blame for the predicament they’re in. Immediate satisfying revenge, even if it means things become exponentially worse, is a far more attractive proposition than being told that everything is fixable but it’ll just take another 20 years. Because when you’ve already accepted that things are likely to become exponentially worse ANYWAY, it’s not a huge sacrifice to ensure it does if it means you get to watch smug bastards suffer. Of course this overlooks the fact that the people who are bankrolling the nihilistic revenge fantasies are also the people who shattered the social contract and will be making out like bandits regardless of who ends up in government while everyone else suffers.
On the flipside Zohran Mamdani in New York is demonstrating that the key to overcoming the far right nihilistic despair is… governing for the people? Like, genuinely governing for the people, in the people’s interests, to the point where New Yorkers are raising infrastructure issues with the Mayor’s office and they’re getting fixed so quickly they’re turning into memes. To the point where New Yorkers are wondering WTF previous politicians were doing the whole time, if this is what a genuine public servant can deliver? Imagining that kind of political service delivery across Australia gives me hope to keep fighting for the future rather than giving into nihilistic despair.
You say youth is a defence, but is it? What about all the young blokes moving right? A lot more young blokes support right wing parties than they should. It's women who are moving left.
The fascist man-o-sphere types do a very effective job of convincing 12-20yo boys alienated by "woke" that they are public enemy #1. Alienate them, detach them from their community, then give them something new to attach to, classic cult playbook. And unfortunately we don't teach critical thinking well enough in schools to point out the grift.
My apologies the following is a rambling rant. Not sure it make sense. But anyway here goes.
Born and raised on the Lower North Shore of Sydney from 1954. It was an upper working class,Irish Catholic Family with Anglo-Celtic-Indigenous heritage. Father was a panel beater who worked as an employee in panel beater shops owned by others. Mum when she worked between kids worked as a seamstress in a tie factory a couple of streets away. All the Victorian terraces opposite were run as boarding houses for the working poor and retirees.
Dad was a member of the ALP, mum wasn’t but she networked within the Labor party if that makes sense. Dad was a drunken arsehole. He made mum’s and us kids life hell (there were 5 of us - hey it was the 50s and 60s).
I mention all of this for context
During my late teens and early twenties I was committed to the ALP. Became a member in my late teens and stayed a member until my early thirties. Unlike Albo I became increasingly disenchanted with the ALP in the Hawke/Keating years when they fell under the spell of Neoliberalism (or if you prefer either Economic Rationalism or Chicago School of Economics). Oh, let’s not forget the corruption of the NSW state government during the 80s.
These days the Greens get my first preference because they most remind me of Whitlam era ALP. Yeah, I know most of them are upper middle class wankers but at least their hearts are in the right place.
I have no love of One Nation. Pauline Hanson was a small business owner, a member of the petite bourgeoisie who has no love for the working class. But I understand why many working class folk are attracted to ON. Since the late 1980s both major political blocks (including the ALP) have been in the thrall of neoliberalism. Yes the ALP has tempered their policies to a greater than the LNP but they still abandoned the dispossessed and the working poor to the hell of managerialism.
So a pox on both their houses. Unfortunately One Nation is not the answer. And I’m not sure what is the answer.
Finally by all means attack Pauline Hanson and One nation. But not those who vote for them. For they have been abounded and One Nation is the only party that appears to speak for them ( though in reality they don’t)
The problem with Hanson's nostalgia for the past is that Australia was NEVER monocultural - never.
Even the Aboriginals were multicultural, having spent tens of thousands of years absorbing the cultures they intermarried with between Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, including India and Indonesia, before they first parked their boats on the Kimberley coast more than 65,000 years ago.
DNA studies prove they are multicultural.
The wonderful Ernie Dingo was found to have a big chunk of Indian DNA.
Dingoes themshelves came from Thailand at least 5000 years ago.
Indians have been sailing to Australia for at least 5000 years, say DNA stuies.
Everyone on planet Earth except Africans has about 2% Neanderthal DNA,
Hanson probably more.
The First Fleet included at least 13 blacks, including 6 born in Africa. One of them, known as John Caesar, who lived on four continents, became our first bushranger.
Hanson is trying to recreate an imagined past.
And really, I don't want to go back to my mother's meat and three veggies every night. Who would?
So the real choices are these:
1. Seek to create our idea of an imagined past.
2. Be content with the daily present.
3. Imagine an even better Australia than the one we live in, which is one of the best true democracies, says the Democracy Index.
I remember the day I first went to school at Bass Hill primary 1957 and was asked if I was a pommy, a reffo, a dago or a wog. There was apparently a hierarchy. Nothing much has changed as far as PH is concerned...all are unwelcome.
I am just tired of dealing with stupid people. Dull eyed morons too f***witted to recognise that they're being taken advantage of, manipulated and lied to by a nasally inflected, populist rust haired harridan. Prat simpletons acting against their own best interest.
It used to be said that tolerance was a virtue but to my mind, its not one to be wasted on cahnts too stupid to recognise how stupid they are.
I've been spending some time lately wondering what I would do today if I was 20-25, or what advice I'd give to my kids if they were around that age. It hasn't been a positive experience, what with hostile climate change accelerating, neo-nazis increasingly poli-washing themselves into the mainstream, all the money accumulating at the top while the rest of us go broke, and so on.
In the end my conclusion was: train in a useful manual trade that would be difficult for robots to replace, learn some survival skills, cosy-up to a commune of some kind, and indulge your deepest desires on weekends when you have some spare cash, because the whole societal shebang could collapse at any moment.
The bit that really stings about our current predicament is that we're being brought down by ignorance promoted by liars. Apparently a lot of us can't do even the most basic critical thinking. For example, does our lives being tough right now have anything to do with migrants? Shouldn't take long to see that no, it doesn't, these things are almost completely divorced. Unemployment is low, they aren't tekin yer jerb, we actually need them to FILL ALL THE JERBS!
The actual reasons life is increasingly tough are complex, 30+ years of policy failure in a range of portfolios from housing to environmental and financial regulation by the political duopoly. But, no, it's convenient to blame the other so that's what's happening. It all just makes me very sad.
I think it's a truism that conservatives (including the FR) are about the past and progressives are about the future (it's in the name!), but the populist / fascist FR is about gathering around an *idea* of the past, not the past itself. And, per Umberto Eco, that idea of the past can't be interrogated too closely or it falls apart and stops being useful as a rallying cry. Actual history is suspect *because* it is intellectual and complex. And we can say the same about nostalgia itself—it doesn't refer to the past but to the feelings we remember having when we felt safe and familiar. That's why we see little kids as young as 4 or 10 sighing and saying 'when I was young'... nostalgia is a feeling, and it's available to anyone. I like your construction of 'aggrieved nostalgia', because it connects one rallying cry of a wistful feeling of 'times lost' (pure fantasy but what does that matter) with another rallying cry of 'it's not my fault it's that lot over there wot done it let's get em'.
Damn it. I meant to write this.
your have articulated the point about Umberto Eco's ur-fascism better than I.
If it's any consolation, most of your memories are false anyway. I wonder if the familiar patterns of generational voting have changed. I grew up in Inala [yes, we looked down on Ipswich] from the early 60's to the 80s. Dad was a boilermaker in a factory; Labor was the standard vote. His information on politics came from the ABC and the Courier Mail, before it went really feral. Nowadays every fool with an opinion can broadcast it and have it amplified; their is no test of truth on social media. The Red Headed Horror may be wilfully ignorant, but her string pullers are great are putting the ... ahem ... right words in her mouth, things that do cause resonance across all age groups. On examination, most of what she says is dog whistling gibberish and her "policies" right wing fantasies. I expect [hope] when we get close to an election and voters actually examine what she's offering and she is held in the spotlight the Onanists' vote will diminish.
PS Of course I grew up. leftie: Gough made my Uni study free!
Inala eh. *cracks knuckles*
Speaking as a full blown Gen X here, I can confidently say, hand on heart, that I absolutely DO have a memory and that's why I too would rather EAT My BALLOT PAPER than sully it by voting ONP...or LNP for that matter. It NEVER ceases to amaze me that people keep saying, "Yeah! Gimme more of that shit!" in the face of clear and horrible history. Is it because they, in fact DO NOT have memories? Or have they, like many Boomers now, suffered some kind of awful cognitive decline which means they no longer remember WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED the last time they voted the RWNJs into power? We're even seeing it right now with the current infestation in 1 William St...but do you think that will stop the punters voting for them again next time? Even if they personally have serious grievances with them? Honestly! It DOES MY HEAD IN!
I am also a full blown gen-x. I think the reason why some of our cohort are pining for the days of their youth is because they spent much of it pissed or stoned and genuinely can’t recall how bad it was.
Trauma also has a lot to answer for. I think the desire for a Trumpian figure. We grew up with authoritarian fathers who had the shit beaten out of them, who thought it was their god-given duty to beat the living shit out of us. This has lead to a generation where many, consciously or subconsciously, respect a “hard man”, and because of their trauma bonds are susceptible to grievance.
I'm sure much of what you've said is true. But it still doesn't explain why, in the face of actual hard evidence and history, they keep voting for the clown show. It was a smart man who once said who said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
The difference really boils down to how simple is your worldview.
Is life is easily categorised into men/women, black/white, deserving/undeserving or are you able to comprehend the enormous range and variety of human beings and their experiences.
Being confronted with the sheer scale of complexity of the universe causes some to utterly reject it and desire a simpler time when they were more ignorant and happier because they cannot accept that there is more to the world than their simple understanding of it.
Much in the same vein that so many lost their grip when Covid came around and showed them that the universe is completely indifferent to the actual existence of the human race let alone their very small place in it.
Facing the fact that you exist in a finite window of the universe, in a very small near imperceptible part of it, while also being an important factor in the lives of all those around you and that can make a huge difference in their lives and anyone you meet is an inherent contradiction of the human condition they’d rather not think about, so they deny it completely.
They are the centre of everything, anything different is alien and any added complexity is some woke bullshit they didn’t have back in their day.
(Which of course ignores the true history of the human race they were never aware of and still don’t want to be)
Our continued existence is dependent on such a complex interplay of conditions (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation anyone?) that we take for granted everyday and these bozos don’t want to face anything more complex than saying he/she.
If it wasn’t so dangerous it’d just be sad and pathetic.
Into the mix, I have observed other multipliers that work within the confines of what you are saying: In general, you get a little more conservative, the more you have invested in securing yourself financially. In general, that takes time. You are older. The world contracts as a matter of practical personal protection and the energy goes out of social engagement and betterment and goes into "how the hell do I get the kids through uni and protect my real estate value" and that doesn't lead to open-hearted thinking and grand, forward looking gestures of progressive politics. Leave socialism and self-sacrifice to the young, Chantelle needs new ballet shoes.
What always surprises me though, is that we still have the problem in the first place. That 'conservative' politics retains a position in the modern fabric of society at all. It's kind of like stoically sticking to an earth-centric view of the cosmos. It doesn't survive inspection. Deeply conservative politics is always on the wrong side of history. It doesn't even work at a thermodynamic level. You simply cannot keep things the same, let alone make them go backwards.
Looking forward to your Quarterly Essay.
What always startles me about the Reich-wing parties (yes I will continue to make that 'joke' because at least in 2026 there remains some semblance of Jungian collective unconscious in the world that the Third Reich, Hitler & Nazis are not something to be associated with) is for all of their calls to look back to a 'golden historical age' they are crap at knowing any actual history of this golden age or any other age.
If you get specific they forget all the other details of such a period like rates of income tax on the rich, or the origins of the racial laws (hint the Nazi's pinched most of them off the 'land of the Free') or what effect tariffs had on the economy, that even then the vast majority were still being exploited by rich arsehats just the could pretend that they were inherently better than women, minorities, queer people, the disabled or anyone else they could conveniently point at yell 'other'.
Oh so true! What they're great at is cherry-picking and re-writing history to suit their grievance and ideology. The truly fucked up thing is this is blindingly obvious to you and I, but 30% of the poulace seems oblivious to it.
As with conspiracists, I want to scream "your anger is justified, but you're angry at the wrong people for causing it!"
They are justifiably angry at how they have been treated at how the rich and powerful exploit them, so who do they choose to follow? Grifters like Hanson, and Frarage who are supported by the rich and powerful.
Exactly! It's so damn frustrating. They're giving their support to the Billionaires' puppets, direct proxies of the people who've exploited us all for decades. Unfortunately, the professional political class has also let them down (by taking donations from the very same people and lobbies). The only remaining hope is community-minded independents, but the Duopoly's corrupt electoral funding reforms before the last election made their job much tougher.
I should caveat this by saying this particular thought bubble is maybe a quarter formed, since it’s in response to your half formed thoughts, so it’s not even gotten out of bed yet, never mind found its slippers.
I think your theory of parties of the left trafficking in imagination, and parties of the right trafficking in memory is accurate, but only up to a point. It would make sense if our politics was still operating conventionally; the default two party system of the centre right Coalition trafficking in memory and the centre left Labor party trafficking in imagination. Fraser and Howard, and Whitlam, Hawke and Keating are all exemplars of this.
Where I think the theory gets mugged by reality is in the rise of Trump and then later Hanson, and the accompanying politics of rage and resentment. Trump and Hanson use nostalgia to stoke rage and resentment; the core of their message isn’t returning the US or Australia to some imagined golden age that never existed. It’s why they have no clear policy positions on how they’re going to return the country to that golden age. They just use that to highlight how fucked up everything is now and give permission for their audience to be pissed off and vengeful about it.
It plays out in the demographics – Boomers and elder Gen X who grew up in, and had children in, a time when the social contract still functioned and they believed the maxim that if you worked hard you’d succeed and have a good life, and most importantly secure your kids a head start on a good life, have now reached the end of the road and discovered that not all of them reached the success they were supposed to have, and worse, their kids are not only not going to be better off than them, that promised head start was actually a massive handicap in the form of unaffordable housing, high student debt, precarious working conditions and successive global crises exacerbating it all.
Which means their kids are also pissed off and vengeful, because they’re aware that while their parents got free uni, and cheap housing, and job security straight out of uni, not only have they got none of that, it’s getting worse. It explains that while, yes, the majority of Hanson’s base are Boomers/elder Gen X, there’s a not insignificant smattering of young people among her base too.
The young aren’t jonesing for a golden age they don’t recall; they are in nihilistic despair about the fucked up future they are being handed by the people who are nostalgic about the supposed golden age. It’s why the overriding sentiment in every focus group that’s tracking the mood of the electorate says that ON supporters just want to burn the system to the ground, because the status quo is not delivering. If you’re never going to be able to work hard enough to afford a house, or have more than one kid (if you even have kids), or see any more of the world than you increasingly xenophobic backyard, then making sure those elite fuckers who are not only benefitting from the shattered social contract, but are the architects of it, don’t get to enjoy the fruits of their particular labours is a far more attractive proposition than hoping the social contract might be restored if we just tax the gas companies properly.
Parties who traffic in hope of a better tomorrow are finding it difficult to compete with the parties that are trafficking in nihilistic revenge fantasies, and for good reason. The people who voted for Donald Trump TWICE, and those who might vote for Hanson, aren’t doing it because they actually think anything will change for the better. They do it knowing Trump and Hanson will probably be a governance disaster. While it’s a disaster that will impact them, it’s a disaster that will also impact everyone they blame for the predicament they’re in. Immediate satisfying revenge, even if it means things become exponentially worse, is a far more attractive proposition than being told that everything is fixable but it’ll just take another 20 years. Because when you’ve already accepted that things are likely to become exponentially worse ANYWAY, it’s not a huge sacrifice to ensure it does if it means you get to watch smug bastards suffer. Of course this overlooks the fact that the people who are bankrolling the nihilistic revenge fantasies are also the people who shattered the social contract and will be making out like bandits regardless of who ends up in government while everyone else suffers.
On the flipside Zohran Mamdani in New York is demonstrating that the key to overcoming the far right nihilistic despair is… governing for the people? Like, genuinely governing for the people, in the people’s interests, to the point where New Yorkers are raising infrastructure issues with the Mayor’s office and they’re getting fixed so quickly they’re turning into memes. To the point where New Yorkers are wondering WTF previous politicians were doing the whole time, if this is what a genuine public servant can deliver? Imagining that kind of political service delivery across Australia gives me hope to keep fighting for the future rather than giving into nihilistic despair.
You say youth is a defence, but is it? What about all the young blokes moving right? A lot more young blokes support right wing parties than they should. It's women who are moving left.
More on that in the quarterly, amirite?
The fascist man-o-sphere types do a very effective job of convincing 12-20yo boys alienated by "woke" that they are public enemy #1. Alienate them, detach them from their community, then give them something new to attach to, classic cult playbook. And unfortunately we don't teach critical thinking well enough in schools to point out the grift.
My apologies the following is a rambling rant. Not sure it make sense. But anyway here goes.
Born and raised on the Lower North Shore of Sydney from 1954. It was an upper working class,Irish Catholic Family with Anglo-Celtic-Indigenous heritage. Father was a panel beater who worked as an employee in panel beater shops owned by others. Mum when she worked between kids worked as a seamstress in a tie factory a couple of streets away. All the Victorian terraces opposite were run as boarding houses for the working poor and retirees.
Dad was a member of the ALP, mum wasn’t but she networked within the Labor party if that makes sense. Dad was a drunken arsehole. He made mum’s and us kids life hell (there were 5 of us - hey it was the 50s and 60s).
I mention all of this for context
During my late teens and early twenties I was committed to the ALP. Became a member in my late teens and stayed a member until my early thirties. Unlike Albo I became increasingly disenchanted with the ALP in the Hawke/Keating years when they fell under the spell of Neoliberalism (or if you prefer either Economic Rationalism or Chicago School of Economics). Oh, let’s not forget the corruption of the NSW state government during the 80s.
These days the Greens get my first preference because they most remind me of Whitlam era ALP. Yeah, I know most of them are upper middle class wankers but at least their hearts are in the right place.
I have no love of One Nation. Pauline Hanson was a small business owner, a member of the petite bourgeoisie who has no love for the working class. But I understand why many working class folk are attracted to ON. Since the late 1980s both major political blocks (including the ALP) have been in the thrall of neoliberalism. Yes the ALP has tempered their policies to a greater than the LNP but they still abandoned the dispossessed and the working poor to the hell of managerialism.
So a pox on both their houses. Unfortunately One Nation is not the answer. And I’m not sure what is the answer.
Finally by all means attack Pauline Hanson and One nation. But not those who vote for them. For they have been abounded and One Nation is the only party that appears to speak for them ( though in reality they don’t)
THE END
The problem with Hanson's nostalgia for the past is that Australia was NEVER monocultural - never.
Even the Aboriginals were multicultural, having spent tens of thousands of years absorbing the cultures they intermarried with between Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, including India and Indonesia, before they first parked their boats on the Kimberley coast more than 65,000 years ago.
DNA studies prove they are multicultural.
The wonderful Ernie Dingo was found to have a big chunk of Indian DNA.
Dingoes themshelves came from Thailand at least 5000 years ago.
Indians have been sailing to Australia for at least 5000 years, say DNA stuies.
Everyone on planet Earth except Africans has about 2% Neanderthal DNA,
Hanson probably more.
The First Fleet included at least 13 blacks, including 6 born in Africa. One of them, known as John Caesar, who lived on four continents, became our first bushranger.
Hanson is trying to recreate an imagined past.
And really, I don't want to go back to my mother's meat and three veggies every night. Who would?
So the real choices are these:
1. Seek to create our idea of an imagined past.
2. Be content with the daily present.
3. Imagine an even better Australia than the one we live in, which is one of the best true democracies, says the Democracy Index.
I choose option 3.
I remember the day I first went to school at Bass Hill primary 1957 and was asked if I was a pommy, a reffo, a dago or a wog. There was apparently a hierarchy. Nothing much has changed as far as PH is concerned...all are unwelcome.
I am just tired of dealing with stupid people. Dull eyed morons too f***witted to recognise that they're being taken advantage of, manipulated and lied to by a nasally inflected, populist rust haired harridan. Prat simpletons acting against their own best interest.
It used to be said that tolerance was a virtue but to my mind, its not one to be wasted on cahnts too stupid to recognise how stupid they are.
As a gross generalisation, I think focusing on the future brings opportunity while focusing on the past just magnifies regrets.
Interesting theory. I look forward to reading the full essay. When do you expect it to be published?
Oct/Nov
Cool. Are you also looking at the role of cognitive biases?
There will be some neurology