Democracy-Building: Hint #20167

Supposing, for a moment, that we are to take the Coalition of the Willing seriously when they aver that they wish to 'build democracy' in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As we all know, the parliaments of Iraq and Afghanistan are not the prime movers of this equation. The fate of these nations rests not with Baghdad, or Kabul, but with Washington.

It therefore follows that, if we take the CoW seriously, we should be seeking to give Iraqis and Afghans the vote. In US elections. This might substantially alter some of the rhetoric and policy-making that emerges from DC.

We might go further, and argue for a US vote for all citizens whose countries host the US armed forces, or are subordinate to the US as their primary source of 'aid' and trade. This would, of course, encompass most of the world, and create a sort of global state.

The power-brokers in the US would obviously have some objections.

But then again, as a Frenchman once said, 'Nous somme tous Americains'. Leaving aside the problematic status of this 'Nous somme', this statement means, more or less, that this 'war' concerns us all. We are all 'other' to the terrorist hordes, all linked together in our primal struggle for survival, all bound by the same neoliberal logic of the marketplace.

Consequently, 'we' are all Americans now. Leaders and ideologues of the USA loudly proclaim their democratic credentials.

Is it not therefore time that we were afforded our basic democratic rights?

An Aside on the Environment

Environmental issues are not a particular interest of mine. There are plenty of bloggers who do a much better job than I could of discussing issues such as climate change, for instance.

As Al Gore has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in this issue, we might predict that the blogosphere will be working overtime, particularly with rightards eager to denounce climate change as a vast left-wing conspiracy.

To be clear, I am no fan of Gore, and I haven't seen his movie. To me, all post-WWII Democrats are merely Republicans with velvet gloves. Besides, the Nobel literature prize is usually more interesting than the one for peace.

It should also be remembered that environmental issues are by no means traditional leftist causes. To be sure, Marx noted that capital's insatiable need to reproduce itself was likely to have disastrous environmental consequences, but this observation was an aside from his more general theses on capital. As recently as a few decades ago, leftist interest in environmental issues might well have been seen as a petite-bourgeois indulgence.

This has changed more recently, with climate change being recognised almost universally as an 'issue'. Greens parties, across a number of Western parliamentary democracies, increasingly represent a form of organised leftism.

What are we to make of this phenomenon? Clearly, there is strong opposition to the notion of climate change, and to any consequent environmental remedies. It is appropriate to examine the source of this opposition.

It is hardly surprising that oil companies and the like should voice strong opposition. It is also sadly predictable that these companies' pimps in think tanks and the intelligentsia should likewise attack any notion of climate change.

What is more surprising is the other opposition that has emerged. The opponents of climate change engage in such poor reasoning and, frankly bizarre belief systems as to almost represent, a fortiori, evidence of that which they oppose. There can be no greater argument in favour of man-made climate change than the oil companies, their unctuous salesmen, and the right-wing ideologues and conspiracy theorists who oppose it.

Can there be any serious doubt that industry and capital impinge on the environment? The climate change sceptics need only inhale some of the polluted air of Athens, or Budapest, or Beijing, or any number of other places to see that yes, pollution has a discernible impact at a local level. If this impact exists locally, what reason exists to think it would not exist globally, or have ramifications beyond the the immediate surrounds of a given industry. After all, as Heraclitus noted some time ago, air and water move.

Let us take a more local example, that of Francis Street, Yarraville, an inner suburb of Melbourne. This street is a short suburban street in a residential area. Unfortunately for the residents, this street also serves as a link between several of Melbourne's major freeways. In particular, trucks use the road to go between the Westlink Tullamarine Freeway, and the Westgate Freeway, which itself splits into the Princes Freeway and Western Ring Road a short distance away. In addition to linking four of Melbourne's major freeways, the street is also near a number of major industrial sites and Melbourne's docks, giving trucks another reason to be in the area.

Having travelled on the road myself, the pollution caused by fumes was clearly evident. Should there be any doubt as to the veracity of my senses, the EPA also set up a booth in Francis Street, monitoring air quality and noise pollution. The EPA concluded that the air quality had deteriorated, largely as a result of truck activity, and that this deterioration had potentially serious health risks attached. The air pollution in this street was even reported to be significantly worse than that in one of Melbourne's major arterials, the appalling Hoddle Street.

Obviously, it doesn't take a Nobel Prize winner to work out that spewing massive amounts of fumes into the environment will have some unpleasant consequences. To our climate change sceptics, however, these sorts of results are the product of a labyrinthine leftist conspiracy, intended to recruit followers into the Green 'religion'. Not prone to hyperbolae, our good sceptics (such as Senator Brandis, or Andrew Bolt) have even compared the Green movement to the Nazi party.

I suspect that 'scepticism' is far too dignified a term for this delusionalists. Scepticism implies a reasoned philosophical position, which in turn, presupposes a degree of reasoning. When you smell the air in the cities I mentioned, when you view the smog-filled skylines, I do not see anything remotely like 'scepticism', but rather, merely psychotic denial.

For the Health-Conscious...

Somewhere in the aphorisms of Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche tells us that mockery, among other things, is a sign of good health.

With that in mind, I'd like to take a brief look at a blog I discovered, courtesy of this charming American 50-something.

The blog in question appears to be an unofficial fan site in honour of Republican Presidential candidate, Sam Brownback. Unfortunately, the blog does not appear to be ironic or satirical.

Of note is this particular blog entry, containing a clip of a relatively tame French music video, accompanied by the moderate heading - 'Why France is our Enemy'.

Being partly disposed to Francophilic tendencies myself, I though I'd peruse just why France is to be deemed an enemy of the USA, especially on the basis of a single music video:

This is the pinnacle of French culture- a debauched and depraved
temptress cavorting about for the tittilation of the vilest and most sinful
instincts within us.

Methinks he doth protest too much. And I'm sure the French themselves might argue that they have other cultural highlights than obscure music videos.

Until the French language and culture are exterminated, our culture and
our way of life will weaken under their relentless attack. France is our true
enemy. We must never forget this, nor can we forgive them for weakening our
culture and values enough that Al Qaeda could find a way to attack
us.

Despite the professed Christian leanings of the blog, one wonders if its author was under the influence of mind-altering drugs at the time of wondering, in light of the profound distortion of causality at play here. One also wonders whether the authors drug-induced paranoia has led him to dream up a cartoonish amalgam of striped-shirt wearing, accordion-playing, cheese-eating surrender terrorists.

Nonetheless, in the comments, astute and even-handed readers respond to the authors' call for genocide:

Sweet Jesus! I have never seen such a blatant attempt to push the gay
life style down mainstream societies’ throat than this video. It makes my blood
run cold thinking of the number of young men who despoiled themselves watching
this brunette cavort about in a tight dress and take their first step on the
road to drag queen hell. If this is what passes for entertainment over their
France well no wonder they don’t have the stones join us in the war for Freedom
against the Iraqis. This move is a blade out to slice off the manhood of any guy
who watches it.

Ah, not only are the terrorists French, they're also gay...

The author responds to readers' concerns (in bold):

“That video is one of the most depraved things I have ever seen in my
entire life. Why did you show us that, Sisyphus?”
I’m sorry, Marcia. I felt
it was important that we should know what we’re up against- harlots and
temptresses.
“Without French culture we would not have Les Miserables, The
Three Musketeers, Monet, Manet, Notre Dame etc etc.”
You call that culture?
Flush it all down the toilet and give me a decent movie like The Passion any
day.
“Why is this video so troubling? The girl doesn’t reveal anything; aside
from the short cut at the legs, even the costume is fairly conservative. She’s
just singing.”
And undulating her body in a lewd and suggestive manner. It’s
a criminal offense in most jurisdictions of America.
“Now look at Madonna:
for her entire career her specific goal was to push the buttons of traditional
values and spit at the boundaries she saw imposed on women. And she was
American! If you penalize the French on this one, look at home for more
disturbing “troubles”.”
Madonna never would’ve gotten away with that if not
for centuries of French culture leading up to it.

By my way of thinking, even The Passion is surely too lewd, containing as it does well-known Euro-hussy Monica Bellucci. Give me Charlton Heston anytime...

And on it goes. Read the whole thing if you've got time, and feel a need for a good laugh. Elsewhere on the blog, the author calls for the US to overthrow its erstwhile ally, Turkey.

Of course, we in Australia have our share of RWDB freaks, known by a range of traditional terms. We have Fred Nile and the Australia First Party in politics, Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtson in the media, and Tim Blair and Iain Hall on the intertubes.

Still, it's nice to know that things could be even worse.

Stupidity

'A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.' (Bertrand Russell)

'Almost half of Australian women aged 18-41 were sexually abused as a child.
Research shows a staggering 45 per cent of women were abused as children by family members, friends or strangers.Abuse ranged from non-contact behaviour -- such as indecent exposure or being forced to watch pornography -- through to rape.' (Herald Sun, 9/10/2007, reporting on Griffith University research)

Examples of Stupidity.

The Source:

'I’m always horrified by the abuse of children. But I must say that almost every Australian woman has been abused by dodgy statistics. ' (Andrew Bolt)

Responses to Andrew Dolt:
'Griffith is a strange place.
It is also a hotbed for Wahabism in Australia. Taxpayer funded, of course.' (Village Idiot)

'That is an enormous spectrum of ‘abuse’ and implys that almost every second woman I pass on the street has been ‘sexually abused’.
So before this ‘statistic’ moves into the vernacular as they invariably do - think belief in AGW - let’s see the individual breakdown of these statistical elements otherwise it’s sensationalist nonsense.
Again, kind of like AGW. ' (Inbred Retard)

'Griffith has provided a mecca for Far Left academics and student since established.Unfortunately some escape to mainstream education and positions of power within anti-development groups and Government quangos.
Just read some of the blogs originating from Griffith academics and you will get the message.' (McCarthyite Degenerate Checking Under Bed for Reds)

'Rubbish. Pure unadulterated rubbish! I grew up in a big family with a huge extended family and no one has ever been abused, or has done any abusing. Of course, in making that statement, I leave out all our childhood fights and spats. I well remeber when we were kids the girls gave as good as they got! According to the study and your statement, I should at least know someone, or even know of someone who has been abused, or has been an abuser. Sadly for you, that is not the case.' (Self-appointed & Cretinous Representative of all Mankind).

'Man is arrogant in proportion to his ignorance.' (Edward Bulwer-Lytton)

Hang the Intellectuals

The weekend rag had an opinion piece by Chris Middendorp, asking why the works of Australia's greatest novelist, Patrick White, were more or less ignored by mainstream Australia. Middendorp attributes this phenomenon to 'cultural cringe'.

Clearly, Australians have much to cringe about, but most of our cringeworthy objects these days are not cultural, but political. We might ask some other questions about why a writer such as White is ignored, and ignored precisely by our good nationalists in the media.

To be sure, White is a 'difficult' writer, but no more so than any number of other modernists. We should find it striking that this era of cultural whitewashing, where Australia's racism is routinely re-branded as patriotism (or, in the cases of racism directed at Aborigines, as a 'goodwill' intervention), is precisely the era where Australians of international significance among the intelligentsia are either ignored (Patrick White), maligned (Germaine Greer) or co-opted (I'll refrain from citing examples for this last category).

It is no coincidence, of course, that during the past 10 years of Howard's rule, and subsequent cultural warfare, intellectuals have been a source of considerable angst to conservatives. It is also no coincidence that Patrick White, an avowed Whitlamite, homosexual, and Republican, is one such intellectual. As a Nobel Laureate, he is too well-regarded to be susceptible to an Andrew Bolt or Christopher Pearson smear-piece (though White's biographer is not so fortunate). Nonetheless, White is simply sidestepped, while the NewsCorp hacks and Liberal politicians (such as George Brandis, last week) aim at smaller targets.

It should be clear by now that, after years of 'intellectual' or 'elite' being used as terms of abuse, that conservative politicians, and a pliant media, have attempted, as much as possible, to push an anti-intellectual, anti-cultural agenda, except where the latter targets are sufficiently fairy floss-like to be considered no threat to the 'evil, Howard-hating elites' narrative.

In this vein, News Ltd. Political Hack-in-Chief Paul Kelly appeared on last Friday's Lateline, in an attempt to debate LaTrobe University historian Robert Manne. The debate topic revolved around the culture wars, and a recent essay by Kelly purporting to demonstrate that Australia has cultivated a clique of 'public intellectuals' concerned solely with Howard-hating polemic, who ignore the Liberal Governments policy 'success'.

Never mind that this 'success' is far from agreed-upon. Sure, the economy has not collapsed, and has been very generous (for some Australians only - but this topic can wait for another post). On every other front, however, there has been policy failure.

Good quality, affordable healthcare and education has become more difficult to obtain. Workers' long-held rights have been abolished. The sentiments of race-rioters are more or less echoed, repeatedly, by our Governing politicians.

Robert Manne, a long-time conservative who remains conservative (though not slavishly in awe of the Howard Government) made these points to Kelly, and noted that he, Raymond Gaita, David Marr, and Julian Burnside are all 'elites' who are systematically demonised by the News Ltd crew. Manne took Kelly to task successfully:

I don't dispute there is a large group of us who think the Howard
Government has on balance done a lot of harm to Australia in the area of
culture, not the economy, but there are only three people mentioned. I want to
say just one thing about that.

The three people mentioned are very distinguished
people, not second rate in any way. Paul might disagree with them, might think
they are too moralistic about Howard and so on. One has written a superb
biography of Patrick White, David Marr. The other, Raymond Gaita, is probably
the best known philosopher of Australia except for Peter Singer, maybe. And
Julian Burnside is not a public intellectual so much as a humane and extremely
fine barrister who's had major success.

I think the category - the three people
included, if he thinks they're second rate, he should look to the cast of
journalists in Australia. I think there is a real argument and I think it's a
left-right argument, as you said. And I think it's about those intellectuals
like myself and like Ray Gaita and like David Marr and many others like Julian,
who think the Howard Government in many ways has done great damage to this
country and the question of how angry we should be or what the right moral
temper is for all of that is an important and right issue. If I could start by
something. It we look at this week, we've had, for example, a defamatory attack
on a group of academics who happen to disagree with what the Government would
like us to believe on WorkChoices. I don't know what Paul thinks about this, but
we've had an attack on the entire character of a continent - Africans. I feel
really upset about it and I don't think sort of worldly calm, as Paul seems to
think, is the right response to an attack on an entire group of people. I think
it is racism, I have to say.

And therein is revealed the intellectual bankruptcy of present-day conservatism. Preoccupied with idiotic left-right cultural flaming, they cannot assert any coherent, positive position, or even identify who 'the left' actually are. For instance, as Manne correctly noted, Kelly's targets are not rabid socialists.

For instance, Gaita is a signed-up member of the execrable Euston crowd. Burnside is concerned primarily with human rights and due legal process, and is not a polemicist. Marr is a polemicist, but of a self-described 'soft-left' variety. Whilst his criticisms of the Howard Government are frequent, and articulate, they are hardly militant.

The stupidity continued today in the Government Gazette when the far-right News Ltd hack, and board member of 'our' ABC, Imre Salusinszky, opined that the 'intellectuals have gone too far'.

Last week, the Government's 'avuncular' Minister for Serfdom, Joe Hockey, attacked an academic report that demonstrated that the Government's Workchoices legislation left workers worse off. Always more 'idiot' than 'savant', Salusinszky continued Hockey's anti-intellectual smearing by way of Murdoch's megaphone:

A quick scan, using the internet, of research centres at universities
reveals that many are structured around the "softie Left" world view that former
Media Watch host David Marr memorably nominated as the primary qualification for
entry into Australian journalism.

One can accept the above statement as true, provided one excludes the actual content of 90% of what passes for Australian 'journalism'. Only one newspaper in the country is even vaguely to the 'left', and there is no television program that could be considered particularly progressive.

Salusinszky targets that author of the industrial relations study in particular, with this obtuse broadside:

And perhaps there is no reason to be concerned that, in the era during
which the mainstream political class has come to accept the logic of the market,
an academic paid to conduct research into the Australian labour market still
describes himself as a socialist.

This statement demonstrates Salusinszky's remove from the 'mainstream', as well as his sycophantic sloganeering. Who in 'mainstream' Australia has come to accept 'the logic' of the market, other than the HR Nicholls society and a few fundamentalists? Not the many Australians who opposed the sale of Telstra, and who oppose the increasing privatisation of every aspect of society. Not the majority of Australians who despise the Government's supposed 'deregulation' of industrial relations laws. Not the farmers, who are slated to receive significant subsidies or generous retirement handouts from the Government, in order to shore up votes in rural electorates. Imre's gripe, that a labour-market researcher describes himself as 'socialist', is likewise misguided. The Australian Labor Party still describes itself as 'socialist' (with the necessary qualifiers), and remains Australia's oldest, and single-most popular party.

Salusinzsky's most comical moment, however, comes at the end of his piece, where he cites is colleague and fellow-culture warrior, Paul Kelly:

"A healthy democracy will see a healthy gulf between its politicians and
its intellectuals. But this gulf in Australia is a chasm that demands serious
attention."

That the GG could even try to publish such material, without irony, and not intended as satire, suggests that some grave intellectual deficiencies exist either among Murdoch's staff, or his readers. That, or we need to hang a few 'intellectuals'.

Another Discovery...

My Russian is ni ochi horosho, but I think he's saying - 'Hurrah for Soviet Kitsch, comrades!'

Repudiation

For the better part of this year, Australia's Murdoch media hacks have been struggling with the fact that poll after poll, Howard and the Liberal Party have been shown to be deeply unpopular. The hacks have not yet come to terms with this fact, and consequently, every minor fluctuation in polling stats is hailed as the Great Leader's Comeback. After all, how could an adoring electorate that had elected Howard 4 times be so ungrateful?

Some time ago, psephological blogger Possum had subjected Howard's decline to some statistical analysis, with some interesting results. Readers who enjoy a bit of number-crunching may wish to seek out the original post, but here are some of Possum's conclusions:

The media pundits and parts of blogsville have been acting all surprised that
the electorate have somehow “turned” on the government out of the blue. But as
has been demonstrated here before time and time again, it’s not out of the blue.
There has been a consistent and growing swing away from the governments favour
since the 98 election with the swings to them trending less and less positive,
before turning negative, then turning against them in larger magnitudes.
They
nearly lost in 1998 – securing less than 50% of the two party preferred
vote.
They nearly lost in 2001, with some serious porkbarreling and the
Tampa/S11 riding to their rescue, giving them a primary vote spike which was
volatility off the longer term trend running against them at the time.

Over 2001-2004, 5% of the government primary vote went AWOL and stuck mostly
with the minor parties and a bit to the ALP, but the ALP under Beazley and
particularly Crean couldn’t grab those AWOL coalition votes. Latham came along
and grabbed not only that 5% of ex-coalition voters parking with the minors, but
also 3% extra from the Coalition primary vote. Latham imploded and that 7-8%
went back to the minors and the Coalition. Not because of Howard, but because of
Latham.
Approximately 30% of swinging voters deserted Howard after the 2005
budget, taking 5% off the governments primary vote which went straight to the
Minors and undecided camp (and none of them have come back since), and another
3% thereabouts shifted between the ALP, the Minors and the Coalition on a
regular basis.
Along came Rudd and the underlying trend away from the
government crystallised into an ALP primary vote lift (rather than the minor
parties +undecideds where it had been hiding for the last 5 years to varying
strengths).

Naturally, this account of the polls since Howard's reign conflicts with the dominant narrative that we encounter in the media, namely, that Howard is basically a popular leader, who's sudden fall from grace must have something to do with his age, or haircut, or something. (This line is particularly fashionable with the pro-Costello Murdoch hacks, such as Milne, or Bolt).

I won't try to engage with Possum's statistical analyses - though I have some foggy recollections of linear regression and the like, I'm seriously under-qualified for such a task. I will try to offer a little political reasoning.

Firstly, Howard was never popular. Never. For much of his career, he's been a laughing-stock, even among his own comrades, as I've pointed out in the past.

Secondly, Howard, the Great Leader, was never statesman-like, or possessed of any great talent, other than for internal party power-mongering. Australia has not had a less 'leader-like' leader in living memory, at any level. Maximising short-term political gain by any grubby means available has been Howard's stock in trade. He is not so much the Man of Steel as the persistent, insidious tapeworm, clinging desperately to avoid the ever-imminent expulsion. Even John 'warm lettuce' Hewson was more charismatic than this weasel.

Thirdly, Howard has been made to look better by a fawning media, and bumbling, bickering opposition. When the latter began to at least gain some semblance of organisation, this was immediately reflected in poll results. And, to be fair, the likes of Beazley, Crean, and Latham all made attempts (however half-arsed) to challenge the Liberals on the policy front, though almost all of these attempts were unreported by the media.

Fourthly, Howard's authoritarian leadership style, and emphasis on 'party discipline' (that is to say, stifling of all but the most inconsequential of dissent) has almost succeeded in lending an air of coherence to his doctrines. He is able and obsequiously supported by a host of withered half-men, such as Ruddock, Downer, Abbott, and Andrews, who are all far too reviled in their own right to ever consider leadership.

In short, Howard has been lucky, and has benefited for 10 years from a confluence of factors in his favour.

In 1998, he lost the popular vote (two-party preferred), but clung onto power all the same.

In 2001, he benefited from the bigotry that still pervades large swathes of 'Middle Australia'. With Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party in terminal decline, Howard was gradually able to steal a number of bogan votes, particularly on the platforms of 'national security' and 'border protection'. Of course, Australia's borders have only been invaded once, strictly speaking, and that was long ago, and by a rather different kind of 'boat people'. All the same, the Liberals' winning margin was not so great - one can only speculate that Howard may well have lost had Tampa and 9/11 had occurred some other year.

In 2004, Latham led the opposition through a bizarre and inept campaign that saw Howard re-elected with an increased majority. What the pundits fail to realise is that this re-election occurred in spite of Howard's policies, not because of them. Almost all of the much-despised Liberal policies were already there - Hicks, Iraq, inaction on climate change, erosion of civil liberties, etc. AWB was still to come, but this scandal was always politically irrelevant. Workchoices is the main piece of legislation to push voters over the edge.

Howard himself has done more than anyone to put class on the political agenda in Australia, eagerly cultivating the myth of 'Howard's Battlers', good, hard-working white folk from 'Middle Australia' who want tough laws on gays and asylum seekers. Perhaps believing his own mythology, in a fatal fit of hubris, Howard stripped workers of their hard-earned rights, thus ensuring that class remained at issue, though not for reasons of the Liberals' choosing.

It is convenient for the pundits to reduce these matters to a US-style election, and analyse them in terms of which 'candidate' has the nicest smile, or what-not. Even the Liberals' themselves think as much, with Tony Abbott deriding voters as 'sleepwalking' through a potential Liberal defeat this year. Of course, what these patronising and insulting analyses mask is the fact that voters are not merely rejecting a leader, or a haircut, or set of teeth, but are repudiating an entire series of policies that are fundamentally hostile to most Australians, and that serve the interests of a small clique of cashed-up elites. What Nietzsche said often of the Germans could equally be said of the Australians - namely, that yes, they are a bit stupid, but, unlike the Germans, they are not that stupid, and they know when they are being shafted.

A recent poll has even suggested that it's not merely the closet Bolsheviks who oppose Australia's foreign policy, especially as regards the Australian-US alliance. And a new study tells us what we already know, that is, that AWA's offer plenty of 'choice' and lots of benefits, but only for employers. The Government's costly ad campaigns, intended to add saccharine to vile legislation, seem to be thinning out, suggesting that these PR-exercises are genuinely repulsive for 'Middle Australia'.

Let us not, therefore, interpret these signs as evidence of voters playing the capricious tart, flirting with alternatives, or as indicators of consumers preferring a different political 'brand'. The so-called Labor Party is utterly bereft of vision, or any kind of pro-worker policy, but is still considered by voters to be less repugnant than the alternative. The outcome of this years' Federal Election will not be decided on the basis of who has the nicest soundbites, despite what the pundits tell you. Instead, as Possum's stats suggest, it will be based on a thorough repudiation of all that for which Howard and the Liberals stand.