Snap!#*!

Too true blue:

This is not morality as it was once understood: telling the truth, paying of debt, offering parental respect, and doing no voluntary harm. It is not the morality that asks for sacrifice. It is what Philip Roth calls "the tyranny of propriety ... the de-viralizing pulpit virtue mongering". Appropriate is "the current code word for reining in most any deviation from the wholesome guidelines" providing inspiration for personal posturing.

 The decadence of wrist-band politics, in which a plastic bracelet denotes not only a point of view but the moral worth of the bearer, has had a destructive effect on civic debate, turning the battle of ideas into a contest of personal integrity.

 Compromise, the saving grace of democratic civil debate, is simply not on the table; debate becomes polarised between two incompatible positions and it is impossible to sit on the fence. The challenge of accommodating Australians from both sides of the cultural divide, the insiders and the outsiders, has become the chief dynamic of political debate.The split does not follow traditional party lines; there are insiders and outsiders on both sides of politics. For Labor, however, the task of accommodating two very different constituencies has brought the party almost to its knees. From the election of Gough Whitlam as Labor leader in 1967 to the Rudd and Gillard governments four decades later, the challenge of appealing to one group without upsetting the other has seemed an intolerable burden.