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The Forum > Article Comments > Middleground > Comments

Middleground : Comments

By Richard Stanton, published 22/11/2011

The battle to win back the middle

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The middle ground might be better represented if the media weren't so obsessed with the major parties. The DLP springs to mind....
Posted by Montgomery, Tuesday, 22 November 2011 1:00:39 PM
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The middle ground is a somewhat imaginary state. The perceptions of the middle ground are influenced by the prevailing norms even if we accept that 'middle' implies neither too Right or too Left. How is this measured?

It is amusing to watch certain factions of the loony Right go on about the loony Left being responsible for the world's woes, when in today's political landscape the influence of the Right has far more impact, and particularly about perceptions of just what is the 'middle ground'.

These perceptions are whittled away slowly probably more by a natural process of change than by design (I think?). But nevertheless the impact is the same, to the point that with a move to the Right, public ownership, once taken for granted, for essential services and even health or education, are seen as some sort of Left wing conspiracy. Just read The Australian.

This is not to be blind to the same situation happening in reverse such as history shows us the experience of Communist or Facist nations attempting to bring in change especially through pressure from ordinary people.

Democracy is strengthened even moreso when people recognise that they can be manipulated just as easily as those on an opposing ideological side.
Posted by pelican, Tuesday, 22 November 2011 1:22:22 PM
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Isaac Asimov wrote about the computer Multivac who could tell the results of elections so accurately that it could pick just one "average" voter whose vote would accurately determine the outcome of elections as if every citizen voted, thus saving the time and traffic of running polls for everyone. On election day, that voter would walk ceremoniously from his/her home to the Booth to the sounds of a cheering brass band.

Bringing everyone to the middle could finally dissolve the last vestige of difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the illusion as if we have any say about government, and ultimately over our own life.

Democracy is bad because it allows 51% to tyrannize the 49% - so let the semblance of democracy, already crippled by the winner-takes-all electoral system, be gone forever so we can all see the king in his true birthday-suit.
Posted by Yuyutsu, Wednesday, 23 November 2011 8:30:39 AM
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