Something Ive discovered over the last few years through deliberate social experiment. When you extrapolate guns, a gold standard, traditional values and morality, and the death penalty from politics, theyre actually broadly popular ideas. People like the idea of being able to defend themselves, the idea of their money having real, tangible value, and the idea of seeing pedophiles, rapists, and murderers pay the ultimate price for their proven crimes. Theyre also broadly fond of the idea of the governance of public health, education, and social services being decentralised to local communities. These ideas appeal to an entire cross section of the public from stay at home mums, to city office workers, to businessmen, and even politicians. But when you get to the nitty-gritty of it, when you ask why dont we?, the response invariably starts with well for starters it wouldnt garner any public support... And then you get a fumbling about for reasons why. Which Im sure are perfectly valid, but they always sound more like worries than reasons. So Ive been doing a little further investigation. When you ask the same people the same questions when discussing politics, their responses are almost always in the negative; and when they are in the affirmative, the topic is met with enthusiasm but it ultimately boils down to meh, itll never happen. Which makes me wonder. Using someone who has charm and charisma, and with good, fluid articulation, there is no reason why these values and beliefs cant be brought back into the mainstream. Look at Pauline Hanson. I despised a fair few of her views and policies, but even as a child I was quite fond of the majority of them. She brought many of those topics back into mainstream political discussion. She had a certain plain-spoken suburban charm about her. However, she ultimately failed because she couldnt articulate them very well. In fact no one associated with One Nation could either articulate or defend their views very well, and those who did were nobbled by the party executive. I rather think that if she was capable of the sort of articulation you see in the mainstream parties and the successful minor parties, One Nation would still be a force to be reckoned with.
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 12:07:04 +0000