We dance best when we all dance on the same dancefloor

While all people are deserving of equal treatment under the law, and everyone should be treated by our political and civil institutions in a like fashion, that does not extend to the realm of ideas. People can be, and quite often are, factually incorrect, irrational, and plain wrong. Huge masses of people can be wrong. Whole nations even.

Last century, when all of Germany decided to plunge into a corporate psychosis, that did not make the propositions that were being entertained any less obnoxious, fictional, or ill-advised. Also, just because you are well meaning, or have a wonderful body, or taste in clothing, or a squillion dollars in the bank, does not necessarily turn your stupid idea into something worth parading in public.

Now all of this should be patently obvious to even the most feebly equipped amongst us. But it is obvious that it is not. Somehow, as a society, we have allowed a media environment to develop where stupid, irrational and plain wrong propositions flow like cheap wine at a wedding.

All of which serves to preface the observation that we – as a society – have become far too timid in our public discourse. We all need to harden the fuck up intellectually. We need to start cutting people short and abusing them a bit more. In short, we need to be a little sharper and more precise in our condemnation of bullshit propositions and idiotic suppositions.

This is because populist potboiler parties only thrive when ignorant people begin demanding – and receive – equal time for their stupid and often malformed ‘ideas’. First of all, let’s say loudly and often that we are indeed a very lucky country with a great deal of wealth, a very high standard of living, a relatively low national GDP/debt ratio, a terrific school system and health care sector, and a reasonably sufficient social safety net. Moreover, we live in one of the largest countries on earth that is blessed with a host of environmental wonders and a relatively peaceful and prosperous population.

Our country is peopled by immigrants; so, we are not being over-run by immigrants. It is like suggesting the sea is being swamped by water. The vast majority of the inhabitants in our land arrived in the last century and fully one third of those who currently hold down a full-time job were born elsewhere.

Climate change is a fact. Scientists do actually know more about their various fields of study than right wing politicians, opinion writers, and fossil fuel apologists – full stop.

Australia does not have a ‘cost of living crisis’. Some Aussies cannot pay the outrageous bills that they have wracked up, or cannot service a mortgage on a house and a business simultaneously, or may be financially disadvantaged by the ridiculously high cost of housing in our country; but these are foreseeable pitfalls into which some will always fall. Yes, there are some disadvantaged groups who are living in dire poverty and need assistance, but they are only a small proportion of the population. Yet this is not the story we hear endlessly repeated, ad nauseum, throughout our corporate media.

We dance best when we all dance on the same dancefloor. There are not multiple realities out there just waiting to be invoked. We can and do have different experiences and opinions, but facts are facts. So, when a journalist proposes that we are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis then they should be immediately asked to clarify what they mean. Are people starving in the streets? Are there vast newly established encampments of homeless people on our streets? Has unemployment skyrocketed and wages plummeted? Are there lines around the block leading to dingy soup kitchens and poorhouses?

Or do they mean that a family that has overextended itself during good times may have to pull their kids out of private school? Or that landlords with several houses may now have to sell one to be able to make their finances balance? Or that a holiday might have to be put off, or the purchase of a new car postponed?

I am sick to the stomach with the eternal whining of the entitled horde. The problem is not a lack of resources but rather a surfeit of entitlement. The vast majority of those whining the loudest about how unfair modern Australia has become share a conception of ‘fairness’ that is astoundingly narrow and self-serving.

So, my suggestion is that we all need to refuse to collude in entertaining this patently stupid nonsense. The world is not ending because the government clipped a few freebies from the well off, and those that are peddling such a story need to be told to ‘grow up’ and ‘piss off and grow a brain’. This is because those who are pedaling this nonsense do know better. They know the difference between a ‘crisis’ and a load of entitled whining – but most of them are being paid good money to engage in spreading bullshit, knee-deep, in the public square.

In my last missive I was utterly dismissive of the so-called One Nation ‘threat’. Which is a stance that I do not recoil from in the least. The polling for the forces of niceness and not making an idiot of yourself in public (ie the left) has been pretty steady for the last six years, while the polling for living in a made-up universe while whining like a jet-engine (ie the right) has been all over the shop. Nevertheless, this is now consistently being portrayed by News and Nine as being a story about the soul of Australia rising up in a virtuous wave of right-wing indignation and rage, threatening to overwhelm the current government. Which is palpable claptrap but it does keep the mindless throng entertained (apparently).

But not me, I am dead sick of their miserable fantasy merry-go-round, I kinda like the place I am in and the culture we have developed, corporately, over the course of the last couple of hundred years. My dad died from war wounds received fighting the fascists in Europe and Asia, and I am very proud of that legacy. Which is why, although I am not at all worried that the right-wing populist fools will over-run our parliament’s, I am still utterly offended by their take-over of our media and their constant airing of misinformation and sometimes dangerous claptrap. Immigrants are not the problem. It is our tolerance of bullshit and the resulting intolerance of the entitled and ignorant amongst us.

So, the next time someone begins a question by talking down our country, or naming a disadvantaged or minority group, cut them dead and walk away. Life is too short to tolerate fools, and at the moment there seems to be an awful lot of them parading about in our public square. Ignore them and they will go away, and perhaps ask a local or federal pollie why we have allowed almost all of our corporate media to be taken over by a bunch of right-wing schills who most certainly do not love our country (or even the majority of its inhabitants).