Hi John, you're too kind, but astute in your observations...lol
...and left wing.
Actually, though I fully understand how I have been sounding that way, I subscribe to no wing, but advocate that both wings are firmly connected to the same bird. I subscribe to no political or religious dogma of any kind, but due to the fact that I live in a country whereby voting is compulsory, vote for a political party like The Pirate Party seeking an improvement from what we already have, respecting the integrity of candor held within the name.
I subscribe to the Groucho Marx philosophy of, "I don't want to be a member of any club that wants me as a member."
Jokes and truisms aside, I'm naively idealistic. Pushed to put a label to my world view, I'd have to say somewhere around humanitarian to egalitarian, which no political party can serve, as it's too unrealistically idealistic and a world view, not a national view...I'd like to see us function as a united species rather than the fractured friction we embroil ourselves in. It's impossibly simple. I suppose that's the problem with having a world view that can be described by an oxymoron. :)
I didn't want to turn this into a debate about which was the nicer guy. That isn't the point I am making rather that Hawke drew the nation together which is what is needed today.
No, that's my fault, I understood the point you were making. It was putting Hawke in the same league as Mandela that caught my attention, which is why I threw in Whitlam's name, as he, like Mandela, was a man of principle that never wavered. Hawke was a man of principle until he became Prime Minister and didn't have the fortitude to fight the status quo like Whitlam or Mandela did. Hawke became the status quo. Whitlam is the only PM in my lifetime that lived up to his pre-election promises and more. He was truly a man of the people, that's why he was sacked, as he refused to not only not represent wealth, but refused to play by their rules. Gone. So we ended up with Malcolm Fraser who sold us down the river to the World Bank.
As for drawing a nation together, I couldn't put it that way. He was wildly popular for his work as President of the ACTU in the trade union movement, which is the reason why they wanted to give him the job...not only was he a vote catcher, you removed him from being the enemy to government and big business. They killed two birds with stone by giving him the PM's job. The economic boom of the 80's had nothing to do with him or his policies, but the result of the relinquishing of the gold standard, floating of the dollar and deregulation of banking that occurred in the US, causing us to follow suit. Sorry, there was one policy that contributed to over-inflation of the stock market, and that's making superannuation compulsory. The insurance companies during the 80's quite literally were flush with so much money, their fund managers didn't know where to invest it, so invested it everywhere, risky or not. I was in the insurance industry in those days, had Christmas lunch with a couple of fund managers...the shit they told us that was going on, is mind boggling.
Bob was also very good at getting free PR at big sporting events, like the America's Cup when he made his famous comment "any boss sacking someone for not coming into work today, is a mug." Aussies in those days, still very much saw themselves as being the underdogs against the rest of the world, whereas these days I believe the national psyche is more about viewing the world as our oyster. So, I believe you're conflating his popularity and effective PR with drawing a nation together. I believe I understand how you draw your conclusion, though.
Yes we could go into detail about who did what and where..
Sorry, I just took that liberty. :)
...but it's the divisions within society that hurt us the most.
Precisely! And then the divisions of culture/nation at a global level.
Factional politics is ruinous no matter what part of the world we're looking at.
All politics is ruinous. People do not need to be ruled over. That's not to say we need no common basic rules, so I'm not advocating anarchy, but we don't need to be ruled over and treated like errant children.
The people are looking for reassurance and they're not getting it.
I think the people want a sense of a predictable and secure future. Personally, I would find reassurance as foreboding, but I can't speak for everyone.
Rather they are getting false promises, lies, and propaganda and with no viable alternative things are not likely to change any time soon. That's not just in Australia but around the world. The people of this tiny blue planet have always looked to extraordinary people to light the way for them. That's just the way we are.
With no viable alternative people vote for a person like Trump because he is seen as an outsider who might actually get things done.
I think it's even simpler...the Presidency has been reduced to the position of game-show host since Reagan, but now the US actually has a real life game-show host. National leader is a PR job, not a leadership role. You talk like a leader from scripts prepared for you by professional script writers. You're frequently on TV, therefore the general public, for whatever reasons, have to find you appealing to talk about, because like the saying goes, bad publicity is also good publicity. Let's face it, Trump generates publicity.
Frankly it's been pointed out in this post so many times with so much propaganda who has the time and knowledge to sort out fact from fiction. Sometimes it seems like the media gets its facts from Facebook.
Very true.
I describe politics as being the biggest crime story on the planet. And like any good detective will tell you, "follow the money and you'll find the culprit." Politics is no different. Look to see who has financial interest to gain, and suddenly all wars make sense, all political upheavals or small changes, all make sense. Money and the basic human desire for it and its associated benefits, drives everything.
Here's a basic example that's relatively current and topical...this is my take on the Syrian conflict...you know the ill-gotten oil the US obtained in Iraq, the 2nd largest oil field on the planet? Well, the US would like to get it to market. Which market you ask? Well, the European market, as there's more than enough oil in the US currently to service the domestic market, and besides, our good mate Vlad Putin has 15% of the Western European oil and gas market, so the US would like to take that from him. Now, if you want to get your oil from Iraq to Europe, you have to ship it from the Gulf, all the way around the African continent to then get into the Mediterranean Sea, where you would likely off load it at refineries in Italy (they've already got about 20, so have the infrastructure...I Googled). But shipping oil around the African continent is time consuming, risky due to both pirates and the Cape, and so, also expensive. What's the alternative? How about piping your ill-gotten oil to ports in Syria that are already on the Mediterranean? It's quicker, safer and much more economical. Good idea! Except this...those ports that Syrya has are leased by someone...yep, you guessed it, Vlad Putin has had those leases for quite some time. Ergo, Vlad and his allies assists the Assad government in order to keep his markets and stick it up the USA, while the USA and its allies wish to usurp the Assad government in order to terminate those leases and have them in their clutches via their own puppet government.
That's how we discovered terrorists in Syria. It's the excuse to put troops on the ground in order to seize control of a tract of land in order to get an estimated 50 billion barrels of oil to markets. And if you refresh your memory of the region by looking at a map, you'll see that the logistics of what I describe is more than plausible, it's the obvious financial motives for the conflict.