Sometimes this space is hard to fill. Sometimes there is no definitive response. Good arguments on both sides. Sometimes there is just grey. Doubt.
Even Andrew Bolt has doubts. Seriously. As he told the ABC’s One Plus One program (airing tonight):
“I doubt myself, whether I’m right, whether I’m being nice enough, whether I’ve got my facts there, whether what I write is of interest …”
The Herald Sun ideologue insists he isn’t always sure. And he says he admires doubt in others; he tells the program he’s attracted to Tony Abbott because the Prime Minister is not afraid to question his convictions and prevailing attitudes.
It is dogmatism that wrecks political debate, wilful certainty where there isn’t any. The words “I’m not sure” are banned from the game, and the solutions are even further away as a result.
Each day, we doubt. We certainly doubt Andrew Bolt ever demonstrates indecision in his columns — but we wholeheartedly support the sentiment.
There’s a line from the play/film Doubt that has one priest saying:
“Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty.”
Amen to that.
words are easy
Anyone with a scientific background of conjecture and refutation knows what Bolt is doing, appropriating “doubt” and cloaking himself in scientific “scepticism” to play at being an “objective” truth-telling commentator.
Even as a rhetorical strategy this is absurd, as the court found in relation to Bolt’s “objective” commentary on aboriginal ancestry.
Don’t give him the time of day crikey. This is not a game. This is fraud.
Only bigots & fanatics are certain. Beware of the skin deep.
I doubt that Bolt is telling the truth.
Well said, Susan, and it’s probably worth listing just some of the things that he appears to have no doubt about. The invasion of Iraq was a good thing. People who support Indigenous Australians in their quest for justice, are part of a self serving ‘aboriginal industry’. Climate change is a conspiracy hatched up by greenies, lefties and scientists, to establish elite positions for themselves. Everything that the Labor government did was wrong. Everything that the Greens even think is wrong. The independents sold out Australia.
And possibly most bizarrely, that by being an affluent, white, right winger living in prosperous, peaceful Australia, you are somehow a greatly put upon part of an oppressed minority.