The New Revolutionaries

A few weeks ago, I was asked a life-changing question: What are you tolerating? What are you putting up with you don’t want to, don’t have to, shouldn’t have to put up with? Where do you draw the line between what you’ll accept and what you won’t – and what has strayed to the wrong side of your personal line? The most important questions of all were these: Why are you tolerating sh*t in your life, and what are you going to do about it?

For me, the obvious answer related to a situation I’ve been tolerating at work. With a little inspiration from the Destroy The Joint movement, I’ve escalated the issue and I expect a result before Christmas.

The less obvious answer is also the bigger answer. It seems that right now, this decade, many of us have decided that this is the time when we won’t just put-up-and-shut-up any longer. It not about bringing anyone down or destroying anyone’s joint; it’s about living in a world that is smaller and more connected than it has ever been. It’s about accepting that you won’t agree with everyone and being secure enough to let others have their opinions too. It’s about respect for people who aren’t like you are, and being truthful and acting with integrity and holding each other to account.

Perhaps I’m just feeling more confident after President Obama’s re-election, Cardinal Pell’s ruinous press conference, or the resignation of Bruce Flegg from Queensland’s ministry, but I feel something happening. Perhaps it’s the English-speaking world’s equivalent of an Arab Spring. Perhaps its astrology, or maturity or simple old coincidence. I think it’s more: the passage of time combined with incremental social change over several generations, social media and connectivity, and the understanding that people have power.

It’s complicated.

Look at the events of last year or so, which have challenged the behaviours and institutions that make up the basic societal structure of the past decade or so.

News Limited and the phone hacking scandal

The Occupy movement

President Obama’s re-election and the rejection of Tea Party values

Destroy The Joint & Alan Jones and advertisers

The international response to the shooting of Malala Yousafszai

Julia Gillard calling Tony Abbott a misogynist

The Royal Commission into institutionalised abuse

What’s driving these campaigns? It’s not government, and often tackles issues which are entirely removed from Government. Equally, sometimes the campaigns are targeting potential legislation. Organisations like GetUp! now operate alongside industry lobbyists, trade unions, and churches. Social Media platforms like Facebook and Twitter now connect users to online petitions where they can show their support for or against a cause.

The diverse list of headline grabbers above has one thing in common: there’s an energy coming out of a collective challenge to “the way we were”, particularly when “the way we were” allowed the more powerful in our society to do whatever they want without thought for those who have less power, less money, less influence.

But before the ‘establishment’ cries foul, those who are driving change are not all gay Muslim hippy-dippy feminist socialist global-warming advocates, dragging the world towards single planetary governance and a carob-coated Soylent Green existence. They – those people who destroy the joint and start petitions (and sign them) and choose to become whistleblowers and speak out? They are us.

The Royal Commission into the institutionalised abuse of children is the most recent example of what is happening. Despite Cardinal Pell’s denialist perspective, it’s correct to say that the sexual abuse of children, particularly boys, has been an open secret for decades. It may well have been going on for centuries – we don’t know. What we do know is that there was no support for victims, who rarely spoke out in any case. Paedophile priests concealed each other’s crimes, and the Church’s own customs and dogmata allowed these men to find absolution.

So secretive is the church that even now, they choose the sanctity of the Confessional over their responsibilities as humans, as adults, and as moral leaders of their community. Any attempt to impose a secular law to over-rule the rule of their church would probably fail; the collective will of "the church" - those who have perpetrated crimes against our most innocent, those who have concealed it, and those who turned a blind eye - will defy en masse
 
It’s handy to have no legal status whatsoever.
 
And so something is starting. Something to do with intolerance, but as a positive movement rather than a negative descriptor. We’re challenging the way things are now, and sending strong messages out into the world.

No, Mr Murdoch, it is not acceptable for your organisation to source its scoops by illegally hacking phones and email accounts, by bribing officials and by lying about it.

No, Mr Romney, we are not going to vote for a President who will legislate to control women’s’ bodies, gay rights and immigrant’s rights, while making it easier to get guns. Nor will we watch you talk about reducing the deficit will simultaneously reducing taxes on the rich and services for the poor.

No, Alan Jones, it is not okay for you to continue your abuse of our Prime Minister…or your abuse of anyone, for that matter.

No, Mr Abbott, you may not continue to mutter derogatory and sexist comments across the despatch boxes in Parliament, and to base an entire party leadership on the absence of policy.

Hell No! Your Holiness, we are no longer willing to accept the way your church has treated young boys and girls in our communities for generations; neither will we accept your church’s intricate attempts to cover its tracks, evade responsibility and use your Holy rituals as an excuse for inaction.

And to my employer, thank you for noticing.

Dazed & Confused

Prior to the US Presidential election last week, columnist and libertarian Deroy Murdoch said,

"It's vital that this be not just a slight GOP win, but a crushing defeat for Obama...We need to discredit and destroy socialism in the US for at least a generation"

Days after the US Presidential election, conservative voters, libertarians, Tea Partiers, and Christian evangelicals are still dazed. Barack Obama was never supposed to win a second term. The result is, for them, sincerely unexpected. The only outcome for which they were prepared included a calmly confident President-Elect Mitt Romney. It's fair to say that the conservative side of American politics was both unprepared for another term with President Obama, and not expecting to have to face it.

Sad faces

It's always hard to be a loser, harder still to do it with an audience. Mitt Romney admitted that he had not written a concession speech. Romney's team went live with a President-Elect website. Republican talking head Karl Rove refused to accept the loss of Ohio and sent Fox News Host Megyn Kelly on a long-legged trek to find the psephologists' bunker. Such was the rock solid belief that Romney would win, it appears that Fox's election night hosts hadn't considered any other result.

Out here in the blogosphere, the sense of shock was less polished but no less vehement. Right wing forum Godlike Productions posted this gem:

Dick Morris was wrong

"I'm not arguing that Romney was a great candidate -- but up against the Worst President In The History Of The United States, The Kenyan Marxist Muslim, The Socialist Redistributor Barack Obama, a tree stump could have won."

Robert Bowen wrote for The Examiner on November 12.

"There are several things to take from this. First, Romney had coat tails—for Democrats. Secondly, the Republican brand is severely damaged by its war on women, its immigrant bashing, and its obstruction in Congress. This damaged down ticket candidates. Lastly, the pick ups in the West show the changing demographic. Hispanic voters shocked Republican know-it-alls and old school pollsters by turning out to vote. Republicans totally underestimated that. They also underestimated the turn out by African-Americans and young people.

If the Republican Party will even survive, it needs to do some soul searching about its policies. Right now, many GOP pundits are saying their policies are fine, they just did not make their case “delicately.” Is there a more delicate way to say “self-deportation” “legitimate rape”, or forced trans-vaginal ultra sounds? I suspect Republicans still do not get it."

I fear the reality is worse than Bowen suspects, and the Republicans simply won't acknowledge it until it’s all too late. Bear in mind that these terms "right" and "left" are literally relative. Both Democrats and Republicans are significantly to the right of centre, and that's part of a bigger problem for Republicans and Tea Partiers.

One of a series of aggressive tweets which Donald Trump later deleted.

Another four years with President Obama will renew the Tea Party's energy; he's someone to rail against, someone to hate, someone to fear. He’s black, with a foreign/Muslim middle name. He’s an easy target. Donald Trump will continue to suggest that President Obama is somehow an illegitimate president. Rush Limbaugh's face will get redder and shinier, Greta Van Susteran will grit her teeth even tighter, and Glen Beck will howl tears of rage.
Still, few Republicans are accepting that conservative voters have also changed. What was conservative twenty years ago is now mainstream, and the ignorance and prejudices that were silently accepted then are now cause for revolt. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly read the electorate well on election night:

“The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming, black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama's way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?”

“The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore.”

It's difficult to define a "traditional" America on the basis of voter preferences in a country where voting is not compulsory, but it is safe to say that the groups which were once considered to be minorities and special interest groups won the election for President Obama. Despite recent economic history, and warnings of a financial cliff heading their way, the more economically and/or socially vulnerable groups - single women, the poor, African Americans, Latino, gay - voted overwhelmingly in favour of the party most likely to look after their needs.
The biggest block of voters to support President Obama was women. This is hardly surprising, given that Mitt Romney’s party was better known for it’s serial ignorance on a range of issues, including pregnancy, rape, abortion and climate change. These are not “Womens’ Issues” – they are human issues. (see left)

These are the issues which will ultimately split conservative politics in America.

The core values of the Republican party are being challenged by America’s changing demography. Much of mainstream America is rejecting the extreme brand of conservatism favoured by the Tea Party, so moving to the right to embrace the Tea Party won’t win Republicans more votes; it will probably cost some in the middle. Shuffling to the left is even more dangerous, because it makes it impossible to be an effective opposition – they would agree with too many Democratic policies and end up opposing them just to be seen to be opposing them. If Republicans were willing to move to the left far enough to alienate the Tea Party faithful, they would lose enough of their base to make winning a Presidential almost impossible.

So where to now for the GOP? Deroy Murdoch wanted to see the Democrats made irrelevant for a generation. It looks far more like the Republicans are the ones who are endangered, a victim of their own conservatism.

Eve of Destruction

For much of the last 48 hours, Australian women have been talking about destroying the joint. Sounds like something Pete Townsend and his mates might've done to a hotel room 40 years ago. Instead, these are the words that radio shock jock Alan Jones used on Friday morning to describe our current Prime Minister, Victoria's former Police Commissioner and Sydney's Lord Mayor.

"She (the Prime Minister) said that we know societies only reach their full potential if women are politically participating," he told listeners.

"Women are destroying the joint - Christine Nixon in Melbourne, Clover Moore here. Honestly."

Is this really what Mr Jones thinks? That women are destroying the joint? That women are incapable of filling leadership positions? That it's wasteful to spend money on developing female candidates to participate in the political arena?

That's the context here. Mr Jones was joking with Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce about the sale of Cubbie Station, Australia's largest cotton farm, to foreign interests. Mr Jones thought it would be funny to point out that the amount Australia had pledged to assist women in the Pacific Region would have saved Cubbie from falling to foreign ownership.

Incidentally, the audio isn't crystal clear, but it does sound as though Senator Joyce may have described Prime Minister Gillard's grant to help the women of the South Pacific into leadership roles as "putting it up against the wall." He's no fan of the women either.

And before we move from Mr Jones and Senator Joyce, I'm wondering where in the Coalition Handbook does it mention that the federal government should step in and buy failing businesses like Cubbie Station? It must be in there somewhere, because Mr Jones and Senator Joyce both see it as a viable option. If I was to whisper the words "state-owned farms" into Barnaby's ear, I'm pretty sure the images in his mind would be grainy black and white shots of toothless peasants digging potatoes for the Greater Good.

I still can't quite believe that anyone, anywhere in the world, would say that "women are destroying the joint". There is nothing acceptable in that statement.

It wasn't the only comment of that ilk made this week. Liberal Party Thought-Leader Grahame Morris referred to ABC journalist Leigh Sales as a "cow" because she pushed Tony Abbott during a television interview.

Let's apply the Reverse Test here. If the journalist had been a man instead of a woman, and the questions and tone had been the same, would Mr Morris have called him a cow? For that matter, we should apply the Reverse Test to Mr Jones comments too. It's no secret that he doesn't like women...

At the same time, the Republican National Convention in Tampa was trying to diffuse the idea that they were waging a war against women. Their key arguments to prove the non-existence for the war on women was that candidate Mitt Romney had employed women in key roles in his campaign team. In the frantic days of the Convention, no-one was able to ask why. No-one was able to ask if he was paying these women what he'd pay men in the same roles. No-one was able to ask about his view of the never-passed Equal Rights Amendment that's been floating around Washington for 40-odd years.

We do know that Mr Romney privately supported limited rights to abortion. He's said so, but he's also said the opposite. He objects to various women's health issues being covered in "Obamacare" - in fact he objects to the entire scheme - and he introduced a similar version in his home stats of Massachusetts, prior to the federal scheme.

It's only weeks since Republican Todd Akin exposed his ignorance by suggesting that rape victims rarely became pregnant because the female body would just stop that from happening. He's wrong to the tune of about 32,000 rape-related pregnancies per year in the USA, and has been chastised by Governor Romney for saying it.

Now, his statement has been defended by a female Republican Party official, Sharon Barnes, who said she believes Akin only "phrased it (his statement) badly."

Barnes was quoted by The New York Times saying, "abortion is never an option." Barnes went on to biblically claim that, "If God has chosen to bless this person [the rape victim] with a life, you don’t kill it."

No Ms Barnes, it wasn't phrased badly. Todd Akin's statement is factually incorrect. As for Ms Barnes' statement, I hesitate to use the word "bless" in relation to the product of violent sexual abuse.

Governor Romney's running mate Paul Ryan is far more conservative than even the Mormon Romney, which is one of the reasons he was selected. He is rock-solid in his anti-abortion stance, where his pro-life record was reported on Al Jazeera, earning screaming fits of rage from the Ryan-loving, Muslim hating Tea Party crowd. While he's not waging war on women, he also voted against the Fair Pay Act, and wants to make some forms of contraception, and IVF illegal.

It's chicken-and-egg question: are you a conservative because you have issues relating to women, or does being a conservative cause the problems with women? Probably neither; most likely, the conservative attitude towards women is just one of a complex series of values that defines conservatism.

I use the word "values" deliberately. It's a word most closely associated with conservative politics. Add the word "Christian" and you're defining the voter base of the Republican Party in America and to a lesser degree, the Liberal Party in Australia. I find the term "values voters" to define conservatives quite ridiculous: it suggests that the more progressive you are, the further to the left you move, the less "values" you have.

Oftentimes, the opposite is true. Those to the right, the conservatives, tend to be driven more by economic policy than issues of morality and ethics, while the true lefties are always concerned with values first. Lefties will vote according to policies on gay rights, the environment, and government support for the most vulnerable in our society: disabled, elderly, sick, poor, illiterate, and those outside our society via asylum seeker, refugee and foreign aid. These are the true values of most religions: hope, charity, generosity, sharing, loving.

How do conservative women sleep at night?

In any case, the question of a woman's place in society is still a dividing line between the political right and left in 2012. I'm genuinely appalled. I thought this fight was all but over. I thought we'd moved onto other, less basic fights: fat acceptance, anti-bullying, mental health, gay marriage. But I'm wrong, and we need the next generation of women activists - and our male supporters - to get this womens' issues back on the national agenda.

Americana: Isaac the Angry Uterus

It’s official. Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee in the 2012 American Presidential election. It’s been unofficial for some months now, with names like Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Thaddeus McCotter, plus token female Michelle Bachmann and token African American Herman Cain all being relegated to the ranks of politicians who didn’t quite make it into the Presidential Race.

Those of us who ignore the mental health advice and watch eleventeen hours of subscription television news each day are only too aware of the Presidential election. For some of us, it’s a perfectly alluring blend of drama, comedy and cut-throat competitive action. No, I’m not being flippant about that; following a Presidential election can be the world’s greatest spectator sport.

Like all spectator sports, you need to be familiar with the rules, understand the language of the commentary team and know the candidates. Unfortunately, you can’t learn everything you need to know from The West Wing boxed set (although it’s a decent place to start, or a terrific refresher course.)

As in the Australian system, there are two major parties. One is to the right of centre; the other is a fair bit further to the right of centre. The incumbent is President Barack Obama, a Democrat, which is the least extreme of the two parties and is symbolised by a donkey. The Democrats are roughly equivalent to the ALP. The more extreme conservative party is the Republication party. They’re known as the Grand Old Party, or GOP, which is roughly equivalent to the Coalition, but with a bit more extreme.


President Obama was elected President four years ago, just about the time the Global Financial Crisis was rewriting the rulebook for the world. His job, to rebuild America’s economy and reputation while fighting the unwinnable war in Afghanistan, was next to impossible, and many Americans see his progress as disappointing. President Obama is phenomenally popular…in Australia, but we’re not allowed to vote. Go figure. His running mate, who will be Vice President if he wins, is the incumbent VP Joe Biden.

Governor Mitt Romney of the Great State of Massachusetts is an entirely different can of tuna. He and Mrs Ann Romney are the Senior Ken and Barbie of American politics. Mitt is independently wealthy, but we’re not quite sure how much moolah he has because he’s hiding his tax returns, but his estimated worth is around $200 million dollars. He has Masters in Business and Law. The Romneys have five sons, all adults. Mitt and his family are practising Mormons. Romney’s Running Mate is Paul Ryan, an even more conservative Republican.

American politics is more conservative than Australian politics, and that could be the problem for the Republicans. How conservative is enough, how much is too much? The spectrum is not infinite, and eventually, the Republicans will move so far to the right that they’ll run out of room to move.

Since Obama’s election four years ago, we’ve seen what can happen when the far right wing of America’s populace get together to oppose the “radical” left. They have a Tea Party, backed by a “fair and balanced” television cable news network. For hard-line Tea Partiers, the standard Republican platform is not conservative enough, but thankfully, the impact of the Tea Party peaked early, fuelled by rage at President Obama’s very existence and egged on by Sarah Palin and the entire Fox News Network: he’s African American, intellectual, and according to Tea Partiers, he’s also possibly Muslim, Kenyan, Indonesian, Alien, Socialist, Communist, Elitist, progressive, Satanist and The End Of Life As We Know It.

A selection of banners from Tea Party rallies during the past four years.

In 2012, the Tea Party is largely without influence, but they are still an important block of voters. There’s no chance that the Tea Party fringe would ever vote for a Democrat; the danger is that if Mitt Romney is seen as too moderate, they might not vote at all. Voting is not compulsory in America: to require someone to vote is an affront to their right to choose not to vote. It’s logical, if your mind is bendy. The bottom line is that Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan have to find the balance between being conservative enough to attract Tea Partiers to the polls, yet not too extreme to keep that true moderate Republicans away from the polls – or worse, voting for Obama.

After the GOP Convention in Tampa this week, we’ll have a better idea of where that sweet spot might be – because Fox News will tell us. It’s early days, yet we can be sure that from the safety of our Australian lounge rooms, much of it will sound ridiculous:

"Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend." —GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to a heckler at the Iowa State Fair who suggested that taxes should be raised on corporations as part of balancing the budget, Aug. 11, 2011

"[My wife] drives a couple of Cadillacs." –Mitt Romney, campaigning for president in Michigan (February 2012)

"I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in. That's the America I love." –Mitt Romney (January 2012)

"We have a president, who I think is is a nice guy, but he spent too much time at Harvard, perhaps." —Mitt Romney, who has two Harvard degrees (April 5, 2012)

"I'm not familiar precisely with what I said, but I'll stand by what I said, whatever it was." —Mitt Romney (May 17, 2012)

Still, it could be worse. Todd Akin, a Senator from Wisconsin. All but the most moderate of Republicans are “Pro-Life”, which actually means they are against abortion. The further to the right you move, the less wiggle room there is in the argument. Senator Akin was asked whether women who were pregnant as the result of being raped should have access to legal abortions. Here’s his answer:

“Well you know, people always want to try to make that as one of those things, well how do you, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. First of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.” – Senator Todd Akin (August 2012)

As well has being factually wrong, it’s also grossly insulting to all women. In fact, some American commentators have referred to a Republican “War On Women”, an emotive catchall phrase to describe various unrelated policies that all seem to restrict the rights of women. These include funding cuts for organisations that perform medical abortions, victim support for women who’ve been physically, mentally or sexually abused. Related issues include workplace discrimination, equal pay for women, public funding for family planning, contraception and sterilization.

Of course, the Republicans have no problem with women. They chose Sarah Palin – a “hockey mom” who served half a term as the Governor of a minor state - as the Vice Presidential candidate just four years ago. Perhaps they’ve learnt something since then. Michelle Bachmann was a nominee to be the Republican candidate to run against President Obama. She dropped out of the race early on, but she left her mark on the political landscape.

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending." —Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, suggesting at a presidential campaign event in Florida that the 2011 East Coast earthquake and hurricane was a message from God (Aug. 2011)



Hurricane Isaac: The Uterus of Wrath



Does anyone want to guess at what Michelle Bachmann thinks God’s message must be this week? He’s sent a giant hurricane shaped like a uterus to rain on Tampa during the Republican National Convention. Could it just be that the Republicans need to adjust their attitude to women?