Swamp life

Theodore Dalrymple writing about the increase in overt emotionality that is becoming evident in the Western world today says:

“How is it that the fraudulence of this emotionality, its sheer inauthenticity, not to say mendacity, is invisible to those who indulge in it? Here indeed is a puzzle for psychologists. I am reminded of those people who cannot see the fraudulence of American television evangelists the moment they appear on the screen. It is as if we, or at least some of us, are in the process of becoming people without inwardness, who measure their own feelings by outward manifestations only.”

I would posit that main stream media, TV producers and politicised education departments have all played their part in the promotion of such ‘on your sleeve emoting’. That the whole culture has been building up (or disintegrating) to that moment when the phenomena 'went viral' with the death of Princess Diana and seems to be gathering momentum with each breath we take.

Public figures are promoted or vilified on how they ‘display’ their feelings. Where is that stoicism that used to be a part of our heritage? The dignity afforded our ability to weather the storms and arrows of unfortunate incident and unforeseen calamities. Look at what happened to Lindy Chamberlain, it was said that her lack of outward emotion is what caused many to believe her to be guilty.

 Perhaps we are indeed becoming people who are one inch thick and many miles wide – shallow and insubstantial.
What do we call a river with these characteristics?
A swamp!

Self Flagellation

We are currently witnessing an evolution in the religion of self hatred by the urban elites of Sydney.

Councillors (as I have been reliably informed by a friend who served a number of terms on a large urban municipal council) frequently include the; interfering, nosy, bullying, and occaisionally corrupt bureaucrats who enter into local politics because they believe that they are the ones who have a 'special knowledge' (Gnostic?) and are therefore required to, even compelled one might say, to educate their more uneducated constituents in ways of the true 'faith'.

Thus we are made to suffer the inanities of  ideological claptrap such as that perpetrated by Sydney councillors:

Sydney City Council last night declared the arrival of white settlers to be an “invasion” and wiped the words “European arrival” from official documents.

During a long debate, councillor Marcelle Hoff lodged a petition for councillors to use the term “invasion or illegal colonisation” in policy documents and statements.

Ms Hoff read out dictionary definitions of invasion as “to take possession, to penetrate, to intrude upon, to overrun”.

“They came in and they did not leave,” she said.

However as Ms Hoff is herself one of these white settlers, or 'invaders', wouldn't it then be more convincing if she were to either pack up and return to where her family came from or just sell the proceeds of her 'occupation' and return the money to the 'rightful owners'?

Can no one spot the screaming hypocrisy behind sideshow Bob's philosophy. On the one hand he rails against foreign investors in our mines, yet on the other hand...:

So why shouldn’t we now join vigorous moves in Europe and at the United Nations for a global people’s assembly based on one person, one vote, one value?

So he is comfortable in handing over the entire country to foreign rule just not a small percentage of our business?
This fellow would be a joke running a girl guide group never mind ruling (via poxy proxy) Australia.

UPDATE

North Korea will chair the UN Conference on Disarmament:

The development comes in the same week the UN defended its decision to support Iran’s holding of an international “anti-terrorism” conference — which saw participants declaring that Western powers were the international terrorists.

The UN is not on our side. Kind of obvious, really.

And this is the bunch of Yobos that sideshow Bob is keen for us to be ruled by!

MSM, AGW, PPM and cults in general

Once again the massive hypocrisy of the main stream media is exposed in their relentless pursuit of this Rocco Leo fellow, the leader of what they term the 'doomsday cult'. Whilst I know very little about the alleged cult or its theology and thus do not defend the man or his actions, the whole situation appears to follow similar persecutions of 'religious'  figures seen on more than one occasion in Australia.

Wouldn't I be correct in observing that the Anthropogenic Global Warming cult claims exactly the same doomsday scenario? The only difference is that the AGW cultists claim 'science' is on their side, even though actual science deals with what is observable and the AGW  predictions are based on 100 years hence.

Still reason doesn't seem to hold a high priority in either the MSM or the AGW propaganda. Objectivity and/or truth is pre-post-modernism (PPM???) after all.

Dangerous dreamtime

Although Ann Coulter sometimes seems a little too right wing for my taste, much of what she says in her latest blog makes sense. In particular I found this quote to be relevant to contemporary Australia:

Liberals despise the rule of law because it interferes with their ability to rule by mob. They love to portray themselves as the weak taking on the powerful. But it is the least powerful who suffer the most once the rule of law is gone.

'Liberals' (Labor, Greens etc in Australia) like to put out that they represent the downtrodden and powerless in society, indeed they have built their entire 'spin' cycle on this fiction. Just like the fiction that claims the renewable energy sector is a small cottage industry, whereas it is massive, manipulative, insidious and bloated on subsidies, and its Utopian dreams are inhabited by conmen, speculators, greedy bankers and financiers all with their grubby paws outstretched for a slice of the upcoming handouts and ETS pie.

The news cycle is replete with evidence of attempts by 'progressives' to undermine Australia's current system of laws. The suggested implementation of Sharia law for example, the numerous attempts to obliterate drug laws (whilst hypocritically reinforcing laws against smokers!), the attacks on existing euthanasia and abortion laws, the attack on marriage...name the law and somewhere a progressive will be trying to tear it down in the name of 'progress', modernisation or that staple of the current AGW warmists; 'not being left behind.'
Who are these mystical 'others' that are leaving us behind? Doesn't this mentality strike you as merely another twist on the 'keeping up with the Joneses?'

The ideology behind this goal to undermine the foundational values which have created Australian culture are unashamedly Gramscian(neoMarxist) and the sooner the majority wakes up to this attempt to transmogrify Australia into a totalitarian society ruled by elites the better off we will be.
I trust the rot is not to deeply embedded.
Hopefully the upcoming elevation of the watermelon brigade will wake the average voter up to the reality of this not-so-merry band of Luddites before irreversible damage is done to our culture, economy and judiciary.

Sideshow Bob

This morning, Greens leader Bob Brown told Radio National his party would not be backing the plebiscite call, which he described as a “sideshow”, “tricky” and a “huge waste of taxpayer’s money” …

Phony panic mongerers! (mongrels?)

Mark Steyn writes with an enviable wit which masks a devastating literary 'left'-hook (excuse the pun).

His piece on the self deluded excesses of Obamamania and it's phony panic mongering ends with a most acute observation:

The American Dream, 2011: You pay four bucks a gallon to commute between your McJob and your underwater housing to prop up a spendaholic, grabafeelic, paramilitarised bureaucracy-without-end bankrupting your future at the rate of a fifth of a billion dollars every hour. In a sane world, Americans would be outraged at the government waste. Instead, our elites worry about sea levels. The oceans will do just fine. It's the US that's drowning.

Perhaps you need to read the article in order to understand some of the references, do so, it will not be a waste of your time. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/on-obamavilles-main-street-its-all-bumps-on-the-road-to-recovery/story-e6frg6ux-1226077283006

Big Mother!

In Orwell's lexicon 'doublethink' denotes an ability to hold two conflicting (i.e. opposite) ideological positions at the same time.

Consider the current outcry over live animal exports.

Whilst the images broadcast on TV were terrible, such treatment does not happen across the board. In fact there are numerous abattoirs in Indonesia that practice the same advanced slaughterhouse methods as exist in Australia (incidentally do you honestly believe that everyone in Australia does the right thing?), but the protesters do not want to hear that, it doesn't fit the ideology they are wanting to impose on Australia. Their intentions are to wipe out the industry entirely and the gullible (and all to often those on the public purse) are once again swept along with the 'rights' argument. All too often in the current 'new paradigm', animal rights trump human rights, employment or economic well being.
It all seems so humane until one realises that the totalitarianist tendency's behind the loony left are all about control, and the more dependent we become on the government the more control it has over us. Robert Mugabe is on record as being a believer in reducing a country's population into a position of absolute dependence on the government, and who would want to live in an Australian equivalent of Zimbabwe?

Another hypocrisy exposed by this outcry is to reflect on how the progressives squeal when someone from the conservative side of thinking tries to introduce a moral perspective to an issue. How they whinge about 'whose morality' etc, yet what they are doing in this case is to claim the moral high ground by condemning the morality of a whole country.

Lefties eviscerate Tony Abbott for promulgating false scares, a position which could be viewed as laughable unless seen as evidence of extreme doublethink when one considers the scare campaigns waged by the left-wing in respect to heat waves, rising waters obliterating our coasts, Y2K, food riots, the depletion of fossil fuels et al, and they base these scares on spurious (at best) 'science' (usually statistical models) and then publicly flay and denigrate all doubters (skeptics )...a position which is, or should be, at the very foundation of good science.

This government is on a mission to change our economy, our behaviour, our morality, our habits, everything...Gillard has recently admitted that she wants to change what it means to be an Australian.

Never mind Big Brother, this government is more like Big Mother!

In His time

As was his wont, George Orwell summed up the loss of belief prevalent in his day with the words:

"...for when people really believed in Hell, they were not so fond of striking graceful attitudes on its brink."

This loss has become much more striking in our present time and many  more prance willfully on the brink than ever before. 
Perhaps it is time for the ghost of Jonathon Edwards to make his appearance.

 

Hammer that sickle

Welcome to the heretofore disguised plan of the 'real' Gillard:

“This window in our history means we can reshape how we distribute opportunity in our society,” said Gillard.

The law of unintended consequences

A quote lifted from a source on the net. Although the spelling leaves a little to be desired the sentiments are on the money:

Typical greenbeans, act without thinking about the consenquences.

First they force oil drilling in deep water makeing (sic) a rapid repair of a leaking well vertually (sic) impossible,

then they abolish the incandecent (sic) light bulb for an “enviromentally friendly” mercury laden one,

now their electric cars cause more pollution than a conventional gas burning one.

New motto for the greenbeans, “We will save the planet or destroy it trying.”

Holiday break

Have just spent a marvellous long weekend on a Murray river boat. My daughter paddled in her first canoe marathon (3 days) and won her section, setting a new record. She is the one stuffing her face...only the young, active ones can do it without suffering extra girth unfortunately.

Kill the human 'virus'

When you read the ideas and policies put forward by deep green fundamentalists, a finding such as the following would be welcomed by them rather than putting them off.

“Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries?

Goklany (2011) estimated that the increase in the poverty headcount due to higher biofuel production between 2010 and 2004 implies 192,000 additional deaths and 6.7 million additional lost DALYs in 2010 alone.

We must wake up to the reality that green philosophy is not about a love of the earth, it is about a hatred for people.

Confabulation!

Doesn't this statement sum up today's liberal (Labor/Green/Indi) political decision making process:

Irving Kristol ...  once remarked that bad politics is like bad poetry, which as Oscar Wilde said, doesn’t get any better just because it springs from genuine feeling. In 1972 Kristol wrote: “It seems to me that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer rather than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves."…

Less symbolism, more reality!

Surprised by joy!

Well put Andrew Klavan:

But perhaps I wasn’t made to be a doomsayer. The dying of things—of art forms and civilizations as well as people—seems to me the inevitable and steady state of the world: a point of view that leaves me prone more to melancholy than to panic. What I really care about now is the immortal parts of mortal enterprise. I want to get at the spirit of human business: the wisdom and vitality of a culture’s Great Moment preserved in the artifacts it leaves behind. The irrelevant—the stuff that doesn’t matter but is simply beautiful—the music, the poetry, the pictures and storytelling—the arts—that’s where all the joy is, and it’s the joy that seems more urgent to me as the years pass.

I have neglected this most important task for a number of years now. Certainly health (the lack thereof) has played a mordant role, as has being a conservative in a sea of anarchism, but undoubtedly the most crippling  reason for my enforced artistic inactivity has been lingering doubt about the role/efficacy of the arts in the 'real' world.
I have lost my joy! Perhaps it is recoverable, I want it to be and shall endeavour to explore this possibility over the next few months...

1st prize in hypocrisy

Keith Windschuttle in an article on Noam Chomsky (who has just recently received a Sydney 'peace' prize) http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2011/06/the-hypocrisy-of-noam-chomsky writes:

Since the European Enlightenment, a number of prominent intellectuals have presented themselves as secular Christ-like figures, lonely beacons of light in a dark and corrupting world. This is a tactic that has often delivered them followers among students and other idealistic youths in late adolescence.

The phenomenon has been most successful when accompanied by an uncomplicated morality that its constituency can readily absorb.

Windschuttle posits that Chomsky's chief contribution to global peace and morality is his overwhelming hypocrisy...I couldn't agree more.

Beware the coming harvest

What an excellent article.
Perspicacious, intelligent and capturing the exact tone of absolute conceit exhibited by the intellectual ideologues of Europe, the UK and increasingly Australia.
That same conceit exhibited by generations of intellectuals towards those who have consistently both protected and served them.
That same conceit which inevitably transforms into squeals of infantile rage and hapless terror when the consequences of ignoring the reality of sinful mankind reaches its inevitable conclusion, and the ground fertilized by generations of ignorance, sensuality, philosophical hubris and the denial of a loving yet wrathful divine being gives birth to the likes of Stalin,  Hitler, Mao, Castro, Chavez et al.
Read it: http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3934/full

Self-inflated artistic blimps

The puerile nonsense spouted by Blanchett, Caton and friends with reference to the; about to cripple the economy, budget busting 'carbon' tax set to lighten our wallets, sort of sums up the sycophantic attitude many 'artistes' have towards the (generally) labour governments who pay their wages (grants for the politically correct etc...somewhat like the Russian system) i.e. let us appease the boss! Perhaps even a little 'stockholmish' eh?'
Be it whatever, the radical PC and tightly controlled elitism exhibited by the official art world in most Western countries is what makes being a traditional conservative so difficult in the culturesphere. The so called 'free thinkers' (a true laugh) are not very accepting of those who disagree with them which makes the generic artworld claim of 'freedom of expression' so disingenuous.
Cate Blanchett's lyrical waxing about artists who: 'change reality' no less, even gravity!!! as well as 'changing peoples lives' albeit at a 'risk to the artists own life' (puleeeze... how is that true?) and being at the 'core of human identity and existence', would be pathetic if it were not so ludicrously untrue. Add to that the hypocrisy of Hollywood 'stars' whose 'carbon footprint' borders on the obscene, but hey these luvvies are 'special' if you know what I mean.
Totalitarianism always appeals to elites who believe that they will be in the driving seat.
Entertainers are all mere (though overpaid) court jesters...no more, no less.
When the more humble amongst them grasp this simple fact they often can and do contribute to the wider community.