Hi runner,i think or hope for a day when the common would be equal with the ones at the top.

It is the politics of envy that is giving rise to envy being part of the national psyche. Or to be fair to the mainstream who are usually too busy working to raise families and pay taxes to notice, to the psyche of the self-titled 'Progressives' and 'their' chatterati, the opinionated motor-mouths for rent who dominate in the media, or is that mainly on the taxpayer-funded, Twitter-driven ABC?

The early current affairs shows had an obligatory 'human interest' hard luck story a day to make hordes of dumbed-down viewers happier with their lot and left feeling a mite superior too. The ABC's modern, tres 'Progressive' Q&A goes one better to find someone to blame where anyone feels hard done by. Stereotyping of the blameworthy is its game. And its even more dumbed-down viewers (if that is possible) get to feel superior to the show's victims and are invited to share in the sympathy by similarly blaming someone else for their own poor decisions, life's problems and lack of 'success'.

Just thinking of serial complainers who are always out for their own benefit, second wave feminism is rooted in envy. -Mainly financial envy, for they are exemplars of materialism and conspicuous consumption. As always, envy is not balanced by any compassion or attempt to understand the lot of the men they 'diss'. -Sloppy self-serving 'research' does the justification trick for them. After all, it is marketing a exercise where the aim is even more entitlements, and more cold hard cash and status for already entitled educated middle class women, although some hate doesn't go astray. Hate adds the edge. Another case where the ends justify the means.

Similarly, the self-titled 'Progressives', who like to strut as 'Left', but are usually about securing guvvy grants and highly paid sinecures in public agencies for themselves and their mates ('networking', they say), would be rendered dumb if jealousy and envy weren't in their tool kit (and their make-up).

tbc..

contd..

'Inequality'? 'Rights?' Bah! Phooey! Most of the time it is just rat-clever, greedy dudes who are manipulating public opinion for their own benefit. They also use other tools such as fear, but envy presents so many opportunities and doesn't ebb so quickly.

Now, how will this man and his crew ever get the glittering prizes* of becoming PM and ministers if they cannot rely on the Class War and the Gender War and whipped-up envy is crucial to both? This fellow, the talented Mr Shorten,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFELLK8htKM

*the glittering prizes - Australia's first womyn PM did land herself remuneration better than the (then) President of the US of A and the PM of the UK too.

And leoj's post illustrates the real problem: many decades ago the left spouted the rhetoric of class warfare. But nowadays the right falsely accuse the left of class warfare, while waging class warfare themselves (and dismissing any objections to it as "the politics of envy").

The problem was of course greatly exacerbated by Julia Gillard trying to reclaim the politics of class warfare. That, IMHO, was the day she proved herself unfit to be PM.