Trumpian The Guardian had a piece wondering if Australia had already been through its Trumpian political phase, but the answer is no: It’s only just begun. Immigrants, whether they pass the stringent requirements to enter the country as residents at all, or as refugees (especially), cannot be expected to have university-level English. That may not be a requirement for the jobs they take up even for native-born Australians. But now, in order to vote, we expect them to be able to compose an essay suitable for academic credit? This is just the usual Liberal hate and fear of brown people. They would end all immigration from everywhere but white Britain if they could, and probably those whinging Poms, too, except that “real” Australians aren’t having enough babies. The rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation didn’t coincide with Tony Abbott becoming Prime Minister. He hated them. Mostly, he hated them because they took votes from the Liberal-National coalition, reducing their power to impose their race-hate on the country. No, One Nation rose because Abbott’s star fell, replaced by the smiling face of Malcolm Turnbull. But Turnbull kept the far-right on the front bench, like Peter Dutton, whose brainchild the new citizenship test is sold as. Don’t be fooled. Turnbull and the LNP today aren’t centre-right. They’re virulent extremists and always have been. Turnbull’s pleasant façade of reasonableness is the cover they give to controlling the population through hate and fear, causing internal divisions among us, the better to eliminate the middle class and create the new feudalism they believe is their right. They mean to rule, not govern, and to do that there must be Lords and Serfs. They know which group they belong to, and which group the rest of us are in. We’re the only ones fooling ourselves, continuing to vote against our own best interests, as the US did electing Trump and keeping the Republicans in power. Our “Trump moment” isn’t past, it’s prologue.

You Won’t Believe This One Simple Trick to What Happens Next Fairfax is shedding jobs, and moving to rely for content on “contributors”, which sounds like paying freelancers to do the work reporters and editors used to do. This is a shame, as the content of the Sydney Morning Herald is pretty much all click-bait at this point, and badly edited to boot. Online content is fairly rife with poor grammar and typos, but the Herald and its sister publications aren’t any different in print. Having shed editorial staff multiple times over the last couple of years, it’s only getting worse. It’s inevitable that media will move more and more to being fully digital, and that the content will, at least partially in consequence, rely less on the printed word and more on audio-visual presentation. The arrival of radio and television promised this long ago, but the platforms have finally arrived to make it happen. We can watch MSNBC or CNN or Fox on our phones and tablets, laptops and desktops, and many people do, but we can also access breaking news and news-related content via these services, too, which makes operations like Fairfax or the New York Times. etc., in many ways uniquely positioned as distinct providers. The loss of print media won’t be felt by the younger generations, but the degradation of content should be. That’s not a small reason to support the week-long strike, even if it won’t actually change anything that hasn’t been underway for a long time now. I’d cancel my subscription, but the only option is Murdoch’s Australian, and that son of a bitch doesn’t need my money any more than I would ever want to count towards that rag’s circulation. (I won’t even take a free copy of its sibling, the Telegraph, when it’s offered, so it can’t be counted.) It was once a better publication, but the Murdoch model means it’s all alt-right hate all the time for the last ten years and more. The ABC is useful, so long as the LNP don’t amputate its funding to the point of no return, but there’s no print option. So long, SMH; you’ve given up.