Today I’m frustrated by the weakness of leadership of both the Australian Labour Party and the US Democratic Party.
In both the US and Australia, the upper house conservative rump is blocking the stimulus packages of recently elected leaders with strong mandates. This seems to be largely a way of asserting some sort of relevance in the dark days of minority. The Coalition, however, has been at these tricks for nine months, since they decided to block budget legislation in May last year.
This goes strongly against the democratic principle that those who have most recently faced the electorate and won should be allowed their way with their core agenda. Unfortunately, political literacy in both nations is so low that very few people understand exactly how what is being done is wrong.
From here, the ALP has only one course of action left open to it, with two likely results. They must make the rogue Senators stand on their dignity and reject the stimulus package again, so the Prime Minister can pull the trigger on a double dissolution election. Let the Coalition face the electorate over their quibbling against a popular and necessary economic stimulus. Either the Coalition will be forced into a humiliating backdown, or Kevin Rudd will be returned with a more favourable Senate, more likely to recognise and respect the government’s democratic mandate.
The Democrats are in a similar position. They must have the courage to force the Republicans to actually filibuster them, to stand up on C-SPAN and justify themselves 24 hours a day, rather than meekly retiring from the field whenever they don’t have the requisite 60 votes.
In both nations, vital projects are being held back because of a lack of the intestinal fortitude it takes to accomplish anything in leadership. It’s enough to make you want to strike your colours and switch sides.
Friday, February 13, 2009
An Anecdote
Inspired by Rebecca Traister's story over at Salon, here's a short anecdote.
My brother brought home a dog he had got from someone who couldn't take care of it anymore. It was like a cross between a Scottish terrier and some sort of fighting dog; endearingly fluffy and floppy-eared, but with a heavily muscled chest and legs and those huge jaws, built for pulling down much larger animals. My brother called him Nugget.
He had the most manic, upbeat personality of any dog I've ever come across, bouncing madly up to try and lick hands and faces, puppyishly firing little spurts of urine. To keep him from shooting into the house every time the door was opened, my father put metal bars across the entrance to the porch, but the irrepressible Nugget kept pushing at the bottom bar until he had made a gap to push his broad shoulders through.
Ultimately, however, my parents found themselves living in fear of what he might do. He leapt all over strangers and other dogs alike, and in their constant fear they found themselves unable to tell if it was with affection or ill-intent. Finally they put him down.
I was shocked to hear of it, but ultimately I had been unwilling to take care of him, and no one else was, so what could have been done? Still, I feel a twinge of sadness when I think of that mad little mutt who loved his masters so much he'd push through steel to be a little closer to them.
My brother brought home a dog he had got from someone who couldn't take care of it anymore. It was like a cross between a Scottish terrier and some sort of fighting dog; endearingly fluffy and floppy-eared, but with a heavily muscled chest and legs and those huge jaws, built for pulling down much larger animals. My brother called him Nugget.
He had the most manic, upbeat personality of any dog I've ever come across, bouncing madly up to try and lick hands and faces, puppyishly firing little spurts of urine. To keep him from shooting into the house every time the door was opened, my father put metal bars across the entrance to the porch, but the irrepressible Nugget kept pushing at the bottom bar until he had made a gap to push his broad shoulders through.
Ultimately, however, my parents found themselves living in fear of what he might do. He leapt all over strangers and other dogs alike, and in their constant fear they found themselves unable to tell if it was with affection or ill-intent. Finally they put him down.
I was shocked to hear of it, but ultimately I had been unwilling to take care of him, and no one else was, so what could have been done? Still, I feel a twinge of sadness when I think of that mad little mutt who loved his masters so much he'd push through steel to be a little closer to them.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Gary Kamiya sums up the Bush legacy
Read this great article.
Please.
On a completely different line of thought, I enrolled in uni today, which is a slightly difficult thing for a 26 year old to do. While an eighteen year old thinks he is the most interesting, compelling and attractive individual in any given room unless given some undeniable evidence otherwise, you only have to be very slightly older to realise that someone whose life experience consists of being born, going to school and graduating is very rarely going to have something to say worth hearing, so spending one's time in a social setting almost entirely reserved for the aforementioned eighteen year olds is a little bit frustrating.
I did learn something very important today, though. Keep your head down and your wits about you on a university campus - performance art can happen any time, to any one.
Please.
On a completely different line of thought, I enrolled in uni today, which is a slightly difficult thing for a 26 year old to do. While an eighteen year old thinks he is the most interesting, compelling and attractive individual in any given room unless given some undeniable evidence otherwise, you only have to be very slightly older to realise that someone whose life experience consists of being born, going to school and graduating is very rarely going to have something to say worth hearing, so spending one's time in a social setting almost entirely reserved for the aforementioned eighteen year olds is a little bit frustrating.
I did learn something very important today, though. Keep your head down and your wits about you on a university campus - performance art can happen any time, to any one.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Australian exceptionalism
I was thinking about the 2005 Asian tsunami today, and specifically my own brush with it. For our first overseas holiday, my wife and I had planned to go to Phuket, but instead decided on Sabah, in Malaysian Brunei. We were lounging on a beach there on the day that Phuket, Sumatra, southern India and any number of other areas around the Indian Ocean were levelled.
In Australia, we are a proudly agnostic nation, where aggressive atheism is often considered a part of our natural charm. Yet we share a strong faith and that is: bad things don't happen here, not the way they happen elsewhere.
Sure, we're not entirely insulated from reality. We have car crashes, floods, bushfires, drownings and bankruptcies. The very mundanity of those events, however, goes towards the ultimate thrust of our belief. There are no terrorist attacks in Australia. (Not entirely true, but true in effect.) Our soldiers go overseas, rough up the natives and come back largely unmolested. Our economy might labour at times but it rarely goes backwards. Our worst earthquake, in 1989, was the result of mining subsidence and killed about thirteen people.
So we instinctively feel that, here, we are safe, or as safe as one can be in a soft, pink, infinitely breakable body. The obverse of this belief is that once we transgress our national borders, we live under an unfamiliar shadow of danger.
This mindset has its most outstanding example in the Bali bombings. Australians were shocked - shocked! - that anyone would want to carry on their nasty foreign politics in a way that might hurt Australians, let alone in Bali, which because of the number of bogans wandering its beaches had been adopted as an honorary part of Australia. So upset were we that we couldn't help but adopt Indonesia's tragedy as our own, wearing our horror at the death of 88 Australians shamelessly while completely disengaging from the significantly larger number of Indonesians murdered.
It's a big part of the reason the world has started to regard us as louder and more drunken Ugly Americans - this air of bulletproof freedom from consequences, the feeling that anything happening to us is a lark rather than a real event, that the rest of the world is a mere amusement park for the cynical atheists of Australia.
But what is this attitude if not faith?
It's an easy argument to make that this shared belief is a truer and deeper faith than that of the average churchgoer. Separate from societal expectation, and without any real reason to do so, we accept that the world is run in a specific and benevolent way for our own benefit.
It's an odd position for a nation built on genocide to take.
In Australia, we are a proudly agnostic nation, where aggressive atheism is often considered a part of our natural charm. Yet we share a strong faith and that is: bad things don't happen here, not the way they happen elsewhere.
Sure, we're not entirely insulated from reality. We have car crashes, floods, bushfires, drownings and bankruptcies. The very mundanity of those events, however, goes towards the ultimate thrust of our belief. There are no terrorist attacks in Australia. (Not entirely true, but true in effect.) Our soldiers go overseas, rough up the natives and come back largely unmolested. Our economy might labour at times but it rarely goes backwards. Our worst earthquake, in 1989, was the result of mining subsidence and killed about thirteen people.
So we instinctively feel that, here, we are safe, or as safe as one can be in a soft, pink, infinitely breakable body. The obverse of this belief is that once we transgress our national borders, we live under an unfamiliar shadow of danger.
This mindset has its most outstanding example in the Bali bombings. Australians were shocked - shocked! - that anyone would want to carry on their nasty foreign politics in a way that might hurt Australians, let alone in Bali, which because of the number of bogans wandering its beaches had been adopted as an honorary part of Australia. So upset were we that we couldn't help but adopt Indonesia's tragedy as our own, wearing our horror at the death of 88 Australians shamelessly while completely disengaging from the significantly larger number of Indonesians murdered.
It's a big part of the reason the world has started to regard us as louder and more drunken Ugly Americans - this air of bulletproof freedom from consequences, the feeling that anything happening to us is a lark rather than a real event, that the rest of the world is a mere amusement park for the cynical atheists of Australia.
But what is this attitude if not faith?
It's an easy argument to make that this shared belief is a truer and deeper faith than that of the average churchgoer. Separate from societal expectation, and without any real reason to do so, we accept that the world is run in a specific and benevolent way for our own benefit.
It's an odd position for a nation built on genocide to take.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Child protection laws and the ineffable NSW Government
The NSW government will change the child welfare reporting laws to stop DOCS being crippled by the volume of trivial complaints (here), but will there be any examination of how things reached this juncture? Perhaps policy has been made thoughtlessly in response to headlines and spin rather than with careful consideration and development? Either the current reporting laws should never have been introduced, or the funding and structure should have been put in place right away to ensure they could be implemented successfully. A government that cared even slightly about good policy rather than polls would ensure that its agencies, particularly those of such immediate human importance, were fixed before they fell apart, not after.
Even more irritating for me personally has been the budget debacle. It seems Nathan Rees only goal is to keep the budget in surplus, regardless of any consequences to the state, at a time when any halfway competent government would be posting significant deficits. In a state choked by aging and inadequate infrastructure, caught in the fierce currents of a global economic downturn, after that state has posted surpluses for years consecutively, choosing to throw out spending for the sake of balanacing a one-off budget is baffling.
I refuse to believe that an individual could scale the heights of public administration that Nathan Rees or any of his ministers have without acquiring so basic a level of economic understanding, so that leaves only one explanation for this behaviour, that deficits poll badly and surpluses test well. The irresponsibility astounds me.
The Labor government in NSW has worked this way for over a decade, so it's unlikely to change anytime soon. All that really has changed is that Bob Carr, the man who was actually made it all look good, is gone, and the machine men who use the state government as a machine for milking developers of dodgy campaign contributions have advanced increasingly incompetent front men in attempts to extend their cosy situation. If Barry O'Farrell wisens up and avoids actually appearing in public or allowing any of his MPs to speak to the media before the next election, I might even find myself accidentally voting Liberal in a state election in the next few years.
Even more irritating for me personally has been the budget debacle. It seems Nathan Rees only goal is to keep the budget in surplus, regardless of any consequences to the state, at a time when any halfway competent government would be posting significant deficits. In a state choked by aging and inadequate infrastructure, caught in the fierce currents of a global economic downturn, after that state has posted surpluses for years consecutively, choosing to throw out spending for the sake of balanacing a one-off budget is baffling.
I refuse to believe that an individual could scale the heights of public administration that Nathan Rees or any of his ministers have without acquiring so basic a level of economic understanding, so that leaves only one explanation for this behaviour, that deficits poll badly and surpluses test well. The irresponsibility astounds me.
The Labor government in NSW has worked this way for over a decade, so it's unlikely to change anytime soon. All that really has changed is that Bob Carr, the man who was actually made it all look good, is gone, and the machine men who use the state government as a machine for milking developers of dodgy campaign contributions have advanced increasingly incompetent front men in attempts to extend their cosy situation. If Barry O'Farrell wisens up and avoids actually appearing in public or allowing any of his MPs to speak to the media before the next election, I might even find myself accidentally voting Liberal in a state election in the next few years.
False premises
Gary Kamiya has an article on Salon.com that got me agitated about one of my pet peeves, the accepted wisdom amongst progressives that the US (and by extension everyone else) should withdraw from Afghanistan, that somehow this war is morally on par with Iraq. (article here)
While this article and the commenters make some good points, it ignores some important facts about the situation in Afghanistan.
First is the state of Afghanistan before the war. The bombast and propoganda of the right over the last seven years has made it difficult to retain clarity on this issue, but the fact is the Taliban were, between 1996 and 2001, the most brutal and repressive regime on the planet, and that they were allowed to rage through Afghanistan unchecked should shame us all. When Gary Kamiya and apparently almost the entire left advocate abandoning Afghanistan, they advocate leaving over 30 million people in the hands of a system of deliberate evil. At least for the sake of 15 million Afghani women, troops must remain in Afghanistan.
Second is the fact that terrorism does, in fact, offer an existential threat to democracies. There is no more compelling proof of that than the de facto repression of free speech, imprisonment and torture of the innocent sometimes unto death, and disregard for constitutional rights allowed by the electorate in the United States over the last seven years. Because of a single terrorist attack, liberal democracy was dormant if not dead in the nation where it should have been strongest of all.
Or consider the depopulation of half of Israel in July 2006 in response to the Hezbollah rocket attacks, as vast numbers of citizens became refugees. Democracy depends on the calm rationality of the citizenry, and that is exactly what terrorism targets.
Third is the enormous progress that can be made in the internationalisation of the conflict. Anyone with real knowledge of what is going on in Afghanistan knows that great strides have been made as the military of the UAE have engaged. The tribes whose insular, tenacious and warlike nature, and ironclad laws of hospitality, made winning the war impossible for the US alone, are being won over with the help of these valuable allies.
Although saying it induces reflexive cynicism, the international coalition MUST stay in Afghanistan until the government of Afghanistan can defend itself from the mainly foreign extremists who insinuated themselves into the national life.
The most valuable thing Bush and the neoconservatives stole from the thinking left when he politically capitalised on national disaster was not freedom, compassion, or peace, it was clarity of thought. Barack Obama is approaching the situation with neither the concept of American exceptionalism and pre-determined victory that caused the right to bungle the job, nor from the ideologically blinkered corner the left has allowed itself to be pushed into, but instead from the direction of making policy based on reality, needs and results. Now that the shadow of an imperial presidency is contracting, it's time to examine our preconceptions and start to apply knowledge and logic rather than college campus ideological assumptions.
While this article and the commenters make some good points, it ignores some important facts about the situation in Afghanistan.
First is the state of Afghanistan before the war. The bombast and propoganda of the right over the last seven years has made it difficult to retain clarity on this issue, but the fact is the Taliban were, between 1996 and 2001, the most brutal and repressive regime on the planet, and that they were allowed to rage through Afghanistan unchecked should shame us all. When Gary Kamiya and apparently almost the entire left advocate abandoning Afghanistan, they advocate leaving over 30 million people in the hands of a system of deliberate evil. At least for the sake of 15 million Afghani women, troops must remain in Afghanistan.
Second is the fact that terrorism does, in fact, offer an existential threat to democracies. There is no more compelling proof of that than the de facto repression of free speech, imprisonment and torture of the innocent sometimes unto death, and disregard for constitutional rights allowed by the electorate in the United States over the last seven years. Because of a single terrorist attack, liberal democracy was dormant if not dead in the nation where it should have been strongest of all.
Or consider the depopulation of half of Israel in July 2006 in response to the Hezbollah rocket attacks, as vast numbers of citizens became refugees. Democracy depends on the calm rationality of the citizenry, and that is exactly what terrorism targets.
Third is the enormous progress that can be made in the internationalisation of the conflict. Anyone with real knowledge of what is going on in Afghanistan knows that great strides have been made as the military of the UAE have engaged. The tribes whose insular, tenacious and warlike nature, and ironclad laws of hospitality, made winning the war impossible for the US alone, are being won over with the help of these valuable allies.
Although saying it induces reflexive cynicism, the international coalition MUST stay in Afghanistan until the government of Afghanistan can defend itself from the mainly foreign extremists who insinuated themselves into the national life.
The most valuable thing Bush and the neoconservatives stole from the thinking left when he politically capitalised on national disaster was not freedom, compassion, or peace, it was clarity of thought. Barack Obama is approaching the situation with neither the concept of American exceptionalism and pre-determined victory that caused the right to bungle the job, nor from the ideologically blinkered corner the left has allowed itself to be pushed into, but instead from the direction of making policy based on reality, needs and results. Now that the shadow of an imperial presidency is contracting, it's time to examine our preconceptions and start to apply knowledge and logic rather than college campus ideological assumptions.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
That magnificent beast, the financial media.
See it wallowing in its own importance. Its audience, which lends it an undeserved air of sobriety and professionalism, is the staid world of the investor, which thrives on detailed analysis, consideration and caution. Yet like all merchants of news the financial media must strive for relevance, so they sow fear and panic. Stocks never subside, they must crash; if they don't quite crash, they may instead collapse. On the way up, they surge or rally, rather than rise, and the two must never be examined together in context - a crash one day and a rally the next is not a correction, it is some sort of Manichean drama, where the mighty totems of the bull and bear do battle and one emerges victorious.
The rush to predict "market meltdowns" on Tuesday was a perfect example, as alarmist headlines were splashed all over television channels, eventually producing the fearsome figure of... a rise of fifty points. The unmentioned but undoubtedly sheepish removal of the "market crisis" from the news banner on the Sky Business Channel around midday was a masterpiece of comedy.
By market close, this was being laid at the door of an interest rate drop, yet the recovery came well before the announcement. In this way the naked emperor clothes himself. Is it any wonder that large parts of the markets are swept up in the narratives and short-sightedness of the moment, speculate rather than invest, when they are constantly steeped in this sensationalism? With great self-seriousness and regard for their own expertise, these talking heads only ever manage to produce truisms and the accepted wisdom of the echo chamber.
The rush to predict "market meltdowns" on Tuesday was a perfect example, as alarmist headlines were splashed all over television channels, eventually producing the fearsome figure of... a rise of fifty points. The unmentioned but undoubtedly sheepish removal of the "market crisis" from the news banner on the Sky Business Channel around midday was a masterpiece of comedy.
By market close, this was being laid at the door of an interest rate drop, yet the recovery came well before the announcement. In this way the naked emperor clothes himself. Is it any wonder that large parts of the markets are swept up in the narratives and short-sightedness of the moment, speculate rather than invest, when they are constantly steeped in this sensationalism? With great self-seriousness and regard for their own expertise, these talking heads only ever manage to produce truisms and the accepted wisdom of the echo chamber.
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