What do the January 6 “insurrection”, Net Zero, mRNA vaccines and transgenderism all have in common?
Well, for a start, their fundamental flaws have been obvious all along. A blind man could see on the day that Trump didn’t incite his followers to storm the Capitol on January 6, and nor did they. Net Zero is supposedly a response to “climate change”, which isn’t happening. The danger of the vaccines was obvious when Tiffany Dover, the first nurse to receive the injection live on TV in December 2020, fainted seconds afterwards. And transgenderism is clearly a socially contagious mental illness enabled by sexual liberalism, which fills the gap once occupied by more traditional forms of “identity”. These facts have been clear all along.
More importantly, though, is that each of these ideas is now experiencing a rapid decline in popularity. The public are finally realising, after years of the facts staring them in the face, that all these ideas, once widely held, are in fact empirically false. Or to give them their technical term, they’re batshit bonkers.
American author Malcolm Gladwell famously coined a term for this in his bestselling book, The Tipping Point, in 2000. But Gladwell, amusingly, is himself a victim of the phenomenon. At a sports conference in 2022, he endorsed the idea that men who think they are women should be able to compete in women’s sport; two months ago, after sanity about the immutability of gender had begun to prevail again (having reached its own tipping point), Gladwell confessed he felt “ashamed” about having endorsed such a ludicrous idea.
He deserves credit, at least, for admitting his error. Most people just casually edit the icons in their social media profile to suit whichever causes are now in fashion and move on as if nothing has changed.
The Liberal Party of Australia is dropping its support of Net Zero in a similar way. There will be no Gladwell-like admission of shame for having endorsed the insanity of the times. Instead, it will simply redefine a core policy and hope people will perceive it as a mere minor adjustment.
The modern political playbook dictates that politicians never, ever, admit having made an error, mostly because the mainstream media would mercilessly and endlessly repackage any such admission as a sign of hypocrisy. (Which leads me to another tipping point: when will the public realise that the mainstream media’s business model relies on generating conflict, not publishing the truth?)
It would be refreshing, though, for a political party to, just once, admit it got something wrong and blithely ignore the fallout from finger-wagging journalistic scolds who deny human fallibility.
Sadly, this is increasingly unlikely. Instead, politicians are tightening their grip on the narrative in the vain hope that their political chicanery won’t be exposed next time around.
And with people like Tony Burke occupying key ministerial portfolios, what could go wrong?
Burke, wearing his hat of Arts Minister, introduced legislation to parliament this month that forces Netflix and other multinational streaming services to spend 10 per cent of their revenue on Australian content.
If they don’t, the logic goes, then Australian culture will be swamped by content that is more engaging and entertaining. Ignore for a second how nerdish and insecure that is, and focus instead on the fact that Burke, wearing his other hats as Minister for Home Affairs and immigration, is doing precisely that.
Whatever foreign content Australians are watching on Netflix is chicken feed compared to what’s actually happening on our streets and suburbs. Under Labor, Australia is being swamped by immigrants from India, China, Nepal and other undeveloped nations who are not only mostly unskilled but are not interested in assimilating. Rather, many of them are here to change our culture in ways that Netflix content creators could only dream about.
If Burke wants a TV series that encapsulates modern Australia, he could start with a three-part dramatisation of the time during this year’s election campaign when the Federal Police whisked him away from a Muslim prayer meeting in his own electorate because a gang of thugs were on their way and their intentions were not entirely peaceful.
You can see it now: Burke’s Backyard. Where our new culture is deeply rooted.
The timing of this legislation anything but accidental. Australia is just weeks away from what the government calls a “world-leading” regime of restricting 16-year-olds’ access to the harmful effects of social media.
Pretending now to care about Australian culture is a smokescreen for the chaos that will ensue when we are all required to provide some form of ID to use X, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. Even the government is admitting that it won’t work, at least for its stated purpose.
But its real purpose — to accustom us to more and more government control — will probably be a roaring success. At least until this too achieves a tipping point and the zeitgeist rebels.
The sickening part of it is that mobile phones and social media are in fact causing kids enormous, fundamental and irreparable harm. Their ability to learn, laugh, socialise, create and enjoy life are being comprehensively destroyed by an addiction to the dopamine that social media provides.
The government has looked at that problem and not seen it as an issue that desperately needs to be solved, but rather as an excuse to extend its control over the rest of us.
However much you hate politicians, it’s not enough.
