Uncivil wars

Instead, after the 2019 Federal Elections, we got the devious Scott Morrison, there by the skin of his teeth via the 2PP system, who went on a rampage just as any victorious WTA conqueror might. Not even the Westminster spirit could stop him.

Much has been said in the media about our economy having created more and more losers in the last decade, with the winners getting richer and richer.  Money and status are celebrated, no matter the colour or smell.  The late Richard Pratt for instance was honoured with an AC, our highest civic honour, whilst presiding over oligopolistic price-gouging. Against all that background, we can postulate that it was Morrison’s hubris and WTA excesses rather than contempt that heightened widespread anger and despair. And that would also account for the Teal wave and the Greenslide of the 2022 Federal elections.

Will the unprecedented 2022 Federal election results change our political culture for good?     

Unlikely.   In all probability this was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence: climate change denial over a decade, blatant grey corruption in governance and continued reluctance to address the oppression of women all coalesced into a rainstorm that flooded the citadels of the two old parties.  But people have short memories and under our 2PP electoral system historically the two old parties will retake their ground.

Even more insidiously, the winners in our economy have immense economic and political power to keep their ramparts impregnable. They have MPs on both sides, bureaucrats and ex-Ministers turned “consultants” in their pockets.  And they can buy media influence at the drop of a hat, to create chaos, anger and animosity to cower a government not of their ilk into doing what they want, be it taxing gas windfall profits, negative gearing or putting a price on carbon. This and more is laid out in Cameron Murray & Paul Frijters’ recently published book, Rigged, which clearly explains “how networks of powerful mates rip off everyday Australians”.

The working poor are angry: poverty and relative deprivation diminish all humans. The aspiring middle class is forever mindful of not catching-up and easily cajoled into the fear of losing any trickle-down privileges like negative gearing. They can vent their spleen quite well. And the top tier moneyed class is always networking to keep the government under control. This class won’t yield an inch of their established privilege to government reforms, without wheeling out their mighty arsenal: hugely expensive media campaigns, disingenuous offerings from their cultivated retainers in powerful institutions and orchestrated guerrilla tactics from their networks of winners.

But social activists and agitators are no longer shot at sight, nor are they incarcerated willy-nilly unless, of course, they happen to be black.

There is thus perpetual tension in our capitalist society, afflicted with the winner-takes-all mentality from the Parliament down.  

So for the working poor, the alienated, and those anxious to catch up with the winners, what better than to escape into a parallel world of instant democratic voice, shared commons, and untrammelled intimacy?

Clever exploiters like Mark Zuckerberg no doubt saw this unfulfilled need and have succeeded in creating social media word-wide-webs in response.  But it’s the fools’ gold that makes the spruikers the richest people on earth for all time. Those enticed into this parallel world would become mere merchandisable consumers.

But even long before then marketers have subliminally instilled the panacea of instant gratification into every sphere of life that offers these cunning entrepreneurs money, big money, and money-gilded status.

It is therefore all too easy for those who feel angry, alienated, or lonely to find temporary amnesia in those social media platforms. This reminds me of opium in China in the C19 and early C20: respite for the poor until their bodies were drained of vitality, and untold wealth for the immoral, untouchable Brits and their avaricious accomplices from the West.