Which Way Do You Swing? - Politics

Most conservative policies seem to help big business and entrepreneurs by extending tax breaks, incentives and reducing red-tape. These policies assist those already managing.  Sometimes by a little, sometimes a lot. It is the politics and policies of capitalism that fuel the age of the billionaires, and the promise that everyone can achieve those heights. 

These same policies tend to leave those not managing untouched, or, on occasion, worse off, usually in real terms across time, making it harder to quantify any direct disadvantage from an individual policy.

These are policies promoted as celebrating success and allowing the 'job-makers' to take advantage of the system, up to and including, rorting that system. Success and financial power seem to make all these indiscretions tolerable.  

The left finds these greedy, grifting, profiteering examples intolerable and they shout about them as if these are the only examples that exist. They are not. These policies help and support some truly deserving business models, across the economic spectrum, to survive and thrive.

The progressive left puts forward policies that reduce the ability of the successful to make higher profits and placing more restrictions and oversight on businesses. This makes the difficult early years of small business and small sole traders even more precarious. The left also seeks a basic minimum standard of living for all, universal health care, they look to environmental issues at the expense of corporate profits and ensure those on the lowest rungs of society can maintain an equitable standard of living.

These policies are designed to raise the greatest number possible out of poverty and ensure that working full time is rewarded with a liveable wage that covers life's basics and provides for a family. This also allows some to choose not to work and live solely off welfare. 

The right finds these greedy, grifting, freeloading examples intolerable and they shout about them as if these are the only examples that exist. They are not. These policies help and support some truly deserving individuals being let down by a system purported to be looking out for everyone.

I've always felt things work best when liberals and conservatives exchange power at around a 2 to 3 ratio. The right builds up the wealth with a strong economy and the left reforms social policies to help those who slip through the net of the conservative economic lift.

The ratio has slipped across the world because the right has outplayed the left at politics. This has happened because the left regard morality in politics as a badge of honour, and the right has long ago recognised that badges are worthless. 

Once morals counted for something in life and in politics, but then came the age of spin where both side's spokespeople focused only on the faults of the other side, and never with themselves. Where no mistake is owned or corrected and doing the right thing, a standard that was once the default, or at least the desired position, is now the exception.

How did we get here? 

It began when those charged with holding leaders responsible, the fourth estate, the news journalists, became confused with being personalities and entertainers. 

When equal representation of both points of view became more important than facts as determined and checked by multiple sources by professionally trained, skilled and schooled journalists whose reputations depended on their accuracy, facts became irrelevant.

When the politically correct ideal of regarding every view as relevant and worth scrutiny on official news broadcasts became a benchmark, this worthy notion was exploited by those looking to hide issues, spin alternative facts and obfuscate truths. You can shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and get away with it provided you do something provocative enough to misdirect people from your crime. Throw in some 'what-about-ism', cloud the facts with suggestions the victim had a gun or a record, and alert the press that many other people shot people on the same day, and your crime will hardly rate a mention. 

When the opinion/editorial/op-ed piece began to be presented alongside news with little or no delineation, news reporting stopped being news and became political propaganda. The ultimate extension of this is the dedicated partisan network that says whatever is needed by the government to convince people it's news. It is believed for no other reason than it looks like a news channel.

The multiplatform social media landscape has allowed every opinion to be a truth as the presenter presents it. All too often the term 'do your own research', a term intended to mitigate legal issues over commentary of stocks and investments has permeated into every opinion put forward as a phrase to legitimise that opinion by alerting you to the existence of any number of 'opinions' online that back up the opinion being put forward. 'Do your own research' now means, go and read equally dubious opinion pieces posted online by others who share my views.

If you see spokes-people introduced from two sides of politics or from two sides of a contentious issue, what is the point of staying to watch? Professional press agents now spruik their well-rehearsed talking points without ever listening to the other side, and those talking points are always extreme examples. For their team, they put forward positive outliers, for the other side, the negative outliers, and each example gets promoted as examples of the norm - which they are definitely not.  

Politics has stopped being an avenue of service to do the greater good and is now an avenue to get what lobbyists want and stop the will of the people from participating. Journalists began this slide into the darkness of opinions based on wants instead of facts, and the internet has sped it up and made us all contribute to the demise of facts.

How many false stories have been reposted on scientific, medical, political and even current events?

   

What happened to common sense and genuinely doing your own research? Question opinions by seeking out multiple sources of facts as published by respected and accredited institutions and experts with current accredited standing. I want to hear other people's opinions, but I want to know they've taken some time and given some effort towards forming them. Reading a headline and reposting something without scrutiny becomes a waste of everyone's time, or worse, another nail in the coffin of our entire democratic system.

Hasan Minhaj in his address at the correspondent's dinner said: "I don't have a solution of how to win back trust, but I know in the age of Trump, you guys (the media) have to be more perfect than ever because you are how the President gets his news - not from advisors, not from experts, not from intelligent agencies - you guys. So that's why you've got to be twice as good, you've got to be on your A-game, you can't make any mistakes, because when one of you messes up - he blames your entire group; and now you know what it feels like to be a minority." 

In the dawning age of conspiracy, where friends and family regularly state alternative facts as truth, and when challenged, remain defiant and tell you to do your own research, clear thinking, factual journalism and finding alternative sources to double-check alternative facts seems to have become the individual's job. The news media has become entertainment. Politicians have become infallible. Special interest groups have become public relations spokes-people, and facts have become subjective, to be massaged, manipulated, and misrepresented as the truth. 

George Orwell saw this future in a misdirected democracy that delivered authoritarianism. His chilling dystopian tale is starting to feel all too real - the only thing George got wrong was the date.

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

"How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four."

"Sometimes, two and two are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once."

― George Orwell, 1984

President Trump presents, The Greatest Show On Earth!

Remember The Donald, before he was The President Trump? 

Remember how he held a press conference and all the journalists and networks were waiting for hours, cutting into their programming and holding off shows as they waited with bated breath?

And they waited and waited and waited some more.

Then The Donald arrived and made his big announcement. It was little more than an infomercial promoting Trump products and Trump Hotels. Remember that? I always thought it was Donald J just testing how far he had hooked his suckers.

The angry journalists waved their angry little fists and flapped their angry little gums in the middle of their angry little faces and decried, "He played us! There was no big announcement. He promised us a big announcement, and he didn't deliver!. He used us to gouge a little more of the billion dollars in free media coverage we're giving him! What a complete rogue!"

Then the media went back to giving him their undivided attention and promoting fake news they'd sourced from facebook, twitter or by quoting someone else who'd sourced the idea from facebook or twitter.

It's journalism 21st-century style... where unvetted information is raced to air in a bid to be first and Dulcie from Bachas Marsh has just tweeted, 95% of all foreigners are assassins according to a man wearing a white coat and holding a clipboard. Fascinating, Dulcie.

So jump forward a year and President The Donald is under some heavy scrutiny. First, there were claims he was part of a conspiracy with the Russians. There were claims those pesky Russlanders had infiltrated social media to the extent that they had posted unbelievable crap on facebook and Americans had failed to spot that Hillary wasn't in fact possessed and controlled by Honey-Boo-Boo and had adjusted their vote as a result. Those Russians! How did they ever come up with such an ingenious plan? Zuckerberg - Arghhh! The name of an Eastern European sleeper agent if ever I heard one.

If you submerge yourself in the exabytes of metadata the government is now legally allowed to keep on all of us, you'll find The President, The Donald's head of security was shown to have been discussing things with Russia before the election. Gadzooks! 

What had they been discussing? Fake news? Fake science? Fake reality show drama? We may never know because they removed Mike Flynn as the National Security Advisor. It's time to go - Mike Flynn - and don't answer any questions on your way out unless you get immunity, granted by The Donald's people. Tick, tick, tick - won't be a moment with that immunity - just take a seat.

Then Jeff Sessions, The Trump - The Donald - The President's appointment as Attorney General, suddenly came under even greater scrutiny as the next Babushka doll in the Russian election scandal.

 
That's the moment P.T Barnum - The Donald - The President Trump tweeted that Obama had Wiretapped the Trump offices leading up to the election. It was finally a scandal that could have used the suffix. "Gate," because it was an accusation of spying on your opponent during the lead up to an election. It would have made sense to add "Gate" to the end of it, but the media had finally worn "Gate" out.

NIPPLEGATE

Hardly a word has been heard about the controversy surrounding Jeff Sessions or any implications surrounding his connections with the Russian scandal since that bombshell was tweeted by The Leader in Tweet.

The Donald, The J, The Trump, The Tweeter in Chief, The President created a bigger news story. With the skill of a world-class showman orchestrating a misdirect, he caused all the investigative journalists to run off, following the sign he planted reading, "This way to the egress."

Jeff Sessions was in the clear. This left him as the Attorney General, with his first job being to put in place and oversee a thorough investigation into the Russian influence scandal - and I am predicting, and I know it will shock many, that the verdict he returns will be that he, Jeff Sessions, did not done it.

But the pesky journalists were like a dog with a bone and they just kept digging into the story. Russia would not go away.

Kaboom! A US airstrike took out a Syrian airbase. And not just any Syrian airbase. This was the one that launched O-Zone's Dragonstea Din Tei or Numa Numa on a poor, defenceless, unsuspecting world. 

I'm sorry, I'm just being told that was Moldova, not Syria, but in Trump's world, a world of fake news - it's close enough.

Then the angry Russians waved their angry little fists and flapped their angry little gums in the middle of their angry little faces and decried, "He played us! He should have asked us first! He doesn't know the first thing about bombing ettiquete. Now we don't like him at all."

That's why relations between Russia and The Donald's USA are at an all time low - low - low! But wait! They can go even lower - if they need to.

Trump was quick to agree. Things with Russia are bad. Biggly bad, which is the very worst type of bad and let's all hope they don't become bigglier badder.

Within a month, The Donald's love fest with Putie dived into a hatefest. And coincidently, it was the very same month when the investigations into Putin giving The Donald a reach-around, election wise, was building up steam. 

But now, the bigglier baddest relations between the two ever proves how wrong those suspicions were. THIS WAY TO THE EGRESS PEOPLE!

To summarise, Russian and American relations are at an all time low. Anyone thinking there was a collaboration between Russian oligarchs and extremely wealthy American business interests, to gain a sweetheart deal with billion dollar oil pipelines or other environmentally questionable, but extremely profitable infrastructure, is simply wrong. 

Even though those very profitable projects that stalled or were impeded by global politics, ostensibly blocked through lobbying by the Obama administration and the Democrats, are now мертвый. There is no communication between the two countries at all. If people thought those billion dollar projects were more likely to go through now that Trump and his Droogs are in office - Подумайте еще раз - it's just not going to happen.

So, that's the state of affairs in Trump's American administration. Mike out, Jeff in, look over there, me and Putin aren't friends, and mind your own business or I'm going to call you a name. 

There will be no civility or agreement reached anytime soon between Donald.J.Trumperica and Vlad the Terrible's Rossia. And certainly not complicated contractual business agreements between Russian and American superbusinesses to make lots and lots of money flow. That's just not on the cards - because relations have never been so biggly bad. 

You rogue, Donald.J, you rogue - now, can you point me towards the egress?

Google the Evil Face of Facebook.

I find advertising to be the scourge of a modern life. I've never understood how companies, big and small, are allowed to blatantly lie in an effort to farm our dollars and not be held accountable. From the ordinary on TV, radio and in films, to the billboards, spam and fliers plastered across every opportunity to reach an individual.

When I lived in other countries I marveled at the blatant lies of advertising. The German doctors on Polish television promising cures for the incurable, the large multinational pharmaceutical companies in Indonesia pushing 'whitening' skin cream and the blaggards in Russia selling devices that make fat literally drop off while you sit watching television and nosh on a bucket of chips.

Thank goodness I live in an advanced society that doesn't allow advertising to be conducted with such amoral codes of conduct.

Then I began to take note of the actors in white lab coats pushing scientific breakthroughs in beauty products - has anyone yet defined 'Hypoallergenic'? There are spruikers on television pushing products under the guise of finding us, the viewer, the best product on grounds of health, price and convenience and all that information is presented in a thirty second breaking news bulletin under headings like consumer watch or brand facts.

In friends we saw Joey, the human dildo, hired as the 'average person' who simply could not work the spout mechanism on a standard milk carton. Luckily for him there was a five dollar product that would solve this annoying problem and allow him to get his daily milk. How we laughed at the stupidity of it. But we still allow hundreds of like products to advertise in just this way.

Why more of these 'idiot' neighbours haven't ended their lives by misadventure in some sort of Darwinian cull is beyond me. They seem unable to do anything - like the woman who seems to have a complete mental breakdown because she can't match the lids to her Tupperware! These people fall off ladders, strangle themselves with hoses and burn their hands with spilled cooking fat. They need George Forman's grill pronto or they'll be in emergency faster than you can say - 'but wait, there's more'.

I remember seeing Minority Report and thinking what a scary advertising-centric world we were heading for. The smartphone has made that a reality and will soon be talking to us with displays we pass and teeing up messages designed especially for us. It will read our calls and search our conversations for key words to make a profile that determines what gets advertised to us and when. We will become human spam magnets with every word we utter and thought we divulge a trigger for that next great offer.

But no-one saw Facebook or Google coming.

They have us lining up to do all the dirty work of recording our lives for them. We like, record, watch and declare our every interest. It is the data collectors wet dream of personal information. These online juggernauts have put an end to those pesky clipboard people who try to catch your eye as you rush from A to B. They have taken the place of the recorded personal information at the checkout where any snippet of information tying you to your purchase would be used to direct other products at you down the track. It is the beginning of the end of those little boxes on forms that ask if you want whatever company is behind whatever you are signing, to send you further offers and marketing opportunities in the future. Now they no longer need to ask because you will volunteer to look without being prompted.

Facebook and Google have become the ultimate personal profilers. They see our likes and dislikes, they records the pages that make us click and those we ignore, they sift through our contacts and the things that made us act or stay passive. George Orwell envisaged Big Brother as a central amoral government hell bent on control of individuals in order to maintain their control over the masses. Oh so close! It's not the government that cares about everything we do, at least not the old form of government. It is the new form of capitalist government that cares - the multinational branded government. It is the boards of the international companies, the conglomerates, the mighty One Percent. They want to know everything you do, not to benefit you, but to benefit them by enticing more dollars from your pocket for all manner of things.

“Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have on something they don’t need.” (Will Rogers)

Recently I noticed a surprising number of my friends were liking large multinational corporations on Facebook: the huge supermarket and discount chain stores, financial giants, beauty and pharmaceutical companies. When I saw a particular friend or other had liked one of these corporate behemoths I would stare in wonder at how and why? Has my greener than green, tree loving Miranda really sold her soul to become a corporate spruiker? Suddenly my Facebook news feed is filled with such likes from friends. I would guesstimate a third of all posts are from friends, posting links designed to appeal directly to me with offers from some companies that eerily match exactly what I have been looking at recently online.

The tip off to this camouflaged advertising is, as a writer, I research many weird and wonderful things. To write this I have already searched at least three sites I have no personal desire to re-visit or act on by purchasing anything, but no doubt in the next few days my friends will 'like' a series of purchasing 'opportunities' on Facebook that relate directly to what I have looked up. And on Google the sidebar sponsored links will be full of all sorts of revealing and personal offers that relate to my age and things I have liked or sites I have visited in the last few days.

Do they really think I have a friend who would like a cordless impact drill so much they felt the need to shout about it to all and sundry?

I am being asked more and more to link or shout about my purchases when I make them. Pages want to know my views, my web explorations want to be linked and all of these, if I agree or press the wrong button, those actions will automatically list a product or site through my Facebook profile, creating an enticing portal for my friends to click and visit.

We have unwittingly become one of those annoying people with the clipboard trying to grab someone with offers they have no time to hear. I already receive too much spam from Youtube, Linkedin and Twitter about posts or updates that may interest me - they rarely do and the idea that my online activities are now generating more of the same for all I know is shocking.

Where will the restraint come from. What will be the comparative online 'do not call' register - a register that has tried to tackle that strange distant phone line that clicks at me around dinner time, where an oddly accented Filipino or Indian with access to a phone addresses me by name and follows an 'oh-so-polite' script, that promises me a very special offer that involves an upfront garuantee not to try and  sell me anything - and then they try and sell me everything.

Controls always follow well behind a developing technology or practice. It usually takes until the penis enlargement people get your direct mailing address before legislation is brought on, chiefly through annoyance of enough people to demand action.

I predict Facebook and Google will go the same way and we will have to endure endless postmortem committees set up to discuss, uncover and get to the bottom of why such an invasive personal affront was allowed unchecked for so long. Because who could ever have predicted that a young man given billions in his twenties, who modeled his fortune generating, fact finding beast on a design that rated hot chicks, could ever turn out to be amoral in his design of the ultimate capitalist money generating profiler. Winkle twins - want to weigh in here?

Facebook and Google now pervade and invade my everything, When I have that chilling health scare that makes me diagnose myself to a sure death online, I find my Google and Facebook ads only moments behind, offering therapies and counseling. It is the equivalent of the salesman turning up at the wake to sell a burial plot to the widow.