So who was it who leaked the videos of Scott Morrison at Christian camp?
Was it you, Jesus? You are naughty. Was it some disgruntled happy clappy? (Are there such things? They all look so joyous.) Was it some Labor mole? Or was it the Libs themselves in some culture war standard double-reverse-squeeze play, which seems to be the fashion these days?
The thinking would go like this, I imagine:
- Scomo is revealed to be a happy-clappy who is, erm, unrepentant about his happy-clappiness, having kind of downplayed it for a while
- The just-so stories and secret laying-on of hands, etc, strike a lot of people as a little weird and creepy
- Progressives react with predictable outrage to this secret takeover of the country by God’s warriors
- The reaction is so extreme that the mainstream reacts to the scorn by identifying with Morrison because they, like him, are accustomed to being scorned by progressives for their beliefs
- ScoMo comes to seem not merely one of the people but a little Jesus-like himself, suffering the baying of the mob for our sins
- Labor looks like it is the choice of a bunch of arrogant progressives
- People return, reattach to ScoMo as the nation’s daggy dad
- Votes!
- Victory!
There are a couple more loops in it, quite possibly, but that’s the gist. You think that’s too mad a strategy to be real? You need to catch up with Australian politics as it is now. Or Coalition politics at least. Someone in ScoMo’s office may well have diagrammed this all out.
Since his elevation to the office, Morrison and his team appear to have kept a careful hold on how much of his religiosity leaks out, since early revelations made him look distinctly odd and played against the image of Scotty from the shire. But that was quickly and successfully modified — or just happened by drift — and Morrison’s faith was plugged into nationalism.
In the 2019 election the Coalition rolled out its notion of “quiet Australians” and “the promise of Australia” and “have a go to get a go”. Did this work? Did it make any difference? We don’t know, but Labor didn’t have anything like it and the Coalition won.
I don’t think anyone was crocheting home samplers with “have a go to get a go” circling Scotty’s head. Many may have found it twee and embarrassing, but that wouldn’t have stopped it working. It may well have given it cover to work at a deeper level.
Public relations “spin” was invented by Edward Bernays around the time of World War I. He was Sigmund Freud’s nephew and he pretty much applied Freud’s theories in reverse to come up with modern messaging.
Kitsch imagery and naive sentimentalism can thus work as cover for a deeper message. The conscious mind rejects the topmost message, which allows the unconscious to accept an underlying message more fulsomely.
Yes, no one is fooled into thinking that Scotty builds all those damn cubbyhouses. But the image acts as a metonomy for what’s really being talked about: the positive imagery is some notion of home, groundedness, the real. The underside of it is, of course: our home. Our place. Us, not them. You, not they.
Morrison’s message thus draws on religious notion of a covenant and secularises it. Australia is the promised land. The promise is that there is some real relation between effort and reward. Which is a promise that you will be protected from the caprice of fate. The message can be sold so sincerely because Morrison believes it — which is the best way of faking it. Possibly because of his background in tourism peak bodies — which involves, what else, but selling a promised land to the world — Morrison and his team understand the power of concrete imagery, visual messaging, and the power of the simple and repeated symbol.
Maybe someone has decided that now was the time to torque it up a bit. Or not.
The revelations are not without political risk, for all the reasons spoken of here yesterday, but the notion that they would certainly damage Morrison in an increasingly secularised society is simple-minded.
There may be a decline in organised religiosity — especially of the “mainline” churches — but both the evangelical churches and a more general vague spiritualism continue to grow.
Morrison and his cohort would be horrified to see themselves lumped in with the crystal healers and people who believe that there is some generic “force” in the universe but I suspect it would be the case that many people could find something to admire in the strength of his faith.
They may identify also with the suburban non-establishment character of that faith. Morrison is apparently a member of “a church” started by his father, a cop, and it doesn’t really get much more “ordained” than that. Such people, if they go out into the world, learn the trick of living among the faithless. Such churches descend from absolute notions of the saved and the damned of Baptism and Calvinism, and such people — if they go out into the world at all — learn to dissemble, because they regard the world as currently under Satan’s sway.
To dissemble and to proselytise. Morrison was doing this from the start, as your correspondent noted soon after he gained power and told the audience at the National Science Awards that science begins with belief. Which is a rather perfect inversion of how science actually works. But it allowed him to spruik the faith, to bear witness — which his sect instructs, indeed demands, that he do.
The suggestion that he has seen normal prime ministerial meet-and-greets as an opportunity for the “laying on of hands”, the direct infusion of faith, reinforces the possibility that he regards prime ministerial duties as equally split between running the country and spreading the faith.
The least important part of all this is the “prosperity gospel” angle, which is the one that has attracted most attention from progressives. Whatever role this plays behind the scenes, Morrison’s quasi-religious message to the country is the opposite of the individualist, anti-state message that similarly aligned American preachers spruik.
Instead, Morrison’s message fuses national collectivism with a sense of immanent presence to give a lustre to ordinary lives. The kingdom is with you because you live in a land of promise, whether you are defending our borders or building the kids a cubbyhouse.
I don’t really understand why progressives don’t understand what is happening here. Perhaps you need to have had a religious education to understand it from within, that even our secular life is shot through with Christian understandings of the world, of the power of myth, that modern politics is founded in parable.
The common progressive reaction — that “this is all crap” — is an expression of incomprehension of, and envy at, its success. Labor, founded on a mix of Methodism and Marx, used to understand this. It has ceased to. Its only full success since 1996 came when it was led by a man who mixed Methodism and Mao.
It talks about going to the suburbs, and then offers them a focus on campaigns tackling reconciliation and violence against women — progressive substitutes for a religious-national faith. Its dominant reaction is a barely concealed exhausted exasperation, with people for whom Morrison’s message provides some succour.
Without a parallel message, it may well sneer its way back into opposition all over again. Or the Australian public may throw this mob out.
Who knows? Jesus does, but he’s not saying. Not on the ballot? You’ve got to be kidding.
If christianity is what underpins the behaviour of our prime minister then I am unimpressed because that behaviour involves lying to the Australian public, unethical behaviour, the use of RoboDebt and other devices to hound people, often in an unwarranted and who often have no means of defense against bureaucratic violence.
That’s not a christian in my book.
Christianity has always been the ultimate draconian institution leaving behind plundered societies many of those also being Christian societies. Theocracies were the norm not long ago.
All man made religions are about power over the people,never forget that, and that’s exactly what Morrison is doing for himself, but also for Houston who is using him to build an empire of his particular cult with groups wherever he can, and Morrison is using OUR money to help him do that while Houston encourages the fool into believing he’s God’s chosen,but then he claims all members of his cult are chosen but only if you can cheat your way into being wealthy seems to be their creed.
Nice points. I would just add all religions are man made with no exception. God was made in the image of man while man places himself equal alongside god by giving himself immortality.
I doubt the plan was as calculated as you suggest. Just as last week’s hi-vis Twerking with Twiggy session was about sandbagging seats in WA, this laying-on-of-the-hands on the Gold Coast was about preserving the windfall gains of the 2019 election in Queensland, the state that won it for them. It was a politically defensive move by their sole remaining asset, not a Jiang Qing-style cultural revolution. Since winning the last poll against the odds, a myth has grown up around Morrison as some kind of seer when we know it was essentially Clive Palmer’s money that won it for them. If anyone is thinking about this all far too literally, it is not the progressive vote but the Libs’ brains trust who are now half-stonkered on their own kool aid.
Trouble is, Morrison is still ahead of Albanese as preferred PM and a recent opinion poll gave him high approval ratings for his handling of the vaccine rollout-out, even amongst Labor and Green voters. Whereas the Federal Government’s handling of this has been absolutely woeful
It is all a bit ‘don’t think of an elephant’ as per George Lakoff, where people generally form views of the basis of feelings not facts. So if your PR constantly uses images and language that create certain impressions (and Morrison is a master at this) then most people aren’t going to check the reality, which is that Morrison actually does very little in the way of running the country.
Yes, but is the preferred prime minister a meaningful indication of electoral prospects? Abbott was never liked much, but the electorate in 2013 wanted to turf the ALP badly enough.
As long as people read and watch right wing media, where the truth is well hidden, we won’t get through to people what they need to know in order to make a well considered vote.
George Lakoff, “Don’t think of an elephant: Know your values and frame the debate’, Scribe 2004 is a guide for progressives to understand what people like Morrison are doing. I had a quick look it again and it lays out the script used by conservatives to frame the arguments which they have done brilliantly. The way we frame political discussions in Australia now is straight from the US conservatives handbook. From the blurb on the back cover: ‘conservatives now dominate politics because they understand the power of political metaphors as rhetorical framing devices: inherently positive terms like ‘family values’, ‘war on terror’ and ‘tax relief’ make it impossible to argue without sounding foolish, treacherous, or dangerously radical. . . Lakoff explains how the right has managed co-opt traditional values in order to popularise its political agenda.’ ‘ . . one of his points is that people vote for their identity and values, not necessarily their self-interest.’
This is what Morrison is very good at in his marketing.
Since the first time I saw Morrispin I have given him no credit as a person of worth. To me he is and always has been a self-agrandising nobody. It troubles me that anyone cannot see right through his stance of using religion–though I do not consider his cult as anything other than a money- making business. The Houstons spotted him as soon as he walked through their door, and the son has cultivated his ego day by day until the damn fool believes he his God’s right hand. Poor delusional fool.
What are Morrison and the Penties trying to save us from? Ourselves, the socialists, the evil one, Penrith footy club, the homeless, the rapture, the wrath of the Lord? 2021 and we are still talking about this shite!
JMNO that books sounds fascinating, i will have to track it down. is there anything in the book that suggests how to negate its influence? or is it a case of having to fight fire with fire?
The book is written for progressives who want to reframe the arguments and it has a few chapters at the end on this – after showing how the Right’s arguments work.
How do the “family values” square with the behaviour Morrison displays himself and apparently condones in his ministers?
I was trying, probably not very well, to explain the language the conservatives use to keep the voters voting for them. Morrison seems to know how to use the language. But as far as I can see, there’s no substance beyond it. He’s all marketing.
It is all in how the conservatives define families and the moral order in a hierarchy with God at the top, man second, nature last. Lakoff’s exposition of the thinking is complex but you can see it in the IPA’s work and in a lot of the culture war arguments.
Yes JMNO, people vote at the gut level, not the analytical, which is why they often vote against their own and our national interest.
Or as they used to say in America – grab them by the balls and their hearts and minds will follow.
Don’t know if I’m atypical of disgruntled older voters who can’t wait to give Morrison and his thieving, irresponsible clowns the boot, but if someone rings me and starts with “I’d like to ask you a few questions about voting” I hang up immediately. Moreover News poll is owned by…guess who/what…so who would care what they publish except the stenographers of the press gallery?
I read those stories JMNO, and honestly I suspect they were cooked. They defy rational analysis.
Morrison does tabloid politics. Splashy front page, sport on the back and nothing in between.
But it keeps the punters supporting him (according to the polls). what an easy way to run the country. Mount a canny PR campaign and then you don’t actually have to do anything useful.
Totes agree Mr Denmore, the second half particularly. The thing is that either you and I are deluded, or they are, and I’m not sure which.
Our agreed position relies on Australians being slightly smarter than the LNP gives them credit, so our thesis is on exceedingly thin ice.
Oh lookie there, a downvote, the first one I’ve witnessed. I wonder what I wrote that could either offend or be argued against.
Razzi claims that down votes are often an indication that a sound point has been made which has upset one of the usual suspects.
It must depend on how you’re prepared to define success. If the only definition is votes in ballot boxes, then yes, you can probably swing that through consensual fantasy.
Am I the only one who thinks that’s a bit of a thin definition though? Surely there are some other people who would like to see some beneficial outcomes in the real.
Yeah, yeah, I’m surely one of those condescending progressives we keep hearing about.
Morrison will likely go down in history as the great underachiever because he has no substance, he’s the hollow man who fails mirrors.
Can’t agree.
I am definitely not rejecting Rundle’s premise on the basis of secularity…I can see perfectly well how a quiet bog-standard church of england type PM works quite nicely, assuring people that they would be bound to a standard of morality that most of us can relate to.
So it’s a plus for lip-service christianity, but the exotic nuttiness of charismatic religions, with the speaking in tongues, the laying on of hands etc….naah.
That’s a definite turn-off imo.
I think we need to ask ourselves, how would an ad affect the PMs standing, if it were a minute of highlights from Copeland, Benny Hinn, Margaret Court et al, all frothing at the mouth, babbling and falling over in raptures? And that ad ends in the PM himself, in a trance, swaying back and forth like a loonie?
Can’t see the LNP marketeers going anywhere near it, but an Aussie “Lincoln Project” style team would be all over it before you could say “ablubba wubba bubba ablubba”
Perhaps the prospect of parishioners lining up at the altar to receive ‘the body and blood of Jesus’, via the wafers made by the nuns, is more your thing? – now that’s definitely more acceptable and way less creepy than ‘swaying back and forth like a loonie’…..
I reckon the difference in acceptability comes from increased familiarity with rituals, plus the symbolic nature of them helping to take the curse off, so to speak.
You have to explain to someone, that the wine and wafers is ritual cannibalism – then they look at you like “WHAT THE…????”
On the other side, no one needs to look for hidden symbolism in talking gibberish and pretending to be full of the holy spirit by writhing around on the ground – that’s not a metaphor for the thing, it IS the thing.
And that’s my point, between the acceptability of more mainstream religions, and the charismatic cults. People can handle the eating of symbolic wafers better than the blather of speaking in tongues in my opinion.
I’m not one for splitting hairs when it comes to defending various religions – I think they are ALL equally indefensible.
Accepting the ‘taking of communion’ while ridiculing ‘speaking in tongues’ makes no sense to me. Nor does
rationalising such madness via a hierarchy of social acceptability.
AnotherSatellite, I don’t think we’re disagreeing- i think religions are all false too.
The point I am making is how the Morrison fans will react, not how I react – Rundle’s article says they will not only be alright with his charismatic christianity, but they will empathise with him, as a victim of lefty persecution.
I am disagreeing with Rundle on this, I think the Liberal base won’t take a shine to a religion that isn’t main stream and not what they’re used to – they will see it as a minus not a plus.
If the latest polls are any gauge, Morrison’s popularity, despite the determined attempts of progressives, would appear very much intact. I doubt whether his religious choice will alter this.
As Rundle states ‘many people could find something to admire in the strength of his faith’. So the brand of religion appears less important than the capacity to believe in ….something.
Yep. We’re told we must respect the PM’s religion. We are constantly told we must respect religion and religious belief.
I’m not sure why, to be honest. I read about two women in Port Moresby being beaten and burned by twenty men who believe Exodus 22:18 the other day. Am I supposed to respect that religious belief, too?
We’re told to respect faith so often, the public does. “ Person of faith” is a compliment in secular Australia, whispered reverently- sometimes the only nice thing someone will have to say about someone else.
I saw headlines today claiming that having a go at the PM’s beliefs is having a go at every Christian. Once the PM’s Pentecostalism is repackaged as simple, familiar Christianity, the faith respecting public will revere the man of faith, just as they’ve been taught to do.
Religion exists solely to justify unconscionable behaviour.
Buddhism?
Myanmar?
Military dudes with nowhere to go. Same as Fiji.
Sri Lanka? Cambodia?
Or the outlier, the Republic of Kalmykia in Russia’s south – a barren landscape the size of Scotland, wedged between Stavropol and Astrakhan on the coast of the Caspian Sea.
A perfect proof of Andrew’s point- no interest in improving the world, entirely about avoiding rebirth of the individual.
An early example of “Screw youse, stop the Wheel,I wanna get off!”
You might take a comprehensive analysis of the politics of Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Fiji. Then we will discuss “improvements”.
Bingo. Progressivism’s killer flaw right now is smugly thinking that hating priestly pedos, hating violence against women, hating racism, hating unfairness, hating News, hating greed, hating queer bashers, hating kitten kickers, hating flat earthers, hating Mother haters, hating Sky Is Blue deniers, hating those who assert that bears don’t sh*t in the woods and the Kennedys were gun-loving Hasidic, and especially hating the idea of an imaginary friend in the sky – all this hate with thrice the conspicuous moral fervour of everyone else – is a political and moral worldview.
It’s not. It’s just narcissistic reactionary misanthropy. Like the worst of the religions, including many evangos, except stripped of the conviction that is their one (worrying) electoral saving grace.
I’m not sure about Qld or Vic but if the ALP ever wants to win back the Lindsays, Reids and Mitchells, they’ll need a catholic, anglican, prot, meth, jewish or muslim religious centrist who isn’t (absurdly) squeamish about saying the word ‘god’ publicly, or can at least fake uttering it cheerfully as a civic positive, or at least-least, without visibly sneering or gagging or hiding behind convenient Westminster separation tropes.
This is now an urgent strategic reality for soft pap progs to grapple with. ScoMo’s imaginary friend may be absurd, but what does that make of the losers who can’t lay a democratic glove on Him?
Paraphrasing John Paul Jones, the polarisation has yet to begin.
Always amuses me to be called “hate-filled” by Conservatives who literally grew up hating EVERYONE who doesn’t resemble them. Non-white, non-Christian, non-binary, non-hetero, non-male…..your demeanour and language clearly show you’ve hated ALL of these groups at some point.
As to why we supposedly can’t lay a “democratic glove” on him is because the Liberal Party now have the tightest grip on our media that they have ever possessed. Murdoch owns Sky and News Corpse, Costello controls 9 and Fairfax, Stokes owns 7, and SBS/ABC have been defunded to the point of near impotence. Nothing remotely democratic about that.
Ah, hi Marcus, yes yes, terrible to be up against so much, etc etc. I am always happy to amuse you, but your guys just keep losing elections, right? If you’re OK with that….cool, so be it.
As for me, happy to politely swerve around your usual scorched earth wishful thinking re: my bigotry. I am very, very rude on this forum, to pretty much everyone, sooner or later, but I do realise many now find it hard to tell the difference between that, and hatred, of which there is not a drop in my heart, for any living creature, chrs.
Nailed it.
Heya, I’m a bit late to this and haven’t read all of the below, but I did want to comment on:
“…that hating priestly pedos, hating violence against women, hating racism, hating unfairness, hating News, hating greed, hating queer bashers, hating kitten kickers, hating flat earthers, hating Mother haters, hating Sky Is Blue deniers, hating those who assert that bears don’t sh*t in the woods and the Kennedys were gun-loving Hasidic, and especially hating the idea of an imaginary friend in the sky – all this hate with thrice the conspicuous moral fervour of everyone else – is a political and moral worldview. It’s not.
It’s just narcissistic reactionary misanthropy. Like the worst of the religions, including many evangos, except stripped of the conviction that is their one (worrying) electoral saving grace.”
I consider myself a leftie and a progressive, but I actually agree with this, and it worries me.
For example, it became trendy of late to hate and cancel JK Rowling based on her not agreeing with the current apparently hallowed view de jour that gender is entirely about the way a person feels and nothing to do with biology. I’ve read her blog post on her position and I agree with her, and also with her concerns about the rights of groups other than (as well as, of course) transgender groups, which to me are equally important – e.g. we should look carefully at how women feel about some of the proposed changes that would affect them, etc, and not just dismiss that as unimportant, or even worse, call that anti-transgender – and it seems to me that anyone who questions or deviates from any view de jour these days will automatically be classified as therefore being anti-transgender or racist or sexist etc etc and be vilified and cancelled themselves – and that’s blind hatred, and not reasoned debate.
I’m a biologist by training and I don’t see how you can take biology out of the equation with anything to do with biological bodies, including whether a person identifies as male or female or gender fluid or anything else on that spectrum. We are biology, and the mind with which we think and make decisions, and our feelings too, don’t come from some non-biological entity in the ether that’s magically detached from everything else on the planet and above natural processes. The mind too is a biological entity. But I guess there’s still the residue of the Great Chain of Being in the popular imagination that has humans somewhere between supernatural gods and animals, perhaps with the body of an animal but some higher soul that they think makes us better than other animals in some magical way, and that’s actually demonstrable bonkum, because we’re part of the evolutionary tree that’s given rise to the entire animal kingdom, and neuroscience doesn’t require a magical explanation for how humans operate.
And I’ve wondered about the environmental pollution that’s having biological effects on the population, e.g. giving people cancer (nobody would argue with that), increasing asthma attacks (ditto), probably involved in drastically dropping the Western male sperm count over the last few decades (hormone mimics in plasticisers are potentially part of the reason), etc.
And when they found that some of the breakdown products in the treated sewage going into Port Phillip Bay was causing disruption in the sexual development of tadpoles, creating a lot of intersexes (and they could replicate this in the laboratory), I did wonder whether this was also a matter of concern for other species – including Homo (allegedly) sapiens – because that’s a logical thing to wonder, and a matter worthy of investigation – just as we should investigate whether environmental pollutant/chemicals leaching out of food packaging etc is involved in the accelerated puberty in girls in recent decades.
Because although the increase in humans self-identifying as trans is partly due to social factors like increased acceptance and increased awareness, it’s also quite possible that environmental pollutants including substances leaching from food packaging are affecting sexual development and identity in young children. But can you imagine how such an investigation could be politicised? “Are you saying that being trans is an aberration, a disease, etc etc etc?” (hate hate hate cancel cancel cancel) …well no, and we know that many weird and ultimately incorrect psychological theories were made up about what caused homosexuality, when actually it occurs naturally in non-human animals as well (so much for the commonly held idea that it was “unnatural” etc), and there’s pretty good ecological explanations for why homosexuality becomes an advantage to a species especially under certain conditions – notably increased population density – same sort of potential reason why magpies bring up their offspring communally, with the breeding pair being helped by non-breeding relatives (who are mostly not homosexual, by the way; the point here is that there’s more nurturers than actual breeders around and this actually can be an advantage to a social species – and no, I am not saying or implying that homosexual couples shouldn’t have their own children, of course they should if they want to, I’m just explaining some of the biological nitty-gritty behind some biological characteristics – the prejudice is projected by the beholder and belongs to them).
The really stupid thing is that the kneejerk prejudice about the kinds of things I’m talking about is caused by people projecting their own biases and judgements on this kind of investigative discourse – instead of thinking about what’s being said. And I think “narcissistic reactionary misanthropy” is an excellent description of how all of this works.
And another application of it – some people, for example, say anyone could be a doctor with enough training, but that’s no more realistic than the idea that anyone could hammer in a nail straight with enough training – everyone has some things they’re good at, and some things they are bad at – and while we can and should all apply ourselves to become more capable in our weak areas, we should also use our strengths, and develop our strengths. So I’m not going to run like Cathy Freeman no matter how much training had been put into me as a youngster – but that’s OK. I’m good at other things. The biggest snobbery here is the socially inbuilt idea that a good doctor is worth more than a good carpenter or a good teacher or a good banjo maker or a good cook, when they are equally deserving of respect. And that’s the snobbery that says that everyone should go and get a university degree.
To go back to the kinds of things that make me really uneasy about the current view de jour: The recent idea that white people wearing dreadlocks is inappropriate cultural theft – ever thought of it as a potential expression of siblinghood? And even if it’s not, I wouldn’t want to dictate that people can’t wear certain hairstyles because of their skin colour or ethnicity or anything else – would no more argue that Asian people shouldn’t be allowed to go blonde or African people shouldn’t be allowed to straighten their hair, than that Europeans shouldn’t be allowed dreadlocks. Nor would I think people’s choice of musical instrument should be confined to what their own “tribe” came up with. This just creates more stupid and unnecessary divisions and if these people had their way, we’d all become like little football teams of narrow tribal characteristics, in a stupid kind of cultural apartheid (ironically, in the name of avoiding racism).
Last week the some people identifying as lefties were suggesting (but not in my name, I can tell you) that people should stop referring to any parents as “mummy” or “daddy” because it leaves out transgender parents. We should just say “parent” apparently. Well, hang on a moment – a lot of people self-identify as “mummy” and “daddy” – and it’s somehow OK to take who they are away from them? Let transgender people be what they want, but let’s not let that take away other people’s right to be male or female, and identify as such, and use language which identifies it. This stuff is crazy…
Waiting for the downvotes to pour in. 😛
Overall a decent post Sue. Too much for me to respond to at the moment but I will keep this post in mind.
Greer and Doug Murray along with any number of well qualified others agree with you on the question of trans.
The content of Jack’s post has no relation with the Left and no one is able to provide a coherent definition of “progressive”. Rather than appeal to authorative sources, one subscriber declared that socialism is what Bernie Sanders says it is! I’m tired of describing “conservativeism”.
Thirty years ago about 40-60% of a Yr10 class (depending upon the neighborhood) were living with a step-parent. I have often wondered what the social consequences might be for more hybrid arrangements.
Anyone who has the attention span to read your post is unlikely to down-vote it.
Not reading, let alone comprehension, would seem sine qua non of copious downing.
‘Greer and Doug Murray’… ‘well qualified’? Could you elaborate? Last century? 🙂
Yes. The last paragraph of Sue’s post is illustrative.
It is entirely clear that even in the plant kingdom the distinction between male and female is ENTIRELY and UNAMBIGUOUSLY clear. The entire point of a species is reproduction and in “higher” orders of organism such is achieved by male and females of a given species.
I am happy to summarize Greer and Murray et al but you might familiarise yourself with there arguments first.
In a nutshell, the trans thing is distinct from homosexuality. The trans thing is sustained ONLY by affirmation in the same way as (the discredited) Eco Feminism of the 90s.
The subterfuge of trans masquerading as a really when the empiricism of the matter is verifiable by the very existence of a species contains its own distruction.
I’m not certain how much overlap there is between what I’m saying and what Greer and Murray were saying, Mr E. As a biologist I know there’s males, females, and various intersexes in a lot of sexual species. Have you ever looked at sequential hermaphroditism in various marine animals, plants etc? Really fascinating. Male/female is quite fluid in a lot of species – in the sexual and functionally reproductive sense.
Gender, of course, is a cultural construct around biological sex in humans – and much of the construction of that was bonkum (I can cite examples, but I’m sure you can too). And if biological sex can be fluid in some organisms, why not gender, which is just a construct, not a biological phenomenon. I’m not arguing against that. I’m just arguing that the existence of trans people doesn’t invalidate the existence of males and females, or vice versa. And trans people are real – in case you’re suggesting they aren’t. So I don’t agree with a number of your paragraphs.
And re “higher” orders, even bacteria mate to exchange DNA – which doesn’t, in their case, make them male or female.
And I quite like some of the ideas in ecofeminism, and the subject as a whole has not been “debunked” at all.
Or hermaphroditism in worms. However, the very word refers to the sexual (in the strict sense) distinction that exists.
By “higher” I didn’t intend unicellular organisms.
There is not even an in-principle test that one could apply to ascertain if males and females have differing physical perceptions of physical structures or whatever. So it goes for Eco Feminism.
Thanks for this well considered piece.
Pity about the abysmal site format – it was worth putting in doc. to read.
In a paddock of cows without a bull, the first to run will be obvious because the others try to mount her and she will stand.
However, in full heat, she will begin mounting other cows.
Some. depending on their cycle, will stand,others do not.
A friend’s bitch, though desexed, routinely tries to mount her leg.
Ecclesiates 1:9.
You’re welcome. And Ecclesiastes has thoughtful things to say that even atheists / agnostics can benefit from (if the baby isn’t thrown out with the bathwater). Ever tried his literary cousin, Ecclesiasticus? Some bitter stuff and some brilliant stuff, just as with any good literature. Very Shakespearean in some ways.
Love it, SueC. That is definitely the best rant I have had the pleasure of reading. I agree with far too much of it to post anything but a big THANK YOU, and… you rock, girl 😉
You’re welcome. A good rant seems to be helpful to both the writer and some of the readers. I also enjoy reading good rants. 🙂 You have a nice weekend, now!
I do have a niece who is married to another woman and is pregnant by other means than male/female horizontal folk dancing… due in November… she states she was not gay before she met her partner and just fell in love with the person… so they are very ‘non-binary’ in their reference to each other… they don’t make a song and dance about that or their lifestyle… and most don’t … I say its other entities such as political parties or media who select these minor things to create faux and confected outrage or even celebration such as the the Greens coming out the other day and proclaiming it Lesbian Visibility Day… the feedback was mostly negative and WTF…
There is the present and some wisdom as we age. We have the personal references by Vita Sackville-West along with Virginia Woolf’s Orlando.
The reflections of your niece in two decades will be interesting.
Thanks for this report, Milton – it’s funny how the things we hear from our fellow citizens can not infrequently leave us feeling so much better than what we hear from various official channels. 🙂
Over 40 years ago, being pregnant with first child, I was curious about the environmental pollution occurring worldwide. It was more about disposal of toxic chemicals seeping into surrounding soil/water. Mainly looked at USA – easy to find books on subject as early environmentalists were just starting to look at industry. Then a couple decades back, paediatricians and medical professionals were talking of effects of chemicals on human body. One Dr said (of chemicals in food), that 1+1 chemical =2 and easy to see interaction and effects. But 1+1+1+1 did not make 4. The effects were more serious on developmental growth. Many other health/developmental issues raised then, but I would say the food lobby are OK at the moment – it’s an individual problem rather than a deliberate industry problem. Plus as you say – plastics everywhere affecting all life on earth – on land, water, all flora and fauna. Agree with all your topics. Thank you.
You’re welcome. Looking at fetal cord blood samples these days is scary.
This seems to be looking for a ‘strawman’ or ‘straw women’ i.e. inflate or conflagrate small or personal issues of e.g. identity, language etc. into existential angst by positing that freedom of others, their bodies, choice etc. impinges on the freedom of conservatives and/or Christians?
For example, I disagree with the last paragraph as it may misinterpret a series of issues on parenting and language that are researched at universities (in niche and small numbers courses), then links them up and inflates them as significant issue.
I observed the end result via Facebook with a couple I know (in NZ nowadays) reacting to someone sharing the Daily Telegraph article on the same confected parenting and language issue.
Their reaction was outrage at ‘universities’ telling them how to be parents; neither had studied nor ever been on a university campus while possessing zero parenting skills…… just showed how influential NewsCorp’s tabloid media is in Australia and online.
However, it helps denigrate education, research, issues of gender, sexual orientation, women’s empowerment etc. in society to strengthen conservative Christian voices.
Specifics are required for your first and second paragraphs Drew.
“This seems to be looking for a ‘strawman’ or ‘straw women’ i.e. inflate or conflagrate small or personal issues of e.g. identity, language etc. into existential angst by positing that freedom of others, their bodies, choice etc. impinges on the freedom of conservatives and/or Christians?”
I’m not sure what you mean by “this” but it’s definitely not what I think. By “this” do you mean the views of some conservatives and Christians? I’m neither of these things, which should have been abundantly clear.
Conflating several issues in a long comment including biology, environmental pollution, gender etc. with an unclear focus, but qualified support because one is ‘leftie’ and ‘progressive’?
‘ Well, hang on a moment – a lot of people self-identify as “mummy” and “daddy” – and it’s somehow OK to take who they are away from them?‘
Do not understand, who is literally taking whom away from whom?
Further, the Overton window has moved so far to the right that many ageing left and progressives in Oz sound like, or have the same sociocultural obsessions, as nativist conservatives; this strategy is observed elsewhere too (Howard and Crosby Textor knew how to pare away Labor votes of social conservatives).
What conflating exist is, it seems, unintentional. I intend to add more to my original reply in a few days.
As to Overton the empirical verses post truth is the region of conflict where Orwell is currently being played out.
I’ll let other people who understood what I was saying explain it to you. Unless, like me, they have better things to do.
Go to a Hillsong service. That IS now the Liberal base. And it’s smashing the sh*t out of most everything else in the swing electorates. You might not believe in even a ‘mainstream’ god but without one on your side you are never going to win another Fed election.
Why do progressives not get this?
I’m going to continue to vote as though you’re wrong on that point.
(And per the up-stream characterization of a hate-fueled progressive polity, I’m going to reject that idea too. Hate is the other team’s foundation.)
Hi Andrew, apologies, I replied at length to yours but it may not squeak through moderation, it was long and fairly rambling even by my standards. Absolutely you – we all – should keep voting without our gods in the booth. I think the winning trick for progressives is avoiding alienating believers before they step inside, for no discernible gain. Chrs.
There are still many people of faith in the ALP and they’re connecting with people of religion…note noteable ALP believer Kenneally’s great work in pursuing the incarceration of the Sri Lankan family… practical use of faith and religious beliefs…. I also note Jodi McKay and NSW Labor spends a lot of time attending functions organised by religious immigrant communities… I’m just not a believer and I don’t sneer at religion… I believe in what Gough used to say about being a fellow traveller with religious people….in any case much of the sneering is confected by media using tiny samples of complaints to create outrage…. I’ll never subscribe again to main stream media until they start doing there job of holding Governments to account …
Most annoying mis-feature of web-forms is their readiness to throw away significant work. Computers shouldn’t ever lose your work, IMO.
The not alienating believers is quite the trick isn’t it? Mostly because it depends on the believer. People believe all sorts of things: we’re curiously illogical creatures for the most part. Most of the time none of that matters, and people can be useful members of society while holding to the most absurd notions. However it seems to me that most of the current “religeous freedom” push is not about stopping or reducing sanctions against religeous observance, because there really aren’t many of those. It’s about allowing those observances to have negative consequencces for other members of society, without consequence. I think that it’s right to push back against those arguments and actions, and if that alienates some of the “believer” perpetrators, then that’s just how it is, and up to them.
Jack Robertson, how big a movement is Hillsong in the Oz landscape?
I thought the last census showed more australians said they had no religion than the census before, part of a continuing downward trend over the last 30 years.
And when you say Hillsong is smashing everything in the swing electorates, could you expand on that with some examples of what you mean?
I’m asking respectfully, not to provoke an argument. If there’s some figures you could share to support these claims, I’d sincerely like to know as I’m interested in having a picture of the political landscape that is accurate, rather than what I’d personally like it to be.
Hey Glenn,…what, no argument? You’re no fun! 🙂
My long choppy, gobby reply above to Andrew R seeks (however clumsily, I am a pretty shambolic writer) to echo what Rundle put much more clearly, which is that the key is less about the absolute scale of the Evango movement, and more about its capacity to insinuate itself u threatening into the wider, I think ‘belief-starved, electorate which defaults towards a mostly/mildly decent social conservatism/live and let live-ism. And especially the way aggressively sanctimonious and prescriptive secular progressivism – often on contrived, deliberately-irresolvable ID politics sectionalism & hair-splitting/angels-on-a-pin moral arms races – is working to make the happy-clapper outfits (which I absolutely agree present great potential Trojan Horse risks going forward) seem the far more mainstream option.
I think one excellent, if oblique, way of quantifying both the nature and especially tactical savvy of evangos is to map the ‘same sex marriage’ plebiscite vote against the results of the last Fed swings, and then track the evango messaging on ‘rainbow’ issues since. The ABS has all the numbers, in seats like (here in Sydney) Lindsay, Reid, Mitchell but also the ones that stayed ALP but lost ground. The key thing is that, having lost the plebiscite, social conservatives (ie their organisation social forces, such as the Ev churches) in these catchment seats have swallowed the loss (bit like the micks on abortion) and softened their messaging on all gay issues since, to reflect the new secular-political-electoral reality…while still holding firm to a very socially conservative core.
Which, of course, can always be re-recalibrated once you’re even more firmly entrenched, if not impregnable.
Progressives need to re-learn fast about this. This process of knowing what and how to sacrifice of your ‘purity’ to keep up with the electorate, without selling out everything. That’s what makes ID politics so destructive. It’s pretty much all idiotic, tyre-kicking surface, that achieves nothing of substance, wastes resources, splits parties…and makes you unelectable Pure Einstein geenyus. You don’t have have to slavishly parse pronouns to back in the trans community. And you don’t have to believe in god to back in the god community, either.
Just go to the ABS site or the EC site and search out the plebiscite. I would be interested to hear your thoughts/analysis of just that one example, especially if you from Melb or the SE Wld happy clap belt. chrs.
thanks Jack Robertson, will check it out. 🙂
Small base then. Pentecostals about 260,000 as of 2016 in Australia. Even less Hillsong members.
How do you correlate this “base” with swing electorates?
Conservative Christian right takeovers of the Liberals in QLD, VIC and WA have decimated them at state elections;
https://www.afr.com/politics/liberal-survivor-puts-spotlight-on-right-wing-churches-20210315-p57au7
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/victoria/the-religious-minority-seizing-power-in-the-liberal-party-20180601-p4ziyq.html
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2018/09/15/the-liberals-religious-right/15369336006852#hrd
Different at a federal level, but there’s a difference between populism and right wing conservatism. No wonder the religious freedom bill has been conveniently shelved. “Christian values” and policies being dished up at a state level, have been rejected, time and time again.
Conservative Christian influence in WA, VIC and QLD has been pointed out by their own party members as an issue, for not appealing to a wider base.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/06/christian-soldiers-and-climate-deniers-inside-the-fight-for-control-of-the-queensland-lnp
Hey, CJ, I did reply but it’s likely it won’t squeak through moderation. Really good links and I’m very interested in where the Evanj/LNP mods stoush is at outside nSW. In Sydney, with 12 of the 17 SSM ‘no’ electorates – many in Labor heartland – the ‘social conservative’ electoral impulse is the real driving factor behind Evangelicalism’s traction, and that secular impulse runs far deeper snd wider than the mere happy clapper cohort. Non believers will default towards the churchy side if forced to by a too-unpalatable and aggressively proselytised progressive pitch, which includes a gratuitous sneer at the god-botherers. Chrs.
Vic Libs learnt that it is not a good idea to stack hollowed out branches with compliant Mormons because it’s a good way of getting dud or ‘entryist’ candidates who are not acceptable to the electorate, or nowadays, women…..
It’s trying to replicate the US GOP using evangelicals, anti abortion, Catholic, alt/far right, conspiracy theorists etc., as part of a conservative voter coalition but Australia, like the UK and Europe, simply does not have the levels of Christian belief and observance that Americans have (but the US is falling too).
Northern Territory, Canberra, WA & Queensland State elections all tell a very different story, Jack. Religion didn’t win Moronscum the last election, and nor did Conservatism. A well constructed anti-Labor fear-mongering campaign, from News-corpse & Palmer the Hutt, coupled with the biggest marginal seat bribe in history, was just barely enough to get Moronscum’s toe across the line.
Federal Labor electorates in ‘the Area‘ – once their bailiwicks – had some of the highest NO votes against SSM.
Which Bowen & his ilk ignored, at their increasing peril.
BTW, nationally only 48.5% of the electorate voted YES – 62% of the 80% who returned the junk mail, non binding, optional, plebiscite.
Hardly a resounding endorsement.
yep.
Sorry to come at this from a naughty angle instead of the seriousness it deserves, but I can’t help thinking about Pastafarians and how we’d go with a PM who’s into the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It’s real, in case anyone thinks I’m joking, and an interesting exercise in subversion and parody. Besides, their wedding ceremonies are rather cool, hahaha.
If any of them had read a bible they would know that “speaking in tongues” came from only one person in the congregation. It was not a babble of nonsense it was an actual language unfamiliar to the congregation, which only occurred when there was a person who understood that language and could, therefore, translate the message. It was never intended that the whole congregation would ^speak^ at the same time making a headaching racket. Unfortunately for me, I was invited along to a gathering and even the music was a dreadful racket. Of course, if it gave you a headache or made you feel you would throw up, their excuse was that you were filled with satan. How the hell was I allowed in the door. Oddly, this was after I had been taken up the the stage and ended up speaking in tongues, yep! Then I was told to go home and practice in the shower. No one translated what I had said. After that came the head throbbing racket. Maybe if someone understood the language I was speaking in they would have discovered that they were barkingup the wrong cult.
OMG why isn’t the general conversation in the country on the level it is in these comments? Then we probably wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. Assuming we could get non-narcissists to run for politics across the board.
Were “…the general conversation in the country on the level it is in these comments” I’d take the first rocket to Mars, one way.
Of course, some are erudite, some lucid, some practical and some so cynical that Antisthenes & Diogenes would urge them to lighten up & smell the conium.
However, few embody all, or even sufficient, of those ‘qualities’ to be of any use in the corrupted body politic currently running riot.
This is very true, Morag, but at least the people here are more engaged in thinking than average. Also I didn’t mean to imply they particularly should run for politics, just that non-narcissists in general would be a better choice than narcissists and sociopaths, who are more highly represented in power positions than the percentage of the population they represent, because they are irresistibly attracted to the power and hierarchical status these positions afford – and we can all see the damage they do.
If average voters thought about the broad swath of general issues as much as the average commentators here think about them, we might actually get an election that’s decided more on policies than spin, or indeed the personal appearance of the candidates (which is how one of my extended family members voted in several elections).
Very funny about Diogenes – who was probably the first champion of the Tiny House! 🙂
Check out the J W Waterhouse (usually soft porn Victoriana) painting, if only for the
anachronisms – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waterhouse-Diogenes.jpg
Yes, hahaha, I sent that exact one to a friend last week! 🙂
…he doesn’t have much vacuuming to do now, does he, especially considering he didn’t actually have a vacuum cleaner…
Nor the damsels Parisian Chine parasols.
Don’t forget the schizophrenics in amongst the present lot.
Should we take the DSM-5 to parliament and do some fieldwork?
Or is it more a case for a Parliamentary Dalek?
It is an indication of how hugely this country has changed that wowsers & god botherers, once rightly derided as the tattered vestiges of olde worlde privilege & class, are no longer laughed at in the street but elected.
Poor fella,my country.