(Southern Cross) Words

All Politics Is Local That’s the adage, coined by Tip O’Neil, but the interpretation can be misleading. Yes, you as a candidate rely on the locality in which you run, to be recognised, to have the support necessary, and you build this on your actions. But when you get to the federal level, you’re delivering for the nation much more than for your own district. Spending will be directed down to a local level, but the municipality and the state will have greater local effects than federal spending programs. High-speed trains between Sydney and wherever, a long-held fantasy project, will have local effects, but spread across the cities at the anchor points and in between. So Tony Abbott can point to his record and proudly claim historic site preservation spending on the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, but that’s not just Warringah, and Warringah knows it. (And whatever happened to the spending he promised years ago, well before his time as PM, to upgrade Brookvale Oval? Never happened. Other local promises? Anyone remember? Thought not.) And he can deride independents as “Labor candidates in disguise”, but that’s disingenuous. Such candidates run on policy, and the latest such to rise up and challenge is putting forth a national agenda. Zali Steggall has cited climate change – something Abbott has categorically stated he doesn’t believe in – as a key issue, a policy that was integral to Kerryn Phelps taking Wentworth off the deposed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. That’s the kind of leadership we want in Canberra. But it’s going to be tough for an independent to drive policy, or a bloc of them, if the LNP or Labor can form government in their own right, which seems increasingly likely for the latter party, given the defections and retirements the former has experienced lately. So vote for the local candidate, but vote for the own who can help get the agenda set. That might not be someone socially progressive and fiscally conservative.

May We Do Better May is still a long ways off, but maybe not long enough to not start thinking about the prospective federal election. Double-dissolution, maybe? Morrison and the LNP don’t have the numbers to get anything much through the Senate, but they’re also a minority government after losing the Wentworth by-election, so perhaps they’ll focus on actually forming government and hope to firm up the Senate later. But their collective goose is cooked, by all accounts and analyses, which means it’s Labor’s election to lose. Or is it? Labor sucks, face it. They are just the LNP-lite. Sure, they’re capable of governing, just, but aside from some small tweaks to social programs, we can’t expect them to do anything truly forward-facing. So that leaves the Greens as the only minor major party available. Except they suck worse the Labor, especially at the federal level, where their entire strategy is on doing deals with Liberal or Labor as it suits them to best get in the news, all the while engaging in ridiculous power struggles that are all that actually gets them any notice and make them look like children. They’ve largely abandoned any pretence at policy other than in sound bites. So independents. Oh, God help us all. Sure, there are minor parties, but they’re effectively just disaffected Liberals or Nationals or independents tarting themselves up as something more than single-issue candidates. And the actual independent independents are usually single-issue pollies, and usually just disaffected Liberals or Nationals tarting themselves up as populists. Luckily, we’ve got preferences. Now the trick with preferences is that when you vote, you’ve got to take into account where candidates and parties are directing theirs. If you’ve got an independent that seems like anything better than the LNP and can put a complex sentence together even if just in printed policy positions, then preference that one, so long as their preferences aren’t going to the LNP. If it is, go Greens, as their preferences usually go to Labor. Then down the line accordingly until the LNP is dead last in your selection barring One Nation. It’s the only way to send a message to either the LNP or Labor: we hate you all and will turn on you if you don’t get your acts together and we’ll always hate the LNP anyway.

Prognostications I’m going to call it early: Trump will be re-elected in 2020. And if he is, very likely Pence will follow in 2024. It doesn’t matter if the Democrats re-take the House and Senate – either or both – in the midterms in November. In fact, even if they do, we can expect nothing from them. Their efforts at investigations will come to little or nothing. If they persue impeachment of Trump and Kavanaugh, it will come to nothing. There are too many Democrats who don’t vote with their party or who would fear a Trump-aligned challenge in the next election cycle. They might protect the Affordable Care Act, what’s left of it, but they’ll never get through the reforms it needs to bring about universal health care. They’ll never get through gun control. They’ll be treading water for two years and with the re-election of Trump will be back in the outer darkness. The Republicans have broken the country. The appointment of Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court seals their grip on power for a generation. Worse, Ruth Bader Ginsberg will soon retire, and that’s going to leave Trump another seat and a 6-3 majority in the Court. Breyer’s 80, so he’ll go, too, and that’s 7-2. Forget dissent. There won’t be anything meaningful. What brought this about? Is it the state of the nation, the income inequality, the institutional racism, the backlash movements these and toxic masculinity have brought, leading to knee-jerk reactions? Is it purely political? If it’s just politics, when did it start? Maybe you could say it started with Nixon, and the resignation of a President before he could be impeached, and the Republican revenge enacted against Clinton that didn’t see his downfall. (Yes, he was bad, in many ways, including his sexual abuse of his power, his financial “reforms” that gave us 2008, chief among them.) Maybe it only started with Obama, and the Republican leaderships’ distaste at having an African American lead the nation. What are the Democrats going to do about 2020? Put up Cory Booker, another black man? Kristin Gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren, another woman? Doesn’t matter. The fact is that Trump goes from strength to strength, whether he accomplishes anything or not. North Korea? Doesn’t matter, his base love the noise he brings. Same with the destruction of civil liberties the Supreme Court will oversee. More black lives lost? Trumpets are fine with it, even Kanye West. More families destroyed in detentions and deportations. You know they want the wall, right? Climate change? That’s not real. LGBTI rights stripped away just when things were looking up? They weren’t, they won’t be, get back in the closet. Abortion? You know that’s gone. Welcome to the Handmaid’s Tale. I miss Howard Dean’s 50-State strategy. The only way America can ever hope to return to any measure of progressivism is to work its way back up all the way from the bottom. States have to turn blue, not just purple. Court-based activism is going to be a long struggle, so gerrymandering has to be eliminated as an option, voter registration is going to have to be opened up, and the greater care in each of these is going to be required that the current state governments will need for where they’ll be going on abortion, LGBTI rights, etc., because the court challenges will mount up and they will reach the Supreme Court and they will get knocked back. America, you’re fucked. Sorry, but you did it to yourselves, as usual, and now you’re going to live with it for a very long time.

RIP What's that you're drinking, Uncle Bill? Goat's milk. What kind of goat's milk is it, Uncle Bill? Nanny goat's milk, my dear. Admittedly, Gloria Jean was not the highlight of the one movie I remember her for, but I remember her.

Shame We went to see BlacKkKlansman on the weekend. There were other choices, but this did seem to be the movie of the moment, one not to be missed. It is surely one of the best things Spike Lee has done and a superior movie overall. I sat through nearly every minute of it rigid with shame. Sure, it's 1979, nearly forty years ago, but as Lee's coda shows, we haven't gotten very far from then. I found it impossible not to cringe throughout, especially sprinkled through as it was with nearly tossed-off references to the present day. America has a long history, much longer than the last forty years, the last fifty, sixty years. The country was built on two hundred years of slave labor and another hundred plus of keeping their descendants from accessing the same privileges as the rest of the country, let alone offering any redress. Yes, Civil Rights Act, etc., but making the equal status official does nothing unless it's properly enforced, unless reparations are made, and unless the fundamental attitudes and prejudices are dealt with. I look at the young people I know and have hope. But I look at the young people I don't, when they appear in the news, and despair. How long, O Lord, how long? (But don't think America is alone. Look at Australia's treatment of its indigenous population and the dog-whistling regarding refugees, let alone the internment camps we send those asylum seekers we capture to. Look at the Windrush generation in Britain. Look at the treatment of refugees throughout Eastern Europe. Look at the Rohingya, the Uyghurs . . . . We all have a lot to answer for in how we treat our fellow humans and how we have treated them for so very long.)

Archaeological Evidence of Razorfist Remember Razorfist? Well, they dug up his ancestor in Italy in 1994. Just one hand replaced by a knife, so at least we can reduce speculation about various matters of hygiene etc. in the earlier incarnation.

Rift I’ve seen this movie.

Guns In 1996, following the mass shooting at Port Arthur, Tasmania, John Howard, the Prime Minister, was successful in forcing the states to adopt new gun restrictions and in running a buy-back program in which individuals turned in their weapons during a year-long process. There have been no mass shootings as at Port Arthur since. In fact, murders and suicides using guns have also fallen overall. Australia is often looked to following mass shootings in the US as a model for what could be accomplished to reduce such incidents. It is the single most universally acclaimed accomplishment in Australia attributed to Howard. So now, with all that’s happening in the US and receiving global news coverage, is Liberal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton seeking changes to permit gun manufacturers and distributors input to the government’s policies on gun regulation? Is it anything to do with the fact that he’s an ex-cop? And don’t pretend the police aren’t a problem when it comes to gun violence, in Australia or anywhere else. Is it because he’s an authoritarian and front-bench far-right faction leader? Is it because he formerly had oversight of the immigration portfolio and continues to demonise immigrants? Is it because, down in Tasmania, at the recent state election, the Liberal government that got back into office did so in spite of only revealing their intention to soften gun restrictions after the polls closed? In Tasmania, where Port Arthur is, the flashpoint for Liberal government coming to its senses on the issue of gun violence! It’s got to stop. Hunting continues. Farmers continue to control pests. Guns remain in use. But semi-automatic weapons do not belong in the hands of civilians and handguns exist only for murder. Dutton needs to be slapped down. Malcolm Turnbull needs to be the one who does it. But Turnbull is a coward in the face of the far right of his party and will do nothing.

Advertising Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri over the weekend. Good story, terrific performances – not least from Sam Rockwell, whom I think I always like, as a performer – and an interesting commentary on at least some aspects of American culture. The ending says something in particular about larger concerns, but they don’t gloss over too much other topical matters. Also attended the St George Open Air Cinema, for Lady Bird, a smallish film, but very well done, very real. It basically hits nearly all the notes that make an adolescence, all the way through. I think Greta Gerwig learned a lot of Noah Baumbach, and that’s not a bad thing.

Dear Prime Minister Re: National Broadband Network Dear Prime Minister: How did you know: https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet-string.html. You're a visionary.