withoutaface
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- 2004
Below is my thoughtful analysis of the politics of the centre. Reading it will either change your life or make you pissed off for losing 10 mins of it, if the latter, contact me and I'll have them returned to you within 3 working days.
It's long been thought that those able to sit on the fence all day without developing a severe rash on their undercarriage possessed some eerie powers. Now instead of doing the sensible, scientific thing by stalking a member of the Coalition of the Neutral, I've instead conducted a gedanken and concluded that these people do not literally sit on a fence, as doing so would involve making a decision about which fence to sit on and then sticking to that stance for a lengthy period of time, a foreign concept when you're defined by the fact that nothing defines you.
The first rung on this ladder of knowledge which I shall impart to you this morning is presented in the form of a metaphor, in the hope that such an introduction will help ease the squeeze on your struggling mind, already clogged with wee hours haziness and quite potentially moderately toxic chemicals consumed to break up the monotony of university life.
Bland and Flavourless.
Centrists are the vanilla ice cream of politics. They are inevitability in its purest form. They sit there in the neapolitan container of life, never as appealing as the chocolate or strawberry, but at the same time they give off such an aura of mind numbing predictability, and usually seem to get the job done ok. No child gets involved in a screaming match with their siblings because they want vanilla over a real flavour. Instead vanilla is what comes home as punishment when the kids make a scene in the supermarket about cookies and cream v hokey pokey.
It then proceeds to sit there for weeks, mostly unnoticed by the household except when a member has a strong craving for a bland and tasteless, but still reasonably fattening, food. Weeks turn to months, until eventually it comes time to defrost, and the parent removes the tub, remarking "What on earth possessed me to buy this?"
Perhaps one of the ultimate rhetorical questions, but as predictably as A Current Affair naming at least four things Un-Australian every weeknight, vanilla will be back. It might be another brand, it might even be ice blocks next time, but they'll be there, and they'll be flavourless.
Ideological Contradictions
The essence of the argument in favour of a mixed market economy is that socialism is strychnine and neoliberalism a new, more potent form of arsenic, and as such it makes perfect sense to take the two, mix well in a cocktail shaker with 200mL lemon juice. Serve immediately over ice in a high ball glass. The centrist will then rationalise that perhaps the effects of the two poisons cancel each other out, but to me the greatest tragedy is that none of them are sure enough of this own rationalisation to spike Unity punch with it and find out.
Warm, fuzzy feelings
The centre's unrivalled ability to generate this commodity by the truckload stems from their high alert reserves of disaster chasers, revered for both their commitment to the ideals that no mine is too remote for a perfectly stage photo op, that no person's lungs are too ridden with asbestos to give lengthy speeches at such photo ops, as well as their inexplicable ability to get pen to membership form no matter how far underground, or how deep a comatose state the individual in question may be in.
So now that we know the enemy are vanilla ice cream eating, poison slurping junkies who inhale asbestos from the maggot infested carcasses of what looks like they used to be sheep (it increases the duration of the rush), we must know how to identify them, their nuances and understand what horrible thing would turn a man neutral, so here's:
The Punter's Guide to the Various Species of Centrist (Complete with fabricated biographies for real fictional people)
True neutral has no opinion on anything, and has moderate feelings of neutrality towards you, everyone you love and everything you stand for. Think Switzerland only without the controversial z. Increasingly rare in modern day political discourse, there have often been false sightings later put down to Nationals MP's passing away in their seats without anybody realising.
The populist flip-flop is a media whore who has an army of staffers to follow the latest opinion polls and form policy on the fly based on them. They have no opinions or vision to call their own, or if they do they hide them very well, and more often than not hold public office only so their own sense of self importance can be satiated. Unsubstantiated gossip is that they're first cousins to the necon scaremonger, and as such are probably privvy to the Illuminati conspiracy.
The third way 'visionary' defies all logic by being both centrist and radical, by proposing such crazy ideas as combining neoliberal and marxist ideas to an electorate which has had a mixed market economy in place for longer than anyone, their dog or their dementia-ridden grandfather can remember. Also I don't think these cunts exist in Australian politics, but who knows what Blair's going to try getting elected to now that he's no longer having sex with the queen ex-officio.
The unionist is what happens when you throw a pit viper and an onion into a blender turn it on and then make a person from the resulting protein soup. The unionist, quickly running out of employers to destroy and souls to consume, realised in his eternal wisdom that the ALP gives out safe seats like Milton Orkopolous gives out candy to infants. Allegedly. So anyway all that stood in his way was some Hoare, and he fucked her. New Idea states that she was disatisfied that he only did it metaphorically. Whether that means fucked as in rolled her for the seat or fucked a bowl of ice cream as a metaphorical representation of her, I won't speculate, but I think it's pretty clear what really happened.
The parachute candidate feels much like the flip-flop, except they abuse the media not through savvy or personality, but by emphasising their annoying music, former career as a journalist for a small community broadcaster or role as an unemployed socialite with an up until recently unblemished record of voting Coalition.
The hack was the guy who went to uni completely apolitical, joined the ALP club because he fancied the t-shirt designs, then proceeded to believe everything and anything bad those further through their degrees said about the socialist left. 30 years on, in what has been widely condemned as a poor career move, he found himself one of only three people of a 100 strong caucus who honestly believed that a gluttonous two time failure with the electoral appeal of a doorknob was a better leadership choice than someone whose main appeal was that he resembled a fictional character popular with the 6-12 year old demographic, who have proven themselves notoriously difficult to mobilise in recent years, with most choosing to abstain from voting altogether.
Everybody's best mate seems to be more of a university election phenomenon, but he's the bloke who everybody knows, loves and has gotten drunk with, but most wouldn't be able to tell you where or when they met him. The plausibility of using this strategy on a federal or state level seems questionable, however, because it's been medically proven to be next to impossible to have a beer with everyone in the electorate and maintain the functionality of one's liver at the same time.
Mr Boring is the candidate who seemingly just appeared in the job one day without anybody voting for him or even recognising his name. A concensus is reached soon after, though, that history is a social construct created by those far too reasonable to be trustworthy, and that his experience running things behind the scenes representing the only electorate with more ethnicities than the UN General Assembly means he has one up on the evil bloke who the TV says eats nurses with a side of mashed potato.
The independent is the candidate who polls a total of 5 votes and yet still manages to be elected owing to the fact that he lives in a remote, desert electorate with only one polling booth in the middle of nowhere and a constituency of informal voting illiterates. Used to be a member of the Nationals, but was expelled due to clauses in the party constitution forbidding first-cousin incest, which was not pardonable, as he thought it was, on the basis that the dog made a move on HIM. Has now ditched all ideology and ignores anything and everything not relevant to NIMBYism.
It's long been thought that those able to sit on the fence all day without developing a severe rash on their undercarriage possessed some eerie powers. Now instead of doing the sensible, scientific thing by stalking a member of the Coalition of the Neutral, I've instead conducted a gedanken and concluded that these people do not literally sit on a fence, as doing so would involve making a decision about which fence to sit on and then sticking to that stance for a lengthy period of time, a foreign concept when you're defined by the fact that nothing defines you.
The first rung on this ladder of knowledge which I shall impart to you this morning is presented in the form of a metaphor, in the hope that such an introduction will help ease the squeeze on your struggling mind, already clogged with wee hours haziness and quite potentially moderately toxic chemicals consumed to break up the monotony of university life.
Bland and Flavourless.
Centrists are the vanilla ice cream of politics. They are inevitability in its purest form. They sit there in the neapolitan container of life, never as appealing as the chocolate or strawberry, but at the same time they give off such an aura of mind numbing predictability, and usually seem to get the job done ok. No child gets involved in a screaming match with their siblings because they want vanilla over a real flavour. Instead vanilla is what comes home as punishment when the kids make a scene in the supermarket about cookies and cream v hokey pokey.
It then proceeds to sit there for weeks, mostly unnoticed by the household except when a member has a strong craving for a bland and tasteless, but still reasonably fattening, food. Weeks turn to months, until eventually it comes time to defrost, and the parent removes the tub, remarking "What on earth possessed me to buy this?"
Perhaps one of the ultimate rhetorical questions, but as predictably as A Current Affair naming at least four things Un-Australian every weeknight, vanilla will be back. It might be another brand, it might even be ice blocks next time, but they'll be there, and they'll be flavourless.
Ideological Contradictions
The essence of the argument in favour of a mixed market economy is that socialism is strychnine and neoliberalism a new, more potent form of arsenic, and as such it makes perfect sense to take the two, mix well in a cocktail shaker with 200mL lemon juice. Serve immediately over ice in a high ball glass. The centrist will then rationalise that perhaps the effects of the two poisons cancel each other out, but to me the greatest tragedy is that none of them are sure enough of this own rationalisation to spike Unity punch with it and find out.
Warm, fuzzy feelings
The centre's unrivalled ability to generate this commodity by the truckload stems from their high alert reserves of disaster chasers, revered for both their commitment to the ideals that no mine is too remote for a perfectly stage photo op, that no person's lungs are too ridden with asbestos to give lengthy speeches at such photo ops, as well as their inexplicable ability to get pen to membership form no matter how far underground, or how deep a comatose state the individual in question may be in.
So now that we know the enemy are vanilla ice cream eating, poison slurping junkies who inhale asbestos from the maggot infested carcasses of what looks like they used to be sheep (it increases the duration of the rush), we must know how to identify them, their nuances and understand what horrible thing would turn a man neutral, so here's:
The Punter's Guide to the Various Species of Centrist (Complete with fabricated biographies for real fictional people)
True neutral has no opinion on anything, and has moderate feelings of neutrality towards you, everyone you love and everything you stand for. Think Switzerland only without the controversial z. Increasingly rare in modern day political discourse, there have often been false sightings later put down to Nationals MP's passing away in their seats without anybody realising.
The populist flip-flop is a media whore who has an army of staffers to follow the latest opinion polls and form policy on the fly based on them. They have no opinions or vision to call their own, or if they do they hide them very well, and more often than not hold public office only so their own sense of self importance can be satiated. Unsubstantiated gossip is that they're first cousins to the necon scaremonger, and as such are probably privvy to the Illuminati conspiracy.
The third way 'visionary' defies all logic by being both centrist and radical, by proposing such crazy ideas as combining neoliberal and marxist ideas to an electorate which has had a mixed market economy in place for longer than anyone, their dog or their dementia-ridden grandfather can remember. Also I don't think these cunts exist in Australian politics, but who knows what Blair's going to try getting elected to now that he's no longer having sex with the queen ex-officio.
The unionist is what happens when you throw a pit viper and an onion into a blender turn it on and then make a person from the resulting protein soup. The unionist, quickly running out of employers to destroy and souls to consume, realised in his eternal wisdom that the ALP gives out safe seats like Milton Orkopolous gives out candy to infants. Allegedly. So anyway all that stood in his way was some Hoare, and he fucked her. New Idea states that she was disatisfied that he only did it metaphorically. Whether that means fucked as in rolled her for the seat or fucked a bowl of ice cream as a metaphorical representation of her, I won't speculate, but I think it's pretty clear what really happened.
The parachute candidate feels much like the flip-flop, except they abuse the media not through savvy or personality, but by emphasising their annoying music, former career as a journalist for a small community broadcaster or role as an unemployed socialite with an up until recently unblemished record of voting Coalition.
The hack was the guy who went to uni completely apolitical, joined the ALP club because he fancied the t-shirt designs, then proceeded to believe everything and anything bad those further through their degrees said about the socialist left. 30 years on, in what has been widely condemned as a poor career move, he found himself one of only three people of a 100 strong caucus who honestly believed that a gluttonous two time failure with the electoral appeal of a doorknob was a better leadership choice than someone whose main appeal was that he resembled a fictional character popular with the 6-12 year old demographic, who have proven themselves notoriously difficult to mobilise in recent years, with most choosing to abstain from voting altogether.
Everybody's best mate seems to be more of a university election phenomenon, but he's the bloke who everybody knows, loves and has gotten drunk with, but most wouldn't be able to tell you where or when they met him. The plausibility of using this strategy on a federal or state level seems questionable, however, because it's been medically proven to be next to impossible to have a beer with everyone in the electorate and maintain the functionality of one's liver at the same time.
Mr Boring is the candidate who seemingly just appeared in the job one day without anybody voting for him or even recognising his name. A concensus is reached soon after, though, that history is a social construct created by those far too reasonable to be trustworthy, and that his experience running things behind the scenes representing the only electorate with more ethnicities than the UN General Assembly means he has one up on the evil bloke who the TV says eats nurses with a side of mashed potato.
The independent is the candidate who polls a total of 5 votes and yet still manages to be elected owing to the fact that he lives in a remote, desert electorate with only one polling booth in the middle of nowhere and a constituency of informal voting illiterates. Used to be a member of the Nationals, but was expelled due to clauses in the party constitution forbidding first-cousin incest, which was not pardonable, as he thought it was, on the basis that the dog made a move on HIM. Has now ditched all ideology and ignores anything and everything not relevant to NIMBYism.
