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"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body." Walt Whitman
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In both Australia and America the last decade has seen the election of neoconservative governments. In both cases the new governments have quickly set about vigorously changing the political and social landscape. So far so unexceptional. Parties of both the left and right when they get into power, especially if the opposition had been in power some time, always have a long agenda of things that need doing, need 'putting right' - think Gough Whitlam, think Maggie Thatcher, think John Kennedy. There are always other common features too. Being in government means that you have spoils to distribute and donations to reward - people to appoint, wishes to grant, business concessions to give, rules to relax or extend, departments to create or amalgamate. Finally these spoils of government are so addictive that every government, when it gets into power, looks for ways in which it can modify the political and social landscape in order to stay in power as long as possible - a little pressure on the media here, strategic appointments to boards there, a new judge or governor-general today, changes to electoral laws or parliamentary practices tomorrow. Some incoming governments are subtle about this, others less so, but all of them intend not to be beaten at the next election, intend that their government will last a long time.
When first the Howard and then the Bush governments came into power I thought initially that they were just going about things as all of their predecessors had done. A little more vigorously perhaps, because both the Liberals and Republicans had become very professional and were hungry from long periods out of power. I didn't like what they were doing, but like all of us on the Left I gritted my teeth. They had won elections, and politics is a matter of cycles - sometimes the Left wins, sometimes the Right, and society and culture is adjusted accordingly, only to adjust back in the next cycle. Winners under one kind of government will be losers under the next and so on. Business as usual, get over it, try to win the next time.
But it very quickly became obvious in both Australia and America that the rules of the game had changed. In both cases we had groups of people who were not merely saying 'we want to ensure that the Howard government lasts for a very long time' or 'we want George to be succeeded by Jeb', but who were saying 'we are going to make it certain that people like us will rule forever' and who were prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve that outcome. They are people who saw Orwell's '1984' not as a warning but as a manual. These are politicians who believe that people like them are meant to always be in government and have control of the spoils of government. They are also, collectively, the most ideologically driven governments that either America or Australia have ever seen, and part of the desire to stay in power forever is the result of the ideologue's belief that there is only one right answer to any social, economic, cultural, environmental or political problem. And they have it.
And in both cases these are governments who have been favoured by context. The increase in refugee movements from the Middle East, terrorism and September 11, and the Iraq war, have all provided an environment of fear and nationalism. In the rise and rise of vicious realty TV shows like Survivor and Fear Factor and Weakest Link and The Bachelor we have a training ground for public attitudes. The media run endless fear campaigns on law and order. The trivialisation of TV news and current affairs (including now the ABC) and the lack of any kind of investigative reporting plays into authoritarian government hands. Corporate support for globalisation and smashing unions and reducing working conditions and wages and reducing taxes helps the conservatives. The rise of fundamentalist religious groups increases support for right wing governments. Shock jocks on radio and in newspapers constantly and loudly shout comments that just a decade ago would have been seen as so extreme as to be never heard. In this environment it is almost (but these are people who pay attention to details) superfluous to stack every board no matter how large or small with neoconservative appointees, corporatise and silence the universities and ban student unions, spend public money on advertising party politics, set up inquiries stacked with people who can be relied upon, shift money from government to private schools and hospitals, make a mockery of parliamentary question time and ministerial accountability, reject scientific research.
This is government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich, and the rise in CEO salaries and grotesque corporate profits are performance indicators of its success. Another indicator is that the Labor Party has been forced well to the right, and is now, arguably, equivalent to the Liberal Party of Fraser or Menzies. In terms of economic and environmental policy it now really doesn't matter much to corporate Australia whether Liberal or Labor is in power. Any other voices, expressing views that would have been familiar to Chifley or Whitlam, say, whether through protests or through the third largest party in Australia, the Greens, are suppressed in the media by either being completely ignored, or by the reporting of a protest totally framed in a way that suits the government (for example concentrating entirely on whether a protest might 'turn violent', or hold up traffic, and not on the content of the message).
If you want people like us in government, and not people like them, you better get your act together and quick. The political future is close to being predetermined for the next 1000 years.
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