If the West really wants to honour – as we say we do – the human spirit and not the machine, it's necessary to muster the courage to first concede our constraints, the essential limits of technology and politics. A leader capable of healing the national soul is a leader willing to put their political identity at risk by making an all-or-nothing step across the line, trusting the electorate will value the honesty and bravery over the false hopes it has grown perilously fond of.
A tough fiscal strategy is tragically insufficient, it's timidity liable to deepen the trance. The coalition's grumpy second-rate narrative, materialistic and desultory in character, is highly susceptible to the third-rate narratives of leftist demagoguery. Unrelenting emotional posturing, though ruinous in its opportunism, at least offers a semblance of empathy. If nothing else, the Labor Party, heart-on-sleeve media pundits and cherry-picking insurgents like Clive Palmer relate to the punters. No matter this bond is rooted in fear and self-pity, the juvenile belief it's grossly unjust Little Green Man modern democracy, with all its bells and whistles, can't solve the challenges of life on our behalf.
In the zombie culture wars between rival dogma – paternalistic socialism versus remote, right wing zealotry – the disaffected will always drift toward the welfare state. And at pace, once the budget is repaired.
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This irony escapes Abbott, just as it did with his mentor, John Howard. There is no middle ground here, it being nonsensical to maintain personal responsibility can be other than a personal responsibility. Moreover, this moral absolute – a vulnerable faith in humanity – is our only source of genuine hope. And if the Prime Minister doesn't soon give something of himself, connect to people's anxieties without succumbing to sentimentalism, he faces the humiliation of being kicked out after a single term.
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