If you wanted to find the common thought broad enough to hold together antivax, anti-lockdown, alt-med, QAnon and RW populism, it’s the idea that our lives are *meant* to go well, so if they’re not, it’s due to some alien but removable imposition.

https://twitter.com/rachael_dexter/status/1428919646548156417

For antivaxxers and (many) alt-med folks, it’s “toxins.” For Q folks and RWNJs it’s the deep state or some (usually racialised) other that is immensely powerful but nonetheless can be overcome.

I want to be positive here, but… yeah, we’re toast.

https://twitter.com/vicgovdh/status/1428850864752451584

That’s 61 PLUS an additional 16 rapid PCR test cases that will be reported tomorrow - presumably that’s Shepparton. So basically 2/3 wild cases today and another 16 cases at least locked in for tomorrow.

https://twitter.com/patstokes/status/1294455976024616960

https://twitter.com/patstokes/status/1296725737785790465

London, November 1940: ripping down blackout panels and loudly demanding the streetlights come back on because it’s been two months already and people just aren’t meant to live like this Smashing up the wireless set because it keeps feeding media lies about a so-called “Blitz” designed to control us with fear

Turns out I'm not done with this. (1/n)

https://twitter.com/patstokes/status/1223824054559227904

Leave aside that Wild is apparently scandalised by the idea of the ANAO actually investigating things the government might not want it investigating. (2/n)

I want to say something smart about Brexit but my Australian brain just keeps coming back to "you voluntarily gave up having an EU passport?" and shutting down. There are many things that drove Brexit* but I suspect at least a nonzero % of it is "I'm too old to go work abroad and I don't want my adult kids to leave."

*most of the things are racism

Linnell's arguments for the death penalty are so bad they would, honestly, make useful teaching aids.

thenewdaily.com.au/news/2020/01/2… I'm not joking. Linnell, to his credit, actually tries to make an argument, so he's ahead of the pack already. But look at what happens when he does so.

There’s obviously a lot wrong with that @SpectatorOz article on Uluru and religion (only two religions “of note” in Europe?) but this sentence falls into my domain of expertise and it is *spectacularly* wrong. Put the kettle on, this could take a while. Start with “the Kantian philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard.” Now, let’s be charitable and assume Long knows there’s some excellent scholarship on SK and Kant: Ronald Green, and my friend Roe Fremstedal for instance.

As a kid, I remember by grandparents had a printed copy of the prose poem “Desiderata” on the wall. You know: “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” etc (1/21) I was really fond of that little poster. There was a calm about it, a serenity, and a sense of oldness and solidity to the words. (2/21)

The thing that jumps out of Fierravanti-Wells', Molan's, and McGrath's statements is the incredible, bottomless *neediness* of contemporary conservatism. (1/) At face value the claim about the party 'moving too far to the left' is just an obvious nonsense. You'd be hard-pressed to find a single policy position of this government that could credibly be called 'left' or even more left than Abbott's government was. (2/)

It's worth taking a moment to dwell on the "defence" #Leyonhjelm is gradually constructing in his media appearances. Remember that #Leyonhjelm generally has 3 countermoves:
a) appeal to a Back-of-the-Cornflakes-box version of libertarianism
b) impugning the motives of opponents (because he genuinely can’t understand moral motives other than individual preference-maximisation)
c) name-calling

Seeing a lot of Americans suggesting cruelty to asylum seeker children will be the thing that 'finally turns the tide' against Trump.

Take it from those of us whose governments have been running deliberately cruel asylum regimes for years: it won't. Kids ripped from their parents? Indefinite detention? Dehumanisation? These are features, not bugs. A sizeable enough chunk of your electorate, as with ours, will support these measures not despite their cruelty *but because of it*.