After only just over a year, I think the Albanese government is looking like toast. Yes the polling suggests…

After only just over a year, I think the Albanese government is looking like toast. Yes the polling suggests the Dutton-led LNP is a train wreck (it is), this isn’t to say they’re winning either. Albo’s small target politics means nothing materially meaningful will get done. /1

His driving passion is getting 3 terms in government, not actually doing anything. There’s a lot of tidying up going on, cleaning up LNP mess, all useful. But nothing even close to what’s required to turn us around. It’s always about the framing. /2

Labor won’t move on things that need doing because the LNP already framed everything in ways that prevent that. Anything meaningful will be seen as a threat to the ‘economy’, that fiction designed to protect the status quo. Progressives around the world are the same. /3

Unless they challenge that dominant framing of ‘the economy’, the status quo will remain. But they won’t challenge that, electoral politics won’t allow anything that threatens a vote. We’re stuck in the bog that popularity politics made for us. /4

You can’t address serious issues if you have to do it through the detour of popularity. Imagine running a business or raising kids that way, where nothing was allowed that wasn’t popular. Insanity. As always, we have existential emergencies to deal with, and we won’t. /5

Because standing in the way is that tiny veneer of populism that we call democracy. Elected politicians. If you put them all on a cruise ship and sent them away for 2 years, we might get somewhere. Put our democracy in extended ‘caretaker’ mode. As we do during elections. /6

Notice how the country ‘runs’ just fine during caretaker mode? How do we not notice that’s because politicians NEVER RUN IT. That’s a lie. Their function is as a liaison point with the community. Their delusions of actually running anything creates Trumps. /7

I often argue for reality-based politics. It’s coming at us like a B-double at speed. None of our popularity-based politics has the faintest chance of doing anything about it. We have the climate threat that could end civilisation itself, and what do we do? /8

Our populist pollies infect us all with a pandemic virus, over and over. That should help, hey? I think we’ve already reached peak populism, societies are falling apart. Fuck off with all your Left and Right and other paraphernalia of populism. Only one thing will save us. /9

Actual knowledge, applied immediately. The mechanism to do that? Who knows, we might be screwed. But actually an extended caretaker mode, where the thousands of knowledgeable officials could actually get on with doing practical things, might be our best hope. /10

But the populists will never allow it. In our high school societies, the cool folk will never give up power. History will repeat, only complete catastrophe will bring about needed change. /end