******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
I read the full article and was struck, firstly, by how well written it was. Secondly, our ex- and very unlamented Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, was also a very strange character like Harper. Now that Abbott is gone, one has trouble believing that it all really happened. The same feeling will grip Canada post-Harper. What it all means I am not sure. One can say "the decay of parliamentary democracy" but that is more descriptive than explanatory. I am also struck by the phenomenon of the power of the polls. Governments have always sampled public opinion. During WW2 in Britain the major parties agreed not to oppose each other. They presented a united front to the people, but unceasingly they canvassed public opinion and worried about what the people were thinking. But the results were always kept secret, so the cascade of imitation was kept in control. Now it has all become like TV ratings. Just like a TV show cannot sustain falls in ratings, political leaders have trouble holding on against slumps in popularity even where one does not have a presidential system. In Australia this is even more marked because our political cycle is tied to 3 year terms for the Federal government. Abbott was brought down by the polls. Now we have turned to the leader of the Labor opposition, Bill Shorten. He and his party will slump in the polls, and I do not think he can survive unless an early election is held. In all probability he will lose that and then the polls will go hunting for another victim. It's very much as if we live in the era of *ressentimen*t, anxiety, fear and deep discontent and the polls enable all that to be expressed. & the political class wilt and shrivel up in fear, when the spotlight of the polls finds them. The only tactic the politicians seem to have come up with is to "do boring". Stay out of the news as much as possible and hope the spotlight finds someone else. It all reminds me of my adolescence in my French classes, when the vicious bastard that taught us used to stalk around the classroom for boys to flog, and I would keep my head down and never look up in case I caught his evil eye. Granted the current Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, is full of the confidence of the super rich and swaggers around the town boasting about the public buses he catches. But eventually he too will be brought low by the polls, though probably only after he has won the next election. I suppose it all has something to do with the reign of neoliberalism, the downturn in the economy and the subsequent rise of the dialectics of scarcity. Chomsky in his recent talk used the concept of an 'ideological insurgency' to describe rise of the barking mad Right in the States. So to be positive about what is happening, it may be that the polls provide the only avenue to express rejection of the new extremists and their ideological craziness. In the mean time those of us without power can go to www.leninology.co.uk and look up Richard's twitter account and enjoy the latest Cameron memes; and a jolly oink-oink to you too. My favorite, by the way, is the Ed Milliband bacon sandwich comradely Gary _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
