Incomprehensible behaviour by elected officials
An opponent is someone with whom you have a shared understanding and agreement about the rules, and system. Regardless of who wins, the system survives. An enemy, by contrast, wants to destroy your system, and they’ll do it by pretending to honor the rules, and breaking them whenever convenient. Lying, cheating, rigging, propaganda, bribery, imprisonment of competitors, whatever it takes.
How the Right’s relentless, selfish focus on “rights” is destroying our democracy from the inside.
A musing on the root-causes of Roe-v-Wade’s overturn—Senate malapportionment and bad faith—and proposed remedies. Not a discussion of Roe v. Wade.
Can you tell lies in a “balanced” article? Of course. Here’s an example.
How “right” and “wrong” are equivalent for the ABC’s fact-checkers, who cherry-pick their results.
Every election, and oftentimes in between, there are calls from people who regard either the major parties or political discourse as too far Right or Left. These people will call for a party to represent the “Sensible Centre”, or lament what they perceive as polarisation in politics, which is failing to represent what they contend […]
A frequent criticism of government ministers is that they have absolutely no experience or qualifications in their portfolios. Can we take that criticism seriously? Let’s look at the high-level list of portfolios: AgricultureEnvironmentDefenceEducationEmploymentFinanceForeign affairs HealthCustomsIndustryScienceEnergyResources(Attorney-General) TransportCommunicationDevelopmentSocial ServicesTreasuryVeteran’s Affairs(Prime Minister) What are the chances that, of the MPs elected, the party or parties forming government will […]
Perhaps now, far too late, it’s finally obvious that Morrison never intended to use or follow the Doherty modelling in any meaningful fashion. At the very beginning of the pandemic he made his political and ideological preferences clear—go to the footy, let it rip—but such was the overwhelming pressure for a medical, scientifically sound path […]
Originally tweeted by Peter Barnes (@infinite8horizo) on 2022/01/08. There’s black humour in peeling back the layers of wrong here (not Allan’s, what he describes). tl;dr —A model’s predictions can be wrong if its assumptions are wrong; —or wrong if they’re correct but are invalidated later. —A model’s predictions are *irrelevant* if politicians only wanted the […]
With the LNP it’s not “better late than never”, it’s “always late – or never” Water bombers- never Bushfire fund – never ICAC – never Quarantine – never Vaccines – late Rollout – late Local mRNA – still late NSW lockdowns – late Boosters – late RATs – never, then late Do you remember Morrison […]
On the one hand we should, again, applaud @latingle for calling a spade a spade when almost the entire MSM and many of her ABC colleagues are doing their usual bucolic gushing. On the other hand, she’s perpetuating the myth. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-06/morrison-glasgow-trip-climate-change-national-security-questions/100598788 The myth that most of the MSM’s employees are actually journalists and bona-fide members […]
I think we might have reached that point where nuance just dies under the appalling load of a megaton of bullshit. THIS IS TOTAL BULLSHIT THIS IS SNAKE OIL DRESSED UP AS FAKERY MASQUERADING AS BULLSHIT THERE IS NO PLAN IT’S BLATANT DO-NOTHING KABUKI THEATRE I appreciate that when a supposedly responsible, serious body like […]
The asymmetry of propaganda warfare. Brief thread. It’s a truism of warfare that defenders have to succeed every single time, while attackers only have to succeed once. It’s true, for example, of cybersecurity, but it’s also true of propaganda. This is because there are infinitely many lies that can be told, many of them plausible, […]
Here’s a perfect worked example of what I call the “Dead Overton Whistle”. It combines the most noxious elements of the Crosby-Textor dead cat, an attempt to move the Overton window, and a typical political dog-whistle. Johnson was supposed to be in parliament, getting excoriated for his part in yet another piece of breathtaking corruption. […]
A deliberate, calculating liar doesn’t have to lie all the time to be an immoral, bad-faith actor. It’s much better strategy to tell the truth about all the little things, & save the lies for occasional, big, important things. No, not Morrison. Murdoch/Costello/Redstone MSM What also works is to lie by omission.What doesn’t get reported […]
infinite8horizon - peter d barnes 