Taking us for Morons

And so the softening up process begins. The social lubrication for sliding through as many radical and sweeping social changes as the new Federal Government can ram home and as rapidly as possible. Let’s take Melbourne Age columnist, Waleed Aly, for example:

Rudd finds his cultural confidence

KEVIN RUDD's victory lap has been nothing if not evocative. Consider the scenery. The Kyoto Protocol is ratified. A date has been nominated for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. A formal national apology to Aboriginal Australia is imminent. And the Pacific Solution has been dismantled [That’s news to me, but Aly’s all a bristle with starry-eyed hope].
Okay – here’s paragraph one:

Ultimately, this is about imagery: here is the country's new Prime Minister opening with a flurry of symbolic thrusts, calculated to seize the nation's social imagination. Thus has Rudd emphasised immediately his clearest departures from the John Howard era. None of these policy positions is particularly new, but Rudd's choice to swamp the electorate with them up front is striking.
Striking it is. Now – here’s paragraph two:

Indeed, it provides a sharp contrast with the pre-election Kevin Rudd: the man who, even as late as a day before the election, confirmed he would pursue a deterrence policy on asylum seekers, turning back boats Coalition style, and who distanced himself from Howard's proposed referendum on reconciliation. This was a Rudd determined to reiterate his tough social politics to the end; a Rudd desperate not to be wedged at the death [Don’t you love this little spin item - this excuse for a pack of lies? It’s called lying about what you really believe Aly; its’ called deceit – not a hard one to grasp really.], especially on what we might broadly call issues of culture.
Okay – everyone got it? Rudd said one thing to get elected, and is now doing another. Now let’s watch the spin begin:

Which raises an intriguing question: Why would a leader so reticent in distinguishing himself from Howard's social narrative suddenly choose to emphasise his points of difference so early and so starkly?
Intriguing indeed, that is if you’re some kind of brain-dead mollusc.

Rudd's plan for a national apology — his most significant departure from Howard in the cultural realm — was his first substantive headline. He was not compelled to place it so firmly and swiftly on the agenda.
And Aly’s explanation for a campaign that was basically a tissue of lies (the hot-hot-hot answer to his ‘intriguing question’)?

Of course, it is smart politics.
And that, my friends, sets the tone for our new Federal Government - and let not a lefty anywhere accuse anyone else of lying ever, ever again – it's apparently ‘smart politics’ (to a collection of moral reprobates). Now let’s see how the commentariat is going to spin this little lot, shall we:

It's a measure of just how dramatic the election result was. A victory this emphatic [click the link to find out just how underwhelming the Rudd victory actually was] represents a rejection of Howard's orientation too comprehensive to be confined to industrial relations. And the signs are that in parts of the electorate, Howard suffered because, eventually, the culture wars fought back.
Uh-huh. It’s just got through telling us Rudd effectively positioned himself pre-election as a Howard (in cultural terms), then tells us everyone voted for Rudd because they were ‘emphatically’ rejecting Howard (in cultural terms).

Of course, the actual subtext to this is one of deepest deceit: get ready people – we know you really do want a radical agenda of sweeping leftist social change. That’s why you voted for Kevin Rudd (forget the fact that he effectively promised quite the opposite – because we know you know he didn’t mean it. . .).

I will be fighting this grotesquery. The ALP and its leftist elements do not - do not - have a mandate for sweeping social change - quite the opposite - and they know it.

What is about to follow will represent a snow job of monumental proportions, as this lot now try to convince the electorate that they had, in fact, been telling them this all along. The issue will be, of course, whether they succeed in pulling it off.

Prepare. . .I fear this is going to get very nasty indeed.

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