"Democracy" Saved

Image courtesy New Yorker magazine.

 This comprehensively researched article from Time magazine makes chilling reading.

It describes in detail how a loose coalition of concerned individuals saved the USA from what could have been the greatest threat to democracy across the Pacific since the Civil War.

It reminds me of Abraham Lincoln's prediction in his Lyceum address in 1838. 

Lincoln said -

"At what point is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freeman, we must live for all time, or die by suicide".

The "danger amongst us" was Trump's campaign to win at all costs, aided and abetted by a cluster of violent extremists who were prepared to stop at nothing. The closest historical equivalent were groups like the Blackshirts in Italy in the thirties.

The article begins by explaining why there was comparatively little reaction to Biden's win, except for the assault on the Capitol by the very extremists who were Trump's acolytes. That reaction turned out to be seriously counterproductive for the Republicans.

"A weird thing happened right after the Nov 3 election: nothing.

The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before election day, 75% of Americans voiced concerns about violence.

instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the reaction was not mass action, but crickets. When media organisations called the race for Jow Biden on November 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the US to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump's ouster".

It describes how efforts to suppress votes, inject doubt into institutional trust, and use misinformation to muddy the waters, was countered by quiet and consistent work at street level by this informal, bi-partisan campaign.

Read the whole thing. 

It is, at the same time comforting, and chilling.

The USA has dodged a bullet. 

By the way, the quotation marks in the title are a reminder that, as any knowledgeable American will tell you, the USA is a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

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Published

 

Ever since I began reading motor magazines I've always wanted to be a motoring journalist.

Another calling emerged, and except for an interruption when the government decided to send me off to a foreign country in peacetime to help convince the locals that we knew what was good for them, it was a fulfilling and satisfying career. 

My second attempt at retirement (after failing the first one and working as an advisor for ten years) has provided me with time to try my hand at writing about cars.

You can check out my attempts, gentle reader, here.

One online car magazine runs owner reviews, so I submitted one.

They published it, although I'm not sure who is responsible for one piece of poor sentence construction. See if you can find it. I reckon it's their poor editing.

Anyhow, let me know what you think.

In the meantime, I'll add some pics to this post to make it slightly less featureless.

This is a very rare coupe, sold only in Japan

This was my first NB with hardtop fitted and matched.

This was the second NB on the day I sold it.

Australia Day

Image courtesy CEFA.

Last Tuesday was a public holiday.

It’s a public holiday because two hundred and thirty three years ago, a convict settlement was established at Botany Bay by the British.

When you think about it, being granted a public holiday seems a strange way of remembering the opening of a penal settlement. If it was, say, a school, or a hospital, perhaps that would be grounds for celebration. But a jail? 

We should commemorate a national day. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on what being Australian actually means, and to understand our history, and what makes this country the best place to live if you value a great quality of life.

But if you understand our history, it's difficult to rationalise the choice of January 26th as our national day.

Back in 1788, the first fleet arrived over the period of 18-20 January 1788. Between the 25th and the 26 January 1788 they moved from Botany bay to present-day Sydney. It was very much an arrival in dribs and drabs.

The significance of the 26th January lies in the fact that this was the day when Phillip, after a reconnaissance on 21st January to find a more favourable spot than Botany Bay for a settlement, planted the Union Jack at Port Jackson.

If you had asked the redoutable Arthur Phillip what exactly he was doing, I doubt very much that "establishing a nation" would have entered the conversation. He was carrying out his orders, dutifully setting up a penal settlement, because the loss of the American colonies had shut off earlier options for detaining prisoners.

A new location had to be found, and Port Jackson was suitable. Let's not kid ourselves. This was nothing to do with nation-building. It was an exercise in developing a jail.

The first time the term "Australia" was used on anything official was by Matthew Flinders in a chart he compiled in 1804 whilst imprisoned by the French in Mauritius. It wasn't until 1824 (36 years after the arrival of the first fleet), that the British Admiralty finally accepted that the continent should be known officially as Australia.

So calling 26th January "Australia Day" because of the significance of the date is an ahistorical misunderstanding.

So if not 26th January - when?

That really is quite straightforward. 

That date of Federation (1st January) is an obvious choice.

The move toward Federation was a long time in the development, marking, as it did, the growth of a sense of national identity felt by native born Australians.

The Tenterfield Oration, given by Sir Henry Parkes on 24 October 1889, is generally recognized as the beginning of the Federation process.

The argument against 1st January as unsuitable because it is already a public holiday is a distraction. If having a day off is so important, the holiday could be taken at some other time. Beyond that, almost everybody is already celebrating the New Year on that day, so adding a national commemoration won't spoil anything.

As for the "Invasion day" controversy - perhaps moving the emphasis from dispossession (as signified by remembering the planting of the Union Jack), to celebrating the creation of a new federated nation might take some of the heat out of that.

The flag planted on 26th January 1788 was not, after all, the Australian flag.

It is the flag of another nation entirely, a nation that had rejected and imprisoned the majority of those who witnessed its unfurling back then.

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The Democracy Sausage

Pic courtesy Wikipedia

Across the pacific, the tumult and the shouting has died, and the captains and the kings have departed, or at least the noisiest has.

Most of the noise surrounding his departure was generated by controversy about the outcome of the presidential vote, and allegations, by the losers, that the outcome was fraudulent. The repetition of this allegation, without any proof, chipped away at the trust the American people have in their electoral system, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It's difficult to imagine this kind of discord developing in this country. That's a blessing, and you should always count your blessings.

It might be useful to compare the electoral systems in the USA and Australia, and to identify and count those blessings.

The first blessing is participation.

The most fundamental difference is that voting is compulsory in Australia, and voluntary in the USA. Straightaway, the exercise of democracy in Australia maximises participation. When Abraham Lincoln described democracy in his country at the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg on November 19th 1863, I doubt he was talking about random sampling. 

He said -

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

He did not qualify his remarks by saying "some" of the people, so it's a reasonable assumption that he meant "all" of the people.

Democracy is enhanced by participation. Even in the 2020 US November 4th election, which generated the highest turnout for decades, only 66.7% of eligible voters actually cast a ballot. Compare that with 91.9% in Australia's 2019 federal election. These figures mean that in the USA, one in three eligible citizens had no say in electing their president for the next four years. It also means that nine in ten Australians have a say in who governs them.

Another blessing is ease of voting.

A major contribution to participation is to make voting easy and straightforward. Because voting is compulsory in this country, there is a requirement for government to remove all conceivable barriers. This is done by allowing (and because of the pandemic encouraging) postal, absentee and pre-poll voting.

Polling stations are plentiful, and well-staffed, and are open from 8am to 6pm. It is rare in this country to have to queue for hours (or even minutes) to vote. Every effort is made to make the process streamlined and efficient, and processes are consistent across the country.

Whilst in twenty-first century australia, the weekend is no longer sacred, the fact that voting occurs on Saturday also facilitates the process.

Another blessing is efficiency. 

Compare our pretty efficient situation with what happens stateside.

Voting in the USA follows a mish-mash of methods determined at state and county level. There is no Electoral Commission (state or federal), and everybody does their own thing. 

Unlike the time-honoured lead pencil and paper ballot combination used in Australia, you might you might fill in a bubble sheet (like the ones you got with tests in school) or you could push a button on a machine, which punches holes in a ballot. (which was responsible for the "hanging chad controversy in the 2000 presidential election which finished up in the supreme court). You might even vote digitally at a machine.

The pencil and paper system is used here because it is simple and foolproof, and does not rely on technology which can go wrong.

Another blessing is accessibility.

In the US, you will vote on a Tuesday, which is not a public holiday. If you are a single parent, or holding down two jobs (as around 5% of Americans do) getting to a booth can be a challenge. There is a long tradition of voter suppression amongst minority groups (Latinos and African-Americans) which is only just being overcome by political organisations. 

I won't get into the more complex issues gerrymandering - indulged in by both sides, and the elephant in the room, the Electoral College which can and has allowed candidates winning fewer votes Than their rivals to gain power. These are important issues that haven't been addressed successfully for over a century in the USA.

It is possible for Australians to elect a government which commands a majority of seats, but not a majority of voters, but our preferential system (unknown in the US) compensates somewhat.

Perhaps the best way of avoiding further controversy in the US in the future is a root and branch overhaul of their electoral system. It is, after all, held up by Americans as the best example of democracy in the free world.

They could learn a great deal from us which might ensure the maintenance of that precious democracy into the future. Right now it looks pretty wobbly.

And we should definitely count our blessings.  

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An Epiphany

                                                        Image courtesy of Getty Images

What we witnessed in Washington last Wednesday is an epiphany, a wake-up call..

We saw a mob ransacking the Capitol, after a pep talk from Donald Trump, who had addressed them, urging them to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to prevent the certification of the Biden presidency.

Such an assault hasn't occurred since the war of 1812, but that incident involved British troops, not American citizens.

What has created a situation where American citizens feel that it's OK to attack their seat of government and prevent the democratic business of the day from being conducted?

To understand the origins of this behaviour, which is cultural, rather than political, you need to examine the digital environment surrounding individuals who behave in this way. Whilst many of them are complete lunatics (obvious from the images), many of them aren't. Many of them are otherwise solid citizens who believe they are doing the right thing.

Voltaire is quoted as observing - 

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

He's on the money.

Here are just a few absurdities believed by many who ransacked the Capitol last Wednesday -

Members of the alt-right and many conservative journalists, spread a conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan and Twitter contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party to child trafficking. A number of pizzerias were named including the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington.

Then there is the meme claiming that the pandemic is a hoax, or if you don't like that one, that it is a CCP plot.

Then, if we read Qanon or 4Chan, we hear that 5G carries the Covid-19 virus, that lizard people have infiltrated all levels of the US administration (except for Trump of course) and that Pearl harbour and the Oklahoma bombing were false flags operations.

The frightening element of all this is that polling indicates that many of these conspiracies are believed by a significant proportion of Americans.

Absolutely no evidence is presented for these narratives, but that doesn't seem to matter. In any case, even if there is no evidence, an avalanche of blurry videos which are interpreted with no context are substituted.

The most heinous of these memes, and the most dangerous, is the election fraud fantasy. It's heinous because it has been comprehensively debunked by electoral officials (many of them in Republican administrations), dismissed in the courts (often by Trump appointed judges) and the recounts and audits that have been conducted have shown all results are valid.

It is dangerous because as David Kilcullen noted, it has white-anted the trust that many citizens have in their government. This trust is essential for democracy to survive. A few thousand of those citizens marched on the Capitol last Wednesday, and a few hundred broke in, attempted to harm their elected officials, and trashed the building. Some carried zip ties (apparently to kidnap congress members or senators).

Last Wednesday's event, instigated by a pathological liar, are deeply troubling.

But the most significant factor which brought the US to this point is the proliferation of dangerous online garbage. It needs to be cleaned up.That is the challenge for not only the US, but free countries worldwide. 

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Good Bye and Good Riddance

Pic courtesy Jakarta Post

It’s been a remarkable year.

So much that has been bubbling under the surface has been revealed by the pandemic. Trends that were partially hidden by the everyday cut and thrust of national and international politics have been starkly revealed by the virus and its consequences.

One of the first factors to be revealed was trust in government across the globe. The USA has for long been held up as a beacon of true independence and self reliance, a nation where everybody looked after themselves, and were proud of that. The USA has also had traditionally very low trust in government - ask Ronald Reagan.

This lack of trust hasn't worked out well, given the statistics around Covid 19 deaths, and the havoc the pandemic has wrought on the US economy. The US has a death per one million rate of 1066, and Australia has 35. The US economy has tanked, and its recovery has stalled. The Australian economy was also hit, but has recovered more quickly, and the recovery hasn't been arrested by continuing outbreaks.

The figures speak for themselves.

Soon after the outbreak, and as various governments overseas were dithering about their respective responses, our federal leadership abandoned the traditional decision making processes that had been used for decades, and set in place a centralised national cabinet. Despite the fact that there were occasional disagreements, this structure worked quite effectively, and as a result, Australia has come through, so far, at least, in a much stronger position, both socially and economically, that most other countries.

This cooperation seems to have been acknowledged by the Queensland election results, and Morrison's national popularity polling.

Generally, both Federal and State administrations in this country left the politics of the situation alone, and took their lead from the medical expertise available to them. Even when one state (Victoria) fumbled its response, the structure generally held, and in time, the situation was recovered. 

The UK and the USA completely mishandled their responses, allowing politics to become the major consideration, and the results are available for all to see. The arrogance and pig-headedness of both national leaders was apparent, especially after both became victims of the infection. One was probably lucky to survive, but both led their countries down a deadly path when they attempted to use the virus and their responses to it for political advantage. 

This blatantly partisan approach was never so obvious as in the case of the UK, when Johnson's Scottish counterpart departed company from him on the issue of shutdowns, and so many in the US saw mask wearing as a kind of political symbol of partisan politics.

Finally, the kind of national populism that had emerged post 2016 with Brexit and Trump's election was revealed as a dangerous and divisive phenomenon when it confronted a virus that has no respect for race or national borders. At a time when nations should have been cooperating,in many cases they weren't, and to a large extent, this division has exacerbated the problem.

Hopefully, the lessons of 2020 have been learned by our body politic.

And maybe, pigs will fly in 2021...

   

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Basic Motoring

Thinking about it, I begin to realise that I've spent a great deal of unnecessary dollars on motor vehicles.  

I've owned nearly thirty at last count. 

At the moment, I'm looking after two vehicles belonging to offspring, one because she's overseas, and the other because he cycles to work and doesn't need it, but won't sell it because he might be transferred to a situation where he does.

Because my garaging and custodianship includes, as a condition, the right to drive the cars, I had the choice of four cars to use in my recent excursion to Canberra and back.

Now the MX5 is fun to drive, and would possibly have been first choice, but it's appreciating in value, and I'm trying to keep its distance covered low. Besides, it is not all that enjoyable on a long run down a highway. It's an interesting car, built for interesting roads.

My bride uses our "new" car, a Kia Rondo, and whilst she doesn't mind driving the 323, is happier with the Kia. This left my son's Mazda 323 Protege as the weapon of choice for my Canberra excursion. My daughter's Toyota Echo, whilst a pleasant little car, was never a consideration.

It was a journey for research purposes at the AWM, and no other family members were all that interested, so I was travelling solo. The 323 has a number of features that made it a good choice for a solo journey. First up, it has three music sources - the original cassette player, an aftermarket 6 stacker CD player, and my iPhone connected through a bluetooth plug-in device. There was never going to be any shortage of mobile entertainment.

Aftermarket cruise

Navigation was taken care of using the iPhone, on a magnetic mount which meant it was hands free and legal. I have mastered the art of using the GPS app and the music player simultaneously. A recent IOS upgrade has made this simple.

This meant that all the features expected these days on a modern vehicle (GPS, bluetooth phone connection, and music player) were all available in this twenty year old car, for the price of a magnetic phone mount and a bluetooth connector. All worked a treat, with the possible exception of the GPS, which when connected to Google maps had a bad habit of setting me up for a beeline journey down some dodgy roads if I took it literally.

The Mazda performed beautifully. It delivered 7.3 Lit/100kms at a cruise of 110km on the Newell. The aftermarket cruise control was a boon.

The air conditioning in Mazdas is renowned for its efficiency, and with the combination of well shaped velour lined seats, and a steering column adjustable for rake and distance, ensured a very comfortable driving position. Cars of this vintage generally enjoy better vision, as the styling fashion which creates blind spots for rear vision hadn't arrived in 1999.

       Mountain straight, Mount Panorama

I got to drive it around the Mount Panorama circuit on the way home. At 60kph, that was an unexciting, but interesting experience.

These things are going for about $3500 used at the moment. If you can find a low kilometerage example (like my son's car), they're a bargain.