The Transpacific Virus

Apart from Covid-19, there is another virus circulating at the moment.

It is just as dangerous as the Covid Pandemic, but it originated in the USA, not China. Its consequences are real, as can be observed by the chaotic state of US politics.

I'm referring, of course, to the epidemic of distrust of institutions and government across the Pacific since the Tea Party movement emerged towards the first ten years of the new millennium. That movement grew out a sense of grievance and entitlement precipitated by globalism, automation, and the GFC.

Political movements generated by national grievance rarely end well. Examples include Brexit, which is wreaking havoc on daily life in the UK right now, and the Tea Party itself, which has changed some Republicans from a credible conservative movement to a baying mob, despite the fact that it The Tea Party largely disappeared from the scene in its original form. National grievance was one of the major factors driving the rise of the NAZI movement in Germany in the thirties, and remains a large component of Chinese nationalism, used extremely effectively by the CCP under Xi Jinping.

Another component assisting the rise of grievance politics is the role of US corporate media, exemplified by Fox news, and these days, Newsmax. Gone are the days when the corporate media reported the public mood. These days they make a profit by exploiting that mood, monetising it, and then selling it back to the consumers of that same media. 

These same consumers are always prepared to pay for what they want to hear. They become opinion junkies, and this phenomenon leeches into social media. Recently, social media platforms have belatedly started to arrest the tide of misinformation and disinformation that feeds this sense of grievance. Facebook and Twitter have begun to do this, although with great reluctance, as it messes with their business model. It took an insurrection for Twitter to give Trump the shove. 

None of this would bother me very much, except that it is beginning to have an effect locally. One example of this is the imported outrage from the US about vaccine mandates and lockdowns.  Despite the fact that the Australian death rate from the virus per head of population is about 1/25 of what is it across the Pacific (67 per million vs 2297) there are voices here jumping on the culture wars bandwagon, and demanding an end to mandates and restrictions. They even use the same four word slogan.

 The most recent example is the introduction of legislation designed to require voters to present ID at the ballot box. It is designed to solve a problem which does not exist in this country, and has already been resolved in Queensland, where people on the electoral roll are posted an ID card to their address, and present that when they vote. I'm accumulating a collection.

A far greater problem than electoral fraud in this country is the rate of participation in state and federal elections - (91.9%) at the last federal poll. Despite the Electoral Commission seeing this as an achievement, we'd be doing better as a democracy if everybody got to vote.  How about the legislature take measures to ensure this disenfranchised 8.1% of the Australian electorate votes, rather than chasing the less than 0.001% of the electorate who allegedly tried to vote more than once at the last federal poll?

I won't hold my breath for an answer.

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