Political systems are historical constructions, not immutable necessities. Their persistence does not establish their continuing adequacy.
Category: politics
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Students Walk Out Against One Nation
The student walkout against One Nation points to a larger problem: the affective politics of cultivated antagonism that has become disconcertingly effective as a technologically-mediated, commercially-leveraged narrative system.
At the limit lies bullshit: language sufficiently detached from external constraint that its capacity to provoke another cycle of response becomes more important than what it describes.
Political science inherits the person from philosophy without explaining it.
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the trouble with monoculture
Culture survives because it changes. A culture that cannot change is not being preserved. It is being embalmed.
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adaptation: fixing aussie politics
There is no final closure. No permanent certainty. No government that fixes everything forever. There are only systems that adapt well and systems that adapt badly.
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better politics
The task is not to create perfect agreement, but to maintain enough shared coherence that a society can continue solving problems without tearing itself apart.
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the reflecting pool reflects back
The Reflecting Pool turned green. Perhaps it is simply doing its job.
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populism down under
The appeal of populism is that it makes complexity feel unnecessary. The cost is usually discovered much later.
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australia, please…
Populists tell you they’re going to smash the system for your benefit. Funny how it still always seems to end with the rich getting richer, the government getting worse, and everyone else paying for the repairs.
Australia’s political speed-dating with One Nation suggests that what has happened in the USA is not an exception, it is a franchised political method.
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please explain: xenophobia
Xenophobia does not stop a changing world. It converts psychological vulnerability into political power.
