Group think politics: while the bemused look on ...

Whoever controls the collective consciousness - is simply in control

Sitting at the same dinner table with Kerry Packer and with fidgeting hands and a nervous grin was an Australian prime minister. The disdain on Packer’s face in the presence of the groveling by this person who was supposed to be in the nation’s top job had to be admired.

Then there is the king of tabloid radio, Alan Jones, who Chris Masters in Jonestown claims has the power to turn wimpy the most haughty prime minister.

The Packer and Murdoch dynasties know that the average person’s grasp of the world is built on symbols rather than ideas. Such a mind can be taken by a tabloid to where it wants to take it. By exploiting our primal tribalism, the modern mass media is able to take the group-think it has created and make it into a spectator sport. By exploiting the natural fascination we have for celebrities, the media is also able to take another group-think it has created to spectator politics.

Politics is a type of soap opera. Rather than lovers betraying lovers, political animals betray political animals. Gillard and her grasping colleagues disposed of Kevin Rudd and it is she who is now facing the unlikely benefactor of another coup. Gillard sneered at Tony Abbott: “Game on!”

The banal banter on such programs as Q&A almost becomes tabloid television. Q&A generates the delusion in the audience that they are informed and engaged in the direction the country is heading. Many religiously watch interviews of politicians conducted by Kerrie O’Brien and Laurie Oakes - even though the interviewees have never delivered anything but rhetoric into a living room.

On July 17, Gillard announced the date of the election. The show was on the road and it reached its ludicrous pinnacle on July 25. The timing of the debate had to be clear of MasterChef’s timeslot: a program apparently too crucial to our culture for any debate on the fate of the nation to risk competing with. As in all previous political debates, the participants said nothing of substance and could only be judged on style.

Conclusion

On the night of August 21, millions of eyes will be glued to the telecast of the tally room. And when the results come through the champagne corks will pop as if the gate to Utopia has been opened.

The bemused will look on knowing that in the great scheme of things it does not matter one iota what party wins an election. The bemused looking on can write the script for the next three years. It will be the same old story; the government will twiddle with the knobs and then get a shock when the system fails to respond as expected. After all, the same senior public servants will be still there oiling the machines they like the look of and putting sand in the machines they don’t.

So, after the election, life will drift on as always. The general public vastly overestimates the influence of government and vastly underestimates the power of drift generated by the combined activities of 22 million people. Whatever the current situation in any public service or social situation, it is the equilibrium point of forces coming from so many directions as to be beyond any political party’s understanding.

Our one chance of lifting the game is to replace the National History Curriculum (which is now compulsory up to year 10) with one that is written by people who can see a much bigger picture of human behaviour than the “big” picture that our education ministers and education departments imagine they see.