Uncivil wars

I wonder if contempt is merely a symptom rather the cause of our corrupted democracy.

The real cause is likely to be our Two-Party-Preferred (2PP) electoral system which is afflicted with the winner-takes-all (WTA) mentality. 

Parliamentary sittings have become brawling spectacles performed for a population habituated to aggressive macho behaviour.

During the week before the recent Melbourne Cup, it was said that an increase in domestic violence was to be expected after the Cup. Men supercharged by aggression on the field and barracking on the stands, not to mention copious alcohol during and after, would end up unleashing their aggression upon women in the privacy of their homes. The same, it was also said, has happened after every AFL game.

Aggression is institutionalised.

Contempt is but a corollary of aggression that is primed in Parliament, in sports and in all the battlefields in our democracy.

And worse still, our democracy is unrepresentative.

In the 2019 Federal elections the Greens got about 10% of the primary votes, yet their presence in the Lower House is not even 1%.  The democratic principle of one vote one value has become a sham.

One consequence is that trust in our politicians has been declining. Now only one in four or five voters trusts the elected representatives who are by and large selected by their mafia-like Party machines.

A fish rots from the head. That rot has now spread to every part of our polity.

The debasement of our parliament, the consequent spread of that rot throughout the polity, is the more likely cause of the sorry state of our democracy.

Just imagine if the Greens had had their democratic quota in the Lower House for the last ten years! A coalition government with the Greens would have been inevitable. And that would have tempered the barbarity of the climate wars which have deepened the division and anger in our country over so many issues.