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I now don’t watch Q&A for fear it will cause the kind of brain dissonance that would put me in the hands of the tender mercies of an old age care home. But discussion at coffee with my chums went to Q&A despite my attempts to steer the discussion to my current reading of David Christian’s Maps of Time and, inter alia, the transition of fish into lizards and the apparent facts that Neanderthal man had bigger brains than humans – speak for yourself I say – and that a fly at rest can handle at least a hundred times more computations a second than can a fast modern computer. No, I didn’t understand that last point either, but found it strangely consoling in view of the current fad among some scientists (e.g. Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees) to predict the demise of humankind at the hands of robots.
What to do? Watch a rerun or download a transcript? I decided on the latter to avoid the self-harm which comes from listening to the inane clapping of ABC audiences whenever a panelist makes some senseless, sanctimonious remark. Mind you, as the transcripts record applause and cheering, it’s hard to entirely blank out these discordant displays.
I wonder, to get to my theme, whether other countries have audience-participatory chat shows which continually bucket, insult and demean government leaders from other countries? Maybe they do, for all I know. Maybe in New Zealand there is a show on TV run by the New Zealand public broadcasting corporation which has panelists levelling pointed japes at Mr Turnbull to the rowdy acclaim of leftie Kiwis. I simply don’t know and will leave it at that.
In Australia we have the ABC, which provides a platform for all those who dislike Donald Trump. So far as I can tell – or could tell if I only watched the ABC — no one in the country likes Mr Trump. Certainly the managing director of the ABC doesn’t like him. Ms Guthrie described his election win as a “bruising experience for women everywhere.” That takes all Australian women out of the equation in one go. If there are any Australian men who like Trump they are obviously very hard for the ABC to find.
I like Trump enormously. I might even have a ‘man crush’ on him. Certainly, I spontaneously wept with joy when he won; which is a bit unnerving and worrying, to say the least, in these gender-conflicted times. It is safe to say that Norma Liga from the Q&A audience has a different take on Trump. She found his victory “really scary because this guy is an obvious bigot, right?” Wrong, but who could blame Ms Liga for arriving at her view.
The ABC and all of the MSM in Australia demonized Trump, insisting he couldn’t and wouldn’t win. Now put yourself in the position of an ordinary punter whose knowledge is sourced entirely from this media. It would be very hard to form a balanced and objective view. And you might well be scared. After all, he is a demon in disguise, as Elvis might have put it.
Okay, but now that he has been elected it is surely time for the media to provide more balanced coverage of the next leader of the Free World, who will hold our national security in his hands. Give Trump a chance, as John Lennon might have put it. How silly of me to think that; wrong planet.
Benjamin Law (on the panel as a writer and columnist) pointed out, with all of his considerable ignorance on show, that Trump’s new chief strategist, Steve Bannon, was a “known and vocal anti-Semite.” And that a “lot of his hires so far have been very, very extremist.”
Give him his due, serial Trump-insulter though he was (“no-one found Trump more odious than I did”), Greg Sheridan correctly reprimanded Law for his scurrilous and baseless slander of Bannon. Trump’s other picks so far are Reince Preibus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, as his chief of staff; General Mike Flynn as national security adviser; General Mike Pompeo as CIA director; longstanding senator Jeff Sessions as Attorney General; South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley as envoy to the UN and Betsy DeVos as education secretary. Both Haley and DeVos opposed Trump in the primaries, and beyond to some extent. Donald the Magnanimous comes to mind.
Mild-mannered, ex neuro-surgeon Dr Ben Carson is tipped as the favoured choice as the head of Housing and Urban development (HUD). Who knows, he might even invite ‘Never-Trump’ luminary Mitt Romney to join his team as Secretary of State? Now that would be truly magnanimous – and a bridge too far for even generous-hearted me.
There is nothing, nothing extremist about Trump’s picks, except in the fevered minds of the jaundiced left. But it is those of the jaundiced left — willfully ignorant and deluded, clinging to the politics which has wreaked misery and despair on humankind — who are continually given a platform by our (their) ABC to spout mind-bending disinformation. It is not surprising that people out there in ABC-land, insulated from Andrew Bolt, Fox News and Quadrant, applaud inanities.
Nakkiah Lui (on the panel as a playwright and actor) accused the American voter of supporting someone “who had a campaign that was based on blatant racism, blatant transphobia, blatant homophobia, you know making it OK to make fun of people with disabilities.” I kept up with Trump’s campaign. Funny I missed all of this prejudice. I missed it because it wasn’t there. It is a figment. But it is a figment that takes on reality not only for Ms Lui but for all those who rely on the ABC and the MSM for their information.
“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” (Jonathan Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1711) Replace ‘the dunces’ with “the ABC collective” to bring it up to date. Maybe “genius” goes too far, but then you know how I feel about Donald.
What a refreshing piece – amusing, accurate. Thank you, Peter.
Elle, You are too kind but thanks anyway.
You are most welcome, Peter. You are always a pleasure to read.
Very shrewd of Peter to employ wit and sarcasm to illustrate his views on the mindless Trump-bashing at their ABC. Without such spicing it would be extremely boring. I confess to having tuned in to last Monday’s Q&A, prompted by the fact that it was the final “episode” of the inanity for the year and the participation of Eric Abetz and Greg Sheridan. I could take no more when not long into the programme Nakkiah Lui elicited a vigorous applause with an ignorant tirade of idiocy masquerading as wisdom in response to a meaningless question by a young girl, ideally suited for the purpose.
Perhaps Peter is a little too optimistic concerning Donald Trump as POTUS, but his reasoning to support his enthusiasm is pretty sound, to say the least. Yes, Trump’s selection of his cabinet is most heartening, particularly concerning General Mike Flynn as national security adviser. This man is absolutely certain to put a stiff broom through all the US government departments and agencies and get rid of all the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist elements white anting the government. Saudi Islamic zealots must be extremely concerned and for very good reasons.
Masterful piece Peter,now watch Trump exceed our expectations for the better.
I think he will Homer Sapien. He carried a big stick in the campaign. Now I think he knows it is best to keep the stick hidden and talk softly. But I am sure that he will carry through his policies to the extent it is at all possible. His picks so far give me confidence of that.
Peter all I can say is that you are reading all the wrong science authors.
But it was, Peter. You missed it because you obviously missed watching the ABC 7.30 coverage of Trump’s campaign, in which his impersonation of a spastic or person with cerebral palsy or something related was featured many times. Only funny to those disposed to laugh at such stuff.
I pretty well always watch ABC TV or SBS TV. I don’t watch commercial TV because, having accumulated all the consumer goods I want, I have to mute the ads all the time.
Trump is back-pedalling furiously on his election promises at the moment, and is likely to be a big disappointment to the US political Right. How he intends to deliver on “make America great again” is anyone’s guess at this stage. It could well be written on the back of an envelope that’s now in storage at some secret location deep underground somewhere in the Nevada desert.
Ian, if you are not being sarcastic in your second sentence, you might want to read through this
https://www.catholics4trump.com/the-true-story-donald-trump-did-not-mock-a-reporters-disability/
Its an interesting read.
You might not be getting all the news that’s worth hearing from the ABC and SBS.
Imagine if MediaWatch could put some big name ABC and SBS people in a room, one at a time on their own, to sit and listen to that article and its clips, and then respond as they saw fit. Would be good viewing.
Ian, it is impossible to get anything approaching objectivity from the ABC – hence the mimicking the disabled myth, which they were happy to put to air without checking the facts and without covering Trump’s explicit denial. The ABC is a disgrace. Trump has not backpedalled on any of the policies he took to the election. This has been over-hyped. Mind you I expect he will have to compromise to some degree in the months ahead. This is par for the course. If you read his policies, or simply his speeches in which he laid it out, you would know how he intends to make America great again, and it all hangs together. You might have given me inspiration to explain how.
In fact, there is so much of dubious accuracy and value pertaining to the ABC and its news and editorial team it’s difficult to know where to start. I think this comment from a regular reader of “Spiked” covers these issues with real vigor and accuracy – and it shows us very squarely where the ABC group-think derives its model for inspiration and ideology: and it’s time somebody did something about it!!!!
“The pathological aversion to judgement has been a hallmark of Western culture for quite some time. Everything you say is just an opinion, there is no right or wrong, your views are entirely determined by your race, sex or social status. Nonsense like “feminist economics” is treated seriously in academia. The list of genders is expanding and not one politician has the courage to call this for the drivel that it is. The same Obama who lambasts critics of global warming for their supposedly unscientific views has included the quackery of complementary therapies in Obamacare and raised them to a official status they never had before.
The same people who now want to apply the highest standards of rigour to any discussion have been for years destroying any possibility of serious debate by refusing to make distinctions and allowing any fool a voice. The media has been giving a platform to celebrities to speak on any issue they happen to be obsessed about. Meryl Streep’s opinions on chemicals were enough to ban some chemicals. Bono. Geldof or Clooney lecture world leaders, Jamie Oliver decides on government policy and Elton John and Charles Spencer are the moral beacons of our nation.
History teaching at schools has nothing to do with truth and is simply PC brainwashing in Orwellian language. What’s more, the notion that history is only text and can never tell any objective truth is widespread in academia. In many universities you’ll be marked down if you use the word “reality”.
Now these people want to protect us from error and fallacy. It would be something to be outraged about but we live in a world where at one point Mugabe was heading the UN commission on sustainable development and the Saudis the commission on Human rights. So it’s becoming hard to treat these people seriously anymore.”
ABC truth equals the Navy placing refugee hands on hot pipes and anything to do with global warming. Just believe the opposite and you will at least be in the ballpark.
The continuing behaviour of the staff of the ABC as elucidated above is happening and has happened for a reason. That reson is provable and admitted by its sources, but every time I get on the radio talk back to begin to explain it, I get abused and belittled, even lately by one Alan Bolt. One is usually accused of conspiracy theories, but anyone who does not believe conspiracy is ever present in various kinds is both a dupe and exceptionally naïve.
A very good article about the development of this was in the Bulletin, decades ago and described the depredations of a Communist convert in the ABC, one Alan Ashbolt.
It is not the work of one man, but a whole insidious movement of intense fanaticism over many years backed by a very powerful foreign state, which worked to attack the power structures, unions, academic institutions influential societies such as the Masons the churches and the media in the whole world,and had a long term plan involving different tactics for different cultures and countries,
That country was of course the USSR. Am I making this up? Well for a couple of years in my adolescence I was one of the most fanatical Communists around, and read everything the USSR produced in English, which was a lot. Certain tactical publications available in any Communist bookshop discussed all this at length, but of course no one but Communists ever went in there. These bookshops even sold with all sincerity, oiled condoms made out of paper with bamboo reinforcement from the Peoples Republic of China. I can still remember the bemused looks of the staff as a boy from one of the top GPS schools in Sydney browsed their stock. One or three of the leading Marxists in Sydney university (Including one Prof. Sol Encel I believe) went to the same school. After a few years and some maturation I ditched the rebel thing and in no small part it was because of one thing. I had realised that a lot of people were lousy selfish materialistic and about as deep as a kickpool (which described a lot of my schoolmates) but in Communist societies when they got to the top no one could get rid of them.
Public institutions are commonly colonised by interest groups, in my extensive experience. The ABC was so colonised, by local agents of the Communist Party (secret list of course)who once established in positions of power, selected only those applicants who fitted with their ideas and aims.
This planned and supported process is described in considerable detail for anti-Communists, by the highest ranking military officer ever to defect from the Warsaw Pact forces- Major General Jan Sejna of Czechoslovakia,in a comprehensive book that did not sell many copies in Australia. Penetration, colonisation and control of the ABC was one of the prime objectives in Australia.
If I try to tell people Australia was a very high priority for the Soviet Union, I am usually mocked. But such mockers suffer from a sad naivete and arrogance which is self defeating. Why was it so? It had everything to do with Mao’s China, who Soviet leaders were more concerned about than the USA or NATO. At the time, there were forty fully manned Soviet army divisions on the Russo-Chinese border and tension was high along the Amur River.
I hope to produce an article about this soon for Quadrant, and hopefully this will explain in more detail why there is such intellectual perversity and stupid Marxism in the western media, teachers colleges and universities today. The tribe is still in control. The need is for purging, but they know they are safe. Their enemies believe tolerating them is the best policy while they continue their depredation on our society and the formative minds of our offspring.
My son is staying with us and he told us tonight that all the marxist gender garbage was ‘taught’ to him in his Communications degree at CSU well over a decade ago. How are these people STILL getting away with this rubbish?
A Russian colleague. a geologist of considerable Russian experience, once described to me what is meant by the term “Russian bear”.
By this, it is meant that a person of age, experience, knowledge and tenacity is in a position of some influence, whether that influence be productive or bureaucratic. In some very minor sense, I suppose I am an Australian bear, as it were.
His point ? The only way to get rid of them is to shoot them. Without that sanction, nothing changes according to the Russian definition, or at least to my Russian friend. So, in our society, nothing changes.
Jody:
“How are these people STILL getting away with this rubbish?”
The late eminent Sinologist CP Fitzgerald (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Patrick_Fitzgerald) had a favourite Chinese proverb: “Let the waters recede and the stones will emerge.”
Well, the tide is pretty full at the moment IMHO, and not just re the Trumporamus. But I have caught a glimpse or two of some pebbles below the froth.
The purveyors of the “marxist gender garbage” referred to by your son I guess have fallen into the thought trap that awaits us all if we incline to close our minds; to and on anything. Postmodernism and all the spinoffs from it are merely recent manifestations of the well known human desire to form closed schools of thought: and of people to become thinking machines robotically churning out code for this and that. Press a button and out come all the answers: on anything and everything. Needless to add, along with this goes a universalism: ‘We have the truth’, and we will convert the world to our point of view’. Though to be fair to them the Pomo crowd have commonly refined this into ‘we have A truth’. Sadly, this does not help make their word salads metatwaddle and gobbledegookery more intelligible.
The followers of the great proselytising religions particularly the unreformed and reformed branches of Christianity but also of Islam and Marxism (the kind that prompted Marx himself to say of them “if anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist”) fell into this trap of believing that they were on course to take over the world: ‘Soon everyone will believe as we do.’
Ian I would hardly believe that “the unreformed and reformed branches of Christianity…..fell into this trap of believing that they were on course to take over the world: ‘Soon everyone will believe as we do’ “. No doubt there are many Christians who believe that through expressing their faith they can make a difference and make the world a better place….while it exists in its’ present form but to say that the Christian Church (used in the catholic and apostolic sense) is about world domination is afar from the truth as it possible to get.
The founders’ words were quite clear. His kingdom is not of this world and His view was that this world had a set period of existence during which a certain number (not all) would become citizens of this invisible “commonwealth in heaven”. His chief message to all was to “flee the wrath that is to come” which will see the end of this world order.
How different to Marxism and Islam! Both are “this worldly”. One desire the “dictatorship of the proletariat” (led of course by the superior piggies in the barnyard) and the other desires the “Caliphate” (led again by the superior piggies)
…finger problems…..
How totally opposite to the other worldly kingdom, the true republic where all are “co-rulers” with Christ. No wonder Christianity remains the mortal enemy of the Marxists and Islam and why they have made common cause against it.
Trump is a rude, crude, lewd, bombastic buffoon, but I still really liked the fact that he was elected POTUS, even if only to see the majority of journalists around the world go firstly into a state of denial and then into apoplexy. I even broke my golden rule and watched the ABC to see how the likes of Cassidy and Virginia Trioli [a.k.a Vitrioli] took it. Not well. To see some of the US ‘journalists’ crying was almost as good. Trump won’t be the intellectual/philosophical warrior that civilisation/the west needs, but at least he will do less harm than his opponent.