Peter May 31, 2012 at 10:20 am
I don’t understand the fuss. It’s a brutal game and Abbott is a first class fighter. You would expect any opposition to go as hard. The charge seems to be that he’s too effective and therefore a ‘bully’.
As someone said before, Labor have relentlessly been after the personality of Abbott as soon as he took over – throwing anything and everything at the man.
Ellis, amongst all the other prurience and swipes at the most powerful and popular faith in this country (merely mad ‘Christ eaters’ carrying on a 2000yr tradition in accordance with the will of their founder, God’s Son) makes the charge that he is now homosexual…
The difference is that Labor obviously lack the skill to craft any message that cuts through with truth and Abbott is a man of extraordinary resilience, stamina, thick skin and spirit. Exactly the man you want in parliament and in line for PMship
Frank Willmott May 31, 2012 at 10:28 am
Sorry, Peter, but I want a leader with character, not one peppered with hypocrisy, ego issues and insecurities. Did you catch Gillard’s speech to the mining fraternity? That was character. That was leadership.
She is far more the man than Abbott could ever be. And I don’t even vote Labor.
Verily Nostradamus May 31, 2012 at 10:37 am
Gillard is playing both sides and will get burnt sure enough. She was an individual of character, or at least until she became PM. Anyone who has to declare the ‘Real Julia’ is now in the fray has a few issues.
Helvi May 31, 2012 at 10:52 am
Peter, we on the Labor side are more civilised, we don’t want an embarrassing bully as our BM.
They might have bullies as leaders, but possibly only in the darkest places in Africa, and Syria and countries like that…
Peter May 31, 2012 at 12:16 pm
I’m not irrationally anti-labor, Helvi, but you’re in fantasy land if you think that any major leader of anything (except maybe the Church) gets to where he/she is without a certain ruthless instinct…
If men are to be led and governed, sometimes in war when life and death are at stake, niceness does not go far enough. You need spine, nerve, self-belief and conviction. Otherwise people will not respect you or carry out your orders. You cannot lead.
For all Gillards’ constant talk about being strong and tough, I think most people see someone deeply unnerved by events and unsure of herself…
Has Abbott gone too far with Thompson? I don’t know. If Thompson is guilty, then the pressure has been just. If he is innocent, then he has paid a high price in a culture where the media go to great lengths to cover and prolong personal scandals.
Abbott needs to play the game and all politicians need to have the psychological resources to deal with any and all accusations. But there is decency and strength and conviction behind Abbott which will prove itself in government. The meantime is about quickly finishing off a truly pathetic parliament which has shredded Labor’s credibility
Polybius May 31, 2012 at 1:08 pm
Oh dear, where to start?
If Tony Abbott truly had ‘spine, nerve, self-belief and conviction’, then he might have presented some actual policies to the Australian people. He hasn’t. His various pronouncements and interventions form a monument to economic illiteracy and political expediency.
His book ‘Battlelines’ was well-written and thoughtful, whether you agreed with the conclusions he came to or not. Of course, as soon as he got within a sniff of power he reverted to the usual political melodrama we’re all so heartily sick of. It’s very poor theatre – the performances are unconvincing and the lines have gone beyond cliche into a kind of proud and surreal block-headedness – but the show must go on, because that’s all our parliamentarians know how to do.
Thomson’s guilt or innocence is hardly the point at issue – all we’re seeing is an opposition using every political trick they can muster to wrest a vote from a minority government. And the government uses every trick they can to fightback, and the whole thing resembles nothing so much as a bunch of seven year old boys tussling in a sandpit about who gets to play with the Big Red Truck.
If you truly perceive ‘decency and strength and conviction’ behind Abbott, inside him, or anywhere within shouting distance of him, then you form part of a small and odd minority. Abbott is as low as he is in the polls because his Muscular Dorkishness makes people feel disconcerted and fidgety.
And by the way, if you really believe that leaders of the Church managed to attain their positions without ‘a certain ruthless instinct’, then you can’t have opened a history book in your life.
M Ryutin May 31, 2012 at 2:02 pm
While some commentators are claiming that Tony Abbott might be the best opposition leader that Australia has ever had, they are not accounting for history. That aside, a more modern example is Gough Whitlam who was a great opposition leader, capable of destroying PMs but he, like Abbott, had miserable examples to destroy (Gorton, McMahon as against Rudd and Gillard).
The fact that he crashed and burned in office should never negate any of that and some of his legacies are still with us (Trades Practices and Family Law Acts plus one vote one value Australia-wide), but even Gough had “outbursts’ such as throwing a glass of water in the face of Hasluck (on the floor of the parliament) and abusing an MP minister of religion by falsely claiming he had been de-frocked etc.
Totting up ‘incidents’ in and out of parliament by politicians is no party-specific thing as you will find if you look it up (8,000 pounds in bribes to get a seat in parliament and a future convicted murderer having an opposing candidate disappear forever are just some that come to mind.)
Frank Willmott May 31, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Sorry, Peter, just a follow-up. Not to harangue you, but two people stand out to me as representative of the Liberal Party in its recent history, Abbott and Howard, one a toading bully with all sorts of issues, the other a war criminal.
Did you know that throughout the years since the War in Iraq, Glenn Floyd, a Victorian senate candidate, and John Valder, a former Liberal Party National President (& NSW State) President, have been relentlessly pursuing Howard through the ICC. Glenn sent me an email setting out his platform for a shot at the next senate as an Victorian independent, his 4 main focuses being – a Private Senator’s ‘Bank Mortgages Equity-Restriction’ Bill; a ‘Subversion of the Australian Parliament, Illegal Declaration of War’ Senate Select Committee Private Senator’s Bill; a Private Senator’s ‘Australian Citizens’ Rights Repatriation Bill’: or ‘Assange Amendment’; and a ‘War Crimes Amendment Private Senator’s Bill’ to bring justice down on Howard once and for all. At the base of the last three, human rights, human dignity, human freedom.
What Bills do the Liberal Party stand for? Do they represent the people or an oligarchy? If you are a Liberal voter, do you support the people or an oligarchy, and if it is the second, please explain why because I need to understand. The Liberal Party’s whole thrust has been to make out Labor is covered in mud when the truth is the opposite.
The liberal Party is in dire straits. The bluster is about to clear. The media can do no more than lie and cheat for them. The Liberal Party can bring Turnbull back to re-invent some dignity but will the party’s moral platform be any different?
Peter May 31, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Ah yes, the ‘people’, comrade. How many murderous, hateful acts have been propagated in ‘their’ name, this last century. It means nothing more than the ruling government, who always claim to supposedly represent the ‘best’ interests of everyone. The most dangerous oligarchy around.
No party holds a monopoly over morality, unfortunately. I was against the war in Iraq too. But I’d remind you that our present leader got to where she is by deposing a man enthusiastically elected by the people – our nations most popular leader, by some polls.
Frank Willmott May 31, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Peter, the first part of your response is difficult to comprehend. I am talking “common good”, you introduce “exploitation”.
The second part doesn’t recognise our political system; electing a president as against a party. Our system says you choose a party, the party chooses the leader, even in mid-stream. In either case they are difficult at times to differentiate from a one-party system that we bash others for having, no real counter choices, apart from the Greens, The Pirates, and the Indies who aren’t about to form govt.
In my fantasy world your local member would represent his/her constituents. A round table. No politcal parties. No State governments. At times voting would be public [internet], a short test at the beginning to make sure you comprehend the issue.
But this idea is nothing new. What worries me is Abbot is the furtherest example from this. Wouldn’t even allow a conscience vote on gay marriages. We may have got to know a few Liberal parliamentarians instead of the three nasties in the front row.
Peter May 31, 2012 at 2:16 pm
In my fantasy world, Frank, true morality is not subject to the fickleness of public opinion.
I’d even go more fantastic and say that their are policy areas which no political authority has the competence to legislate upon – marriage being one of them. Rather, there is a political realm and a spiritual realm. Both are distinct authorities with different areas of competence. No man should be compelled in conscience to follow the usurped authority of either, but should, in the meek obedience and teachings revealed by Our Saviour, defer to both.
But I’m a strange medieval minority, about to be pelted with rotten cabbages and tomatoes, i know.
Frank Willmott May 31, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Peter, I cannot conceive a connection between the Liberal Party and Christianity in a purist sense. One says love your neighbour, the other screw your neighbour.
Name:
But then how did that other “gloomy business”, the consciousness of guilt, the whole “bad conscience” come into the world? And with this we turn back to our genealogists of morality. I’ll say it once more – or have I not said anything about it yet? – they are useless.
With their own merely “modern” experience extending through only a brief period (fünf Spannen lange), with no knowledge of and no desire to know the past, even less a historical instinct, a “second sight” – something necessary at this very point – they nonetheless pursue the history of morality. That must justifiably produce results which have a less than tenuous relationship to the truth.
Have these genealogists of morality up to now allowed themselves to dream, even remotely, that, for instance, that major moral principle “guilt” (Schuld) derived its origin from the very materialistic idea “debt” (Schulden)? Or that punishment developed as a repayment, completely without reference to any assumption about freedom or lack of freedom of the will? – and did so, by contrast, to the point where it always first required a high degree of human development so that the animal “man” began to make those much more primitive distinctions between “intentional”, “negligent”, “accidental”, “responsible”, and their opposites and bring them to bear when meting out punishment?
That idea, nowadays so trite, apparently so natural, so unavoidable, which has even had to serve as the explanation how the feeling of justice in general came into existence on earth, “The criminal deserves punishment because he could have acted otherwise”, this idea is, in fact, an extremely late achievement, indeed, a sophisticated form of human judgment and decision making. Anyone who moves this idea back to the beginnings is sticking his coarse fingers inappropriately into the psychology of older humanity.
For the most extensive period of human history, punishment was certainly not meted out because people held the instigator of evil responsible for his actions, and thus it was not assumed that only the guilty party should be punished:- it was much more as it still is now when parents punish their children out of anger over some harm they have suffered, anger vented on the perpetrator – but anger restrained and modified through the idea that every injury has some equivalent and that compensation for it could, in fact, be paid out, even if that is through the pain of the perpetrator.
Where did this primitive, deeply rooted, and perhaps by now ineradicable idea derive its power, the idea of an equivalence between punishment and pain? I have already given away the answer: in the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is, in general, as ancient as the idea of “legal subject” and which, for its part, refers back to the basic forms of buying, selling, bartering, trading, and exchanging goods.
Nietzsche, On The Geneology of Morals, A Polemical Tract
Reader1, quoting Nietzsche is not enough, you must include your thoughts on the matter; Insert your beloved “content”, otherwise your just a copy-paste girl.
So, what are your questions about this piece you obviously thought important enough to copy?
What are your thoughts?
Here are some of mine:
1. What do we mean by “style”? – See Derrida’s “Spur” here.
2. What do we make of Nietzsche’s notion of “interpretation” and the intrinsic undecidability of interpretation? And how does this sit with his views on perspectivism or relativism?
3. What are the conditions for formulating a theory or discursive practice?
4. What is the specific perspective that Nietzsche hopes to “look” from?
5. What is the relationship between Nietzsche and his beloved Greeks? How does that relationship inform his notions of
masters and slaves – master morality and slave morality?
6. How does Nietzsche view the transformation from master to slave morality?
7. Why is “guilt” borne of this transformation?
I’d like to hear some of yours – questions, answers, it matters little. As long as their yours.
This is called “hounding” arguments Reader1, NOT hounding people.
See the difference?
There is no difference, this is hounding, you are not my school marm, I will allow my instincts to inform me over and above your self-appointed singular authority and I don’t have to do anything.
The Cat, along with a couple of others in my personal life, killed my dog. I was walking the thinnest line I have ever walked, and I once had my bags randomly searched by police in Bangkok while carrying a large bag of marijuana and a bamboo bong. (I kept my cool and charmed them so much they barely glanced inside.) I was not familiar with the kind of phenomenon that your cult represents, (I’m still not), and teetering between life and death, guilt and forgiveness is not the time to be exploring such matters. I fell into coldness borne of confusion and in my weakness could not save my dog. I always save everybody but I’ve got to be there, I have to be present.
So don’t fuck with me anymore. I’ve lost a hell of a lot and care nought for your shite. Get involved in the Thomson case, shed some light on the JFK assassination, lob a few grenades in David Williamson’s direction – do something but leave others out of it. This is a very narcissistic world. Why otherwise taint what is a very tiny, fragile refuge.
It’s not about you. It’s not even about Doug. It is a little bit about allthumbs but that’s just because he is such a master tactician.
Reader1, I shall re-post.
You raised the question with your post. I was simply exploring the possibility of you quoting yourself.
I am no, and I offer no, single authority. i thought that much would be clear from my questions.
We have all walked that razor’s edge. I have been strip searched on 4 separate occasions. I have a scar on my head. i have seen the insides of 3 country’s lock-ups, and in my daze have spoken to a dead man. I watched a crazed Irishman descend a drainpipe 30 metres high, I say Boston college girls cry in fear and pain, I’ve driven a stolen BMW through the streets of Amsterdam, I watched as plain clothes detectives break the leg of man by slamming a car door on it, I’ve shared cigarettes with crying East Berliners and made tea for Siberian villagers, I’ve watched as Harvard nominees saw their life path printed on a corridor notice board, I’ve eaten wafer biscuits on Mt Sinai and walked through the forts at Verdun. I’ve helped a Belgian farmer carry unexploded ordinance in a rusty wheelbarrow, I watch the mortal decay of a friend’s son who, afflicted with a genetic disorder will be dead by teenage years. I’ve looked into the eyes of a friend who was in the final death battle with cancer and saw fear, hope,wonder??
What was it I saw?
As I said, we have all teetered.
I’ve seen some fall.
I’ve held onto others.
I care little for JFK, for Thomson, for Williamson, they are but marginalia. I care about people; their thoughts, their wishes and their fears.
Of course, this isn’t about “me” or “you”, or even about “Doug”. It’s about the way we communicate with each other – what we say, how we say it, how we mean it. That sort of thing.
And here’s the puzzle you present to me Reader1: you speak of instincts, of life and death, of confusion and pain and torment, you speak of saving people, you speak of sorrow, and yet, in your final line you praise “tactics”.
I am unable to reconcile the two.
One describes human frailties, the other human agency.
I am more concerned
with the former.
And I can’t leave others out of it. You may need me to hold onto you.
Or I you.
I don’t ask you for anything other than what you present willingly.
Is Doug the dog?
It’s a fair question Frank.
Don’t feed the trolls, Frank; “Frank Wilmott” is not beyond parody, you should know. As for Eleanor, it is JG Cole and any number of “others” in the pathological United States of Tara sense.
Ellis, clean out your blog, or close it down and start again, with proper identification of the posters.
Cole/Eleanor has been banned for life plus ten thousand years. I have left a couple of her things up to show you why.
I think they are just the things this blog needs!
Ellis, you simple old fool, I am NOT Cole!!!
Use your technology to confirm that please!
And get back to me with an apology!
The dog was a Kimberly dingo and wasn’t Doug.
People who are interested in the JFK assassination and David Williamson need somewhere to go. And I’ll be buggered if that place isn’t here.
Yes, and there are tens of millions of us interested in these things. Why should we not be?
I have a plan R1 stick around, I may need your help, (now where did I put my compass and sharpener)?
“That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking”.
Freddy N, Twilight of the Idols.
But what else have we got?
Lines for Albo. Freaking brilliant.
Peter May: Gillard did not deposed Rudd. She challenged him and he declined the challenge. She was elected unopposed.
What unsought and undeserved fame! (or infamy).
I should refute the claim, I suppose, that I believe that the Liberal party is the bastion of Christianity and a Good Thing today. Unfortunately our democracy is usually about choosing the lesser evil.
Abbott is an effective leader with intellect, ticker, genuine faith and deep moral convictions. It goes without saying that he’s miles ahead of the power-for-power’s-sake gang of assassins.
To a large degree I’m more attracted by what the Liberal Party don’t stand for and the assurance that they will not treat us like naughty children to be reeducated at great cost and trouble on any particular issue, at a whim. Just a humble, duty driven group seeking to expand and protect Australian interests at home and abroad. No experiments. No social engineering. No civil wars. Slow and steady, responsible and accountable, stable governance which sticks to its core business without the theatrics
Well, they say they can’t trust us to give school money to our children. And they say we’re so careless with sex we shouldn’t get the morning-after Pill. And the army must be sent in to look up the anuses of eight-year-old girls.
How is this not treating us like naughty children? How is this not social engineering?
What are you talking about?
Are you mad?
The lesser of two evils, comrade
Answer my post, if you can.
I broadly disagree of your characterization of Mr Abbott, Doug, which are lines mostly regurgitated from Bob, anyway.
One mistake you make is to attack his strengths. He actually seems to be one one of the most straightforward and honest politicians out there today. I refer to his humble, confident, public confession of past wrongs. He has integrity, man, and a clean, masculine conscience. It inspires confidence in his leadership ability.
Well, at least more so than Gillard proclaiming her unwavering determination and titanic strength, in shakey monotone. A less full human being.
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Bob Ellis and I have exchanged views on Abbott for several years now, and he defended Abbott for most of that time.
Is that not so, Bob Ellis?
Whilst I have been trenchant in my total disgust for Abbott and all he stands for.
So get your story straight, Mr Christian God-botherer.
Don’t make me spew by repeating your admiration for Abbott’s manly virtues.
They are just fine in a footballer or an ex-boxer, but totally useless in a political leader.
Oh dear, so much bile! Please control yourself.
Manly virtues are useless in a political leader, hey? I guess that’s why every female politician is so unashamedly feminine m8
And why the PM has such an overflowing fruitbowl…
Honestly, you washed out old lefties are so divorced from real humanity.
Also, incredibly, I haven’t kept tabs on your relationship with Bob over the years! Just noted that you play his tune now, rather unashamedly.
And look how easily the bile carries on! I wish you well, Doug. May the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity find you well.
Apparently the whale wins in the end and eats the manly Ahab for breakfast. It later goes on to befriend Fay Wray so it just goes to show.
It ended badly for King Kong.
The ultimate triumph belongs to Fay Wray.
Peter, I see you’ve had the misfortune to ‘argue’ with
Douglas Quixote,
where ‘argument’ becomes corrupted by ridiculous and irrelevant ad hominem. It is a common strategy of his Peter, and you would do well to distance yourself from such puerile absurdity.
To Douglas, you should be ashamed of yourself. And you wonder why I, and many others, find you/your manner so offensive!
Bile, Mr God botherer? You accused me of following Bob’s lines.
I say to you that they are my lines.
My lines, you fool.
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, thus you are a fool, for rushing into an argument long in the gestation and now fully birthed, and its teething has now been completed as well.
I suggest you retain a civil tongue in you head, lest you bite it so it suffers a cruel fate.
Praise the Lord.
What parallel universe do you live in, Peter?
Abbott is unfit for office, any office. All his skills are directed to being an attack dog.
He is loud, outspoken, given to thought bubbles and next-day retractions; he says himself that you “cannot trust any of the things he says unless they are written down”, and if you trust any of those you are severely lacking in judgement.
Abbott may have faith, misplaced and overblown; it is hardly a plus in a politician. Save us from those who “know” what is right for everyone else.
Give me pragmatic politicians any day of the week.
What makes some people want to see these politicians as leaders? Some messianic idea that one person will arise to save us? It’s a concept that I reject.
There is a spokesperson for the party, there is a figurehead, that is all.
If that person has more legislative power than any other elected member, then that is undemocratic.
I am not a follower, and I do not need or want a fuhrer.