Politics, much like the ethically-challenged tawdry celebrity gossip-rags it occasionally so closely resembles, is a field in which “Truth” (or even, simply, ‘internal cohesiveness’ of an argument or a position) is often only a tertiary consideration. With some measure of “effectiveness” (especially of a slur) as a secondary, and “the venting of highly emotive vitriol” an unabashed and unquestioned prime.
I’ve seen a few strange things this morning; but one of the more peculiar has to be the Republican Party attacking Tulsi Gabbard’s just-announced Presidential candidacy, on grounds that “Progressives have blasted her”.
The 10th of December marks the 70th Anniversary of the adoption of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. It’s a pretty interesting document – not least because, if you peruse its contents, it contains an array of “rights” that have largely fallen by the wayside here in modern, neoliberal society.
A thought that’s been gestating in my head these past few days about the Yellow Jackets “political moment”, is how … I guess you could say that “populism” looks like *very* different things to different people.
It’s pretty interesting watching the reactions in the media to the GCSB disallowing Spark from using Huawei tech in the 5G network upgrade.
Another day, another case of an American man whipping up ignorance and divisive idiocy via the Twitter medium they’re immanently associated with. Except in this case, it’s Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. And rather than speaking on a matter that is relevant to America, he’s chosen to wade into India’s ongoing post-colonial internal conflicts over “caste”.
Controversial Opinion: The Democrats actually kinda *lost* yesterday’s US Midterms.
During my .. brief awokenness this afternoon, I happened to peruse the newspaper. And what did I see? Pieces commenting on the recent attack at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. This is, of course, to be expected. But what was *not*, like *at all* to be expected, was the escalating level of accusations in relation to the attack that Donald Trump… is apparently an anti-semite.
Thinking about the National Party’s recent woes – there’s a funny sort of … I guess you’d say “symmetry” to a lot of happenings politics; and not simply in the sense that they occur “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”.
So you get somebody at TVNZ endeavouring to engage in a nice gesture (which, again, I *do* think is a pretty cool intent here – and should be lauded, up to a point), on grounds that they’ve heard that Auckland City Council is holding a “Diwali” event, and therefore without doing the proper research, they just kinda assume … and ‘get onboard’ by wishing us all a “Happy Diwali” two weeks early across multiple channels.