5 June

The most common trick populists use is to relentlessly imply that a town or nation is ‘heading in the wrong direction’, is being led by ‘incompetent and corrupt’ people, and that your town or country is being taken away from you, and needs to be ‘taken back’. On every single international measure of life in Australia, this is BULLSHIT. Australia and the Nordic countries have been the best places to live in the world, the entire time these measures have existed. They still are, today. It’s strategy, relentlessly saying all of this bullshit makes people ANGRY, and angry people are easy to manipulate. One Nation is doing this at a national level. And Bathurst, easily one of the best run towns in the entire country, and probably has the best General Manager. The past 3-4 years populists (also One Nation people) have created the exact opposite impression, and now the town struggles to function under the weight of this relentless, angry horseshit. I’ll share one example of this in a separate post, the damage it’s done.