Momentous times in Oz
July 3rd 2010 07:05
I'll be taking a break for a couple of weeks, dear readers, to recharge the batteries. Before I go, a few thoughts on the last year or so in Oz politics.
We have seen the fall of two highly competent leaders in Turnbull and Rudd to be replaced by people with less inate ability and certainly less principle, except for that of personal ambition above all else.
Turnbull and Rudd were certainly not ideal and both suffered from overweening self confidence, but Abbott is both dull and driven by forces he will never be able to admit to and Gillard is also driven by a core of powerlust. Both have lied and back-stabbed leaders they professed loyalty to and totally rejected views they once espoused strongly.
It is one thing to say, 'well, that's modern politics', but if it is we need to really start thinking about what it means.
If formal politics is now so debased and corrupt, can we create some new way of running our ever more complex society? Will cyberspace allow a new kind of social-networked politics to emerge, or will the real crises now emerging recreate a content-based politics that re-emphasises intellect and honesty over cheap popular appeal?
Because if we can't generate a new kind of politics, the current vested interests will increasingly take over just as the global economic crisis and that other great market failure, global warming, show how out of date their ideas really are.
We have seen the fall of two highly competent leaders in Turnbull and Rudd to be replaced by people with less inate ability and certainly less principle, except for that of personal ambition above all else.
Turnbull and Rudd were certainly not ideal and both suffered from overweening self confidence, but Abbott is both dull and driven by forces he will never be able to admit to and Gillard is also driven by a core of powerlust. Both have lied and back-stabbed leaders they professed loyalty to and totally rejected views they once espoused strongly.
If formal politics is now so debased and corrupt, can we create some new way of running our ever more complex society? Will cyberspace allow a new kind of social-networked politics to emerge, or will the real crises now emerging recreate a content-based politics that re-emphasises intellect and honesty over cheap popular appeal?
Because if we can't generate a new kind of politics, the current vested interests will increasingly take over just as the global economic crisis and that other great market failure, global warming, show how out of date their ideas really are.
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