AlanB

"Radioheads"

Theme song for this article me thinks!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk

Agree with Bender's thrust when we can observe a resurgence in authoritarian nativism in USA, UK and Australia; looking like great liberal democracies such as Hungary, Russia or Turkey?

The present SSM is a case in point if one ignores the issue, it's the avoidance of due process through bypassing and dog whistling parliamentary democracy, avoidance of grounded policy (vs. cultural wedge issues) and normalisation of chaos within political parties, mostly conservative but how does it help the nation?

Simply put, where others might disagree with Bender they have a personality problem and are possibly suffering from a mental problem. Whereas where she herself is concerned, she would be explaining that her behaviour is situational and of course she is always rational.

To take an example where the author's own thinking errors are leading her astray, the Australian government was responding to a situation driven by external forces it could not control, numerous deaths at sea and the need to maintain sovereignty (to take two out of a number), where it was reluctantly obliged to break the people smugglers' business model by removing the cheese, the profit incentive.

The Australian government was reacting to situational factors.

Bender's own stance is ideological, judging (of people), not situational.

Perhaps some kind migrants with the very different Eastern way of looking at things, of explaining the world, might help the author. They do far better with understanding others' behaviour as most usually situational. Western psychology, particularly from yesteryear, does not always have all of the answers.

"To take an example where the author's own thinking errors are leading her astray, the Australian government was responding to a situation driven by external forces it could not control, numerous deaths at sea and the need to maintain sovereignty (to take two out of a number), where it was reluctantly obliged to break the people smugglers' business model by removing the cheese, the profit incentive."

Rubbish! The LNP government are/were not slightly concerned about deaths at sea; towing back boats into international waters has no risk mitigation characteristics.

The LNP,starting with Howard, realised the "dog whistle" advantages to "boat people" and the Australian public's potential to be alarmed (of course always alert) and therefore votes.

If breaking the people smuggler model was the object this could have simply been solved by establishing "pop up" embassies in Indonesia and becoming the "official" people transporting entity thereby competing with the paid for transit providers.

Rudd and Gillard ultimately failed under pressure of wedge politics; hence the travesty of Manus and Nauru.

A future government may well enable charges under Human Rights Court jurisdictions for "crimes against humanity" to proceed against this current crop of "criminals" and miscreants; both the LNP and Labor politicians.

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